I’ve been tussling with a blog full of academics over at the Comics Grid (they even quoted my brother at me!) on the subject of Maus and metafictional conceits. Ernesto Priego in the post argued that Maus smartly employs self-reflexivity and irony, particularly in its use of comic-book tropes like caricature.
Priego:
In the panels above, Artie expresses the melancholia caused by the double bind in which he is trapped by trying to deal with his father’s story (and, as we know, with his own story with his father) through comics. The ironic effect provoked by the juxtaposition of the word “caricature” in a dialogue uttered by a cartoon character unavoidably indicates an illuminating self-reflexivity.
By blurring (and deliberately confusing) the distinction between empirical author and fictional persona, Spiegelman appears conscious that every representational practice implies a distortion (“caricature” is indeed understood as the graphic distortion of recognisable features, usually to achieve a humorous, ironic or parodic effect) and that this is problematic when one is attempting a narrative which makes “truth claims” (Ricoeur 1988:188-192), like the testimony of a Holocaust survivor.
So caricature emphasizes the inevitable distortion of representation; thus comics is especially suited to exploring the problematic nature of truth claims.
I think this pretty much gets things completely backwards. To see why, here’s a poem by Paul Celan (translated by Michael Hamburger.)
It is no longer
this
heaviness lowered at times together with you
into the hour. It is
another.It is the weight holding back the void
that would
accompany you.
Like you, it has no name. Perhaps
you two are one and the same. Perhaps
one day you also will call
me so.
As with Celan’s poetry in general, this is mysterious — or, to put it another way, fucking confusing. There is a heaviness…then there is another heaviness….there is a you without a name. Which hour? Which weight? Who is me? The “heaviness” and “lowered into” suggest a coffin or death, but only elliptically. And there are two deaths? Or perhaps a dead person and his (or her?) death? The weight of the void, the void in the weight, press on each other, and something escapes. The poem ends up as an elegy for its own meaning. The heaviness is gone; a void slips in. The “me” at the end is not a self so much as a wavering echo of self; the shadow of an ego that hopes to be called, perhaps, by a friend, a voice, that cannot even be named, much less remembered.
Celan’s work is often seen as a long struggle with the problem of meaning and representation following the Holocaust…which is also the problem of meaning and representation in the face of death. Language in his poems doesn’t so much crack as scuttle to the side. The heaviness of speech is not the heaviness of reality; one can call the other, perhaps, but not be it, and that distance is a pain that can itself barely be expressed. Celan is always on the verge of fading into silence; his poems careful scrawls surrounding their own inevitable dissolution.
The tension in Celan’s writing, then, is precisely because of the inadequacy of his resources. Language can only guess at identities (“Perhaps you two are one and the same,”) but language is all he has.
Spiegelman claims a similar kind of tension, a similar difficulty of representation. But his art does not justify the claim. On the contrary, the use of caricature, which Priego sees as emphasizing the problems of communication, actually finesses it.
The characters here talk about the inadequacy of comics representation. Caricature — the way Vladek is portrayed and, of course, the fact that the characters are drawn as mice — is discussed as false. But that falseness is represented unproblematically through language. You can see this even more clearly in another page Priego reproduces:
The last panel comments on the fact that this is a comic strip; what you see is not reality. But the very fact that what you see is not what you get actually underlines the truth of the final panel, where Artie says, basically, “this is not reality.” That statement, the accuracy of that representation, is not questioned. Language in Maus can, and often does, tell the truth, a fact continually emphasized by the fact that images do not.
In short, caricature is an easy out. Spiegelman’s mice offer a comfortable answer to the question of “what is real.” That answer is, not the surface, but the essence; not the caricature, but the language telling you it is not the caricature. Spiegelman questions whether he is telling the story right, but that’s a methodological, not an ontological question. Indeed, the methodological questions allow him to avoid the ontological ones. Spiegelman questions cartooning in order to avoid more difficult questions. Which is why, despite all its vaunted self-reflexivity, Maus is consistently and cripplingly glib.
I have no comments on Maus (I think like superhero comics, I’m calling a moratorium on my participation in anything involving them), but I love that Celan poem. Thanks for sharing it.
It’s such a fantastic translation too. I think my favorite part:
“Like you, it has no name. Perhaps
you two are one and the same. Perhaps”
is kind of great because of the name/same rhyme, which isn’t in the original as far as I can tell.
The Celan poem is, as far as this reader is concerned, a red herring. “What’s he to Hecuba?” What’s Celan to Spiegelman? Nothing.
There’s an additional layer of irony in play because Noah has quoted a translation: so it’s OK to transpose Celan into another language, but not OK for Spiegelman to do the same visually with his father.
The ‘caricature’ referred to in the text has nothing to do with the visual depiction of Vladek, but rather with Spiegelman’s presentation of Vladek’s modern-day actions.
Spiegelman’s “mousing” of his dad is, in fact, anti-caricatural– rendering generic what caricature emphasises: individuality. Caricature is about revealing: this “mousing” is about masking.
The “meta” in Maus is coolly, and (I would say) courageously assumed; there aren’t many artists who would so willingly invite the reader to doubt his approach. Spiegelman is the Brecht of comics, inviting a cerebral, detached judgment of an intensely emotional story.
Celan’s a writer who is fascinated by questions of representation and the Holocaust. If you can’t see why that relates to Spiegelman, I can’t help you.
Translating always loses something, obviously. It’s a necessity to allow a broader audience. As I said, I think Hamburger’s translation is bautiful. Spiegelman’s transposition of his father is just dumb. It’s not hypocritical to say one person did something well and another did something poorly, unless you resent the whole idea of comparison…which of course comics fans often do.
Every single fucking post modern writer is willing to invite the reader to doubt his approach. Celan does it, for one. Borges, Nabokov, Barth, and on and on. It’s de rigeur. There’s nothing either original or courageous about it. Suggesting it’s original and courageous, as Spiegelman does, is, I would argue, tiresome and ridiculous. But that’s me.
Finally, Spiegelman specifically links his portrait of his father to caricature, which has to be seen as about visual depiction in the context of a comic.
How would YOU know that Hamburger’s translation is beautiful?
Parlez-vous français, Noah?
For all you know, the translation is a travesty. Original, please.
“Finally, Spiegelman specifically links his portrait of his father to caricature, which has to be seen as about visual depiction in the context of a comic.”
Except– as I pointed out, this being obvious– it isn’t. It is the exact opposite.
“Every single fucking post modern writer is willing to invite the reader to doubt his approach. Celan does it, for one. Borges, Nabokov, Barth, and on and on.”
Pretty terrific company to be grouped with, Noah.
Yes. But Spiegelman doesn’t look very great compared to them, unfortunately.
It’s not the exact opposite. Spiegelman uses the caricatures to show that the comic isn’t true. He also refers to himself as caricaturing Vladek, which he says isn’t true. But he doesn’t question the words he uses to tell us it isn’t true.
Seeing caricature as about individuality flies in the face of hundreds of years of caricature, which tend to emphasize racial stereotypes. They emphasize generic qualities, masking individuality. Thus, Spiegelman’s masking of his father works quite well with traditional anti-semitic depictions, which also emphasize genericness and downplay individuality. Spiegelman is quite correct to link the history of caricature to the history of anti-semitic potrayals. His mistake (from my perspective) is to suggest that by pointing out the caricature/mask he is revealing the real. Celan’s is a much fiercer and much more uncompromising take on the tragedy of language and of the real.
Noah, ach, this is more of your tendentious, hammer-blunt, idol-toppling perversity at work.
Your method, from my POV, is to work by comparison/contrast to things you esteem, find fault on the basis of those personal points of reference (as in, Spiegelman isn’t Celan), then point out that, besides the much-idolized comic in question, lots of other artists, in other media, other forms, have engaged in the same things — in this case, self-reflexive and metanarrative feints — so that these are, ho hum, hardly new (even though Spiegelman’s way of doing them was decidedly new to comics). Then you elevate the comic’s use of such common devices to a moral failing, as in, Spiegelman is glib. Then, when confronted, you persist in dissing the comic in question as, here you go again, “tiresome,” old hat, and inferior to works in wholly other forms, works whose agendas and burdens and formal affordances are light years away from the comic in question.
FWIW, you’re entirely wrong about Maus being merely glib. This was the tack I took as a reader initially, back in the mid-80s, due to my own initial resistance to work that exploded or ignored the boundaries of comic book culture as I, an ardent fan, understood it. But when I finally read, years later, the completed Maus, I realized that this was a moving, indeed for me deeply affecting, work that used intellectualized conceits and circuitous method to earn, and make the reader earn, a stunning emotional effect. Maus moves many people for a reason, something your dismissive posturing cannot account for.
In hindsight, there’s nothing glib about Maus at all, and you’re condemning it (condemning is not too strong a word) precisely for its use of the comical, its word/image tensions, its aesthetic effects. You’re condemning it for not rising to the ontological heights, or depths, of Celan, for being something other than what your straw argument insists that it must be. You’re faulting its medium-specific complexities as simplicities. In essence, you’re adding your voice to the chorus of shallow ad hominem criticisms based on a dislike of Spiegelman’s persona, the kind of obtuse, tone-deaf criticism seen in, for example, Harvey’s willful misreading of the book in his The Art of the Comic Book.
Spiegelman will always be subject to arguments that he is “glib.” His refusal to tack away from the comical, his refusal to deliver what others expect of a Holocaust account, and his deeply fraught portrayal of his father are bound to rub a few readers raw. But the charge is itself glib, unearned.
Note that Spiegelman never affirms that his portrayal is “real” in any straightforward, uncomplicated sense. Not even his words do this. Attention to the text, the whole text, verbal and visual, reveals that, as Vol. 2 speeds to its end, Maus unpacks layer after layer of hopeful artifice, and ends on a deliberately deceptive note, whereby father and son together fantastically reconstruct the absent mother who, we know full well from earlier chapters, cannot be restored, indeed is the irrevocable and constitutive absence, or loss, around which the book is built. You haven’t even begun to plumb the depths of this layering.
Again, from my POV your considerable writerly gifts are being sabotaged by your crushingly obvious yen for idol-toppling. The way you swing that truncheon of ideological criticism, in predictable and predictably unsympathetic ways, is a stone cold drag. You’d give us much more if you stopped trying to enrage fans and instead applied your needle-sharp intelligence to actually reading the comics with due attention, without trying to make the alleged limitations of the comics into a warrant for swinging that stick.
Hey Charles! Figured you’d show up!
First, I’m not trying to enrage anyone. Comics fans are just really easy to enrage. That’s not my fault.
I kind of think your comment deconstructs itself nicely here:
“even though Spiegelman’s way of doing them was decidedly new to comics”
Indeed. Why should this be at all a point in his favor exactly?
And many things aren’t really worth that much attention, you know? I read a bit of John Grisham recently. Do I need to read the entire work to determine that it sucks? Maus is better than John Grisham, I’ll admit. But not so much better that I need to reread it infinitely to determine that it’s mediocre.
Also…you seem upset that I should compare comics I don’t admire to work I do. See what I said earlier about comics fans really quite embarrassing discomfort with comparisons.
Oh, and since we’re taking out the knives…your reiterated defensiveness around the low status of “comicalness” and your equally defensive claims of expertise do you, your writing, and comics no favors. I understand that it’s important to raise comics status and usher them into the shining halls of academe. But turning your loves into idols is no particular kindness, and codifying disciplinary boundaries is a way not to protect the work, but to consign it to irrelevance. Comparing Spiegelman to Celan, even to condemn him, is much more respectful than your really ridiculous plea that what he’s doing is worthwhile because it’s new to comics.
Though…as always, I appreciate you coming by, and find your different approach stimulating as well as maddening.
Wait till Eddie Campbell next week, though…
That ends on an ominous note. I take it me and Charles (or me, at least) are going to be whaling the crap out of you about Campbell?
Funny somebody was quoting me at you, Noah. In my revised reading of mouse, I actually kind of disagree with my 2003 self–but I’m not agreeing with you either (no shock there, I guess). To me, the notion that Spiegelman’s use of animal faces and masks is obvious and hamfisted is just wrong. This was a clever way of exploring the tension between notions of biological race and social construction and how those play out in both Nazi Germany and contemporary Catskills (and environs)…The use of animal masks then complicates the already clever animal metaphors. It is a deceptively simple ploy, but one that plays big dividends. The comparison to Sterne, Nabokov, Borges, etc. isn’t always flattering to Spiegelman, admittedly, but he does, in some ways, have bigger fish to fry than they usually. Nabokov and Borges make the formal play the central point of their narratives quite often–while Spiegelman wants to (and probably psychologically needs to) take on one of the biggest historical tragedies of the twentieth century (no, I’m not going to make a ranked list–but it’s a biggie). Nabokov’s playful revealing that Kinbote’s Zembla AND his own novel are not “real” doesn’t have the same potential disturbing relevance of suggesting that eyewitness holocaust testimony is “not real.” Likewise, Borges’ personal presence in something like “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis, Tertius”–and its collision of “real” and fictional worlds–is only philosophically invested in the questionable “reality” of our world–it does not explore the social and political ramifications of revealing “historical” reality to be construction. There are other books that are more similar to Maus in this regard (“historiographic metafiction” is a genre of its own), but Sterne, Nabokov, and Borges, while flattering, may not be the best comparisons. I agree with some of the above (and Charles’ book) that the metafictiveness of Maus is somewhat paradoxical–working to simultaneously disavow the reality of the narrative–and to lay claim to historical reality–but this kind of playfulness seems less “playful” and lighthearted (as in Sterne–one of my all-time favorite books btw). It does work for different purposes, however, without undermining Vladek’s narrative. Spiegelman’s a very cerebral and clever creator (as the Breakdowns stuff makes abundantly clear)– and applying that kind of mentality to his father’s Holocaust narrative combines strong emotional experience with interrogation of that experience. Maus is, in the end, a pretty great book, although I have never really embraced it fully myself, being raised on Holocaust guilt in Hebrew school–and never having really wanted to go back there. I try not to let my ethnic self-hatred completely dictate my response to the book, however.
Hey Eric!
I think your 2011 self is more convincing than your 2003 self also. However!
First, I think you’re somewhat underestimating some of the political and moral elements in Borges and especially in Nabokov. They’re not as obvious (some might say leaden) about is as Spiegelman, but…Tlon is arguably about totalitarianism, and Lolita is definitively about child abuse. Not to get too Domingos on you, but serious artists do tend to engage with serious issues. Spiegelman’s really, really ostentatious about it, but I don’t think that actually means that he’s more serious or more insightful. Quite the reverse, in fact.
Second…the main comparison is to Celan, who is as enmeshed in the Holocaust and its aftermath as Spiegelman is. The difference is that Celan’s take on the ontological issues is really subtle and weird and haunting, whereas Spiegelman’s comes down to little more than the hopelessly cliched “dare we talk about the Holocaust?!” (Charles seems ready to dismiss Celan…which I’d actually be pretty interested to see. I presume it’s on the grounds of being too confusing or inaccessible?)
I guess I’ve kind of hit the third point, which is just that, despite reading you and Charles, I don’t find Spiegelman’s questioning of reality in any way insightful or provocative. The beginning of the second part, where he’s got the mask on sitting atop the pile of corpses complaining about his success…I just found that unendurably pompous, clumsy, and obvious. I mean, like, throw the book across the room unendurable. And all the little details in that vein — “just keep it honest, honey” — I mean, fuck off. I have no desire to see you patting yourself on the back, and/or chastising yourself in the same tones of reverential self-revelation as every other half-assed confessional nitwit who’s ever come down the pike.
I didn’t hate all of Maus. Like I said, there’s an interesting story there, and Spiegelman tells it well enough. I wish the art were better, but it could be worse too. But the metafictional stuff is just really not very clever, to put it kindly.
Rober — yes, you and Charles and everyone else are going to beat me bloody. Even Suat likes that book! I am doomed.
Huh? I like the book (i.e. The Years Have Pants)? There are parts I like and there are parts I like less. Maybe Caro will be on your side…
I definitely don’t think Maus is a great work of art though.
Oh, that’s comforting. I thought you were more enthusiastic.
Caro’s at least fairly positive, from what she’s said.
What are your reservations about Maus?
I agree that Borges’ work, in general, has some interesting things to say about authoritarianism…and especially about the disturbing human need for “order” and for things to “make sense”–Tlon fits into that pattern, admittedly—but, as with much of his work, somewhat obtusely–He was unlikely to take flack from the broad(er) public for his somewhat ambivalent attitudes towards these things in his fiction. Likewise, Lolita, obviously, has something to say about pedophilia–although Lolita wasn’t the example I was using for selfish reasons (i.e., I haven’t read it in awhile and am not prepared to launch a lengthy argument about it). Still, while Nabokov does address social and political realities, particularly in his Russian novels, which I’ve been working my way through of late–his reputation as a master of formal tricks at the expense of “serious” content, is not totally unearned. I’m not trying to say Spiegelman is better than Borges or Nabokov, though, as they’re both favorites of mine (and I tend to be a sucker for formal tricks myself)–All I was saying is that using self-reflexivity in the context Spiegeman does leads to different effects—and that the comparison is therefore flawed. I can’t speak to the Celan, really—as I haven’t read much Celan–and I didn’t even read this article of yours! Having seen your spiel on Spiegelman before—a few lines allowed me to comment freely. Just hewing to Berlatsky family logic.
“and I didn’t even read this article of yours!”
Hah! Well, it’s true we’ve had this conversation before! You should read the Celan poem though; it’s pretty great.
Yes, I am positive about Alec. I’m still working out exactly what I’m going to say, though.
What the literary critic in me likes least about Maus is that it is so reliant on symbolism that the symbols remain inescapably, insistently symbolic throughout. They never stop being marked by their symbolism, so the non-symbolic significance never quite “lives” for me.
This is exacerbated by the fact that there’s not much contrast between the story-without-the-symbol and the story-with-the-symbol. The predator:prey::Nazis:Jews analogy is so simple, so straightforward itself, that once it’s established you can’t really step away from it and experience the story without it, so you can’t get that nice doubling effect that you get in narratives where the conceit is more subtle and less integral to the narrative.
That doubling effect is like shining a pointer on an aspect of the concept that you never would have noticed (so that you suddenly see two things where before you saw one, like those visual games — is it faces or a vase?). The symbolism in Maus doesn’t do that — you always saw the Nazis and the Jews in this predator/prey relationship; so Maus just makes palpable and emphatic something that you knew anyway. It’s an effective symbol for genocide, one that really drives home the point, but it’s not a surprising one. Making it so tangible through the imagery is an achievement, but it’s not the imaginative and uncanny sort of achievement that makes writers like Nabokov and Borges so satisfying.
I can get past all that though and recognize a successful symbol of that ilk, although my preference is for the trickier stuff. But I actually just find Spiegelman’s prose absolutely, utterly intolerable. Even reading the excerpts above makes me shudder.
@Noah. “Also…you seem upset that I should compare comics I don’t admire to work I do. See what I said earlier about comics fans really quite embarrassing discomfort with comparisons.”
Noah, the problem with your comparative approach (and I’d also add the similiar comparative approach that Ng Suat Tong often uses) is not that it’s unfavorable but that it’s ahistorical and inattentive to formal questions. If you had said Spiegelman was better than Celan, Borges and Nabokov, your comments would be equally obtuse. There were a lot of old line fans who would compare Caniff with Rembrandt and Hal Foster with Michelangelo. I found their criticism as callow and unhelp as yours is, for the same reason even though they celebrated Caniff and Foster. These kinds of comparisons across forms and across historical eras and cultural barriers need to be done with a great deal more intelligence and care than you’re willing to apply, with a due acknowledgement of the differences at work. (An example of someone who does it well is Will Pritchard who has an interesting comparison of Boswell with Crumb — but this works because Pritchard is careful to situate both Boswell and Crumb in their artistic and historical contexts. See here for an earlier post calling attention to Pritchard’s work: http://comicscomicsmag.com/2010/06/doing-justice-to-crumb.html)
Because you’re impulse to sneer is stronger than your impulse to read or analyze, these posts always sound like childish taunting rather than criticism: The child’s argument that “My dad is stronger than your dad” is transformed into “My Celan is stronger than your Spiegelman.” These are among the most unhelpful bits of criticism I’ve ever read.
The original poem:
Es Ist Nicht Meher
diese
zuweilen mit dir
in die Stunde gesenkte
Schwere. Es ist
eine andre
Es ist das Gewicht, das die Leere zurückhält,
die mit-
ginge mit dir.
Es hat, wie du, keinen Namen. Vielleicht
seid ihr dasselbe. Vielleicht
nennst auch du mich einst
so.
Paul Celan was a great poet, a great artist. From the top of my head I can only think of one truly great comics artist in the restrict field. His name isn’t Art Spiegelman.
Comics fans have very good reasons to be essentialists. The art form almost never attracted great artists. Not even in a parachute, falling off route, did they fall in the comics field.
…I mean Yoshiharu Tsuge above, of course…
Ah, well, Jeet; I often (though not always!) find your writing quite unhelpful as well. Different strokes, and all that.
I mean, to me, Jeet, you often seem absolutely paralyzed by your own pedantry. You’re so determined to be careful, and often so determined to be reverent, that you won’t actually say what you think. You say it’s important to make “due acknowledgment of the differences at work,” but important for what? So that you can carefully slot everyone into their exact place of worth, doling out praise and blame in exactly proportioned measures? Who does that benefit? Are you engaged with the living world of art or are you compiling the Key to All Mythologies?
Celan and Spiegelman are both dealing with issues of representation in relation to the Holocaust. I think Celan does a better job. I said so. I explained why. You disagree? Disagree. But don’t tell me that I’ve violated some tenet of scholarship or criticism because I’m unwilling to qualify my opinions with hemming and hawing and pleas for other critics to go say something substantive because I can’t be bothered now.
And as for sneering — sneering is fun! You and Charles think so as well; you’re just more comfortable sneering at fellow critics than at artists. I’m not interested in making that distinction…but as I said before, different strokes.
Caro, that’s pretty much where I’m coming from as well. I just didn’t feel that Spiegelman, when he goes metafictional, ever teaches me anything, or tells me anything I didn’t know, or gives me the little oooh! of awe or wonder that I want from my art. It’s just really flat.
I think Charles (and perhaps Matthias) would say that we’re ignoring the comic qualities, the tension between picture and word. I don’t buy it, but I think it’s the counter-argument.
On the other hand, I think I actually may like his prose more than you do…at least the Vladek narration part. I read all the way through Maus without much trouble because of that. I don’t know that I exactly enjoyed it, but I did finish it (it’s like Y the Last Man in that way for me.)
@Caro:
What the literary critic in me likes least about Maus is that it is so reliant on symbolism that the symbols remain inescapably, insistently symbolic throughout. They never stop being marked by their symbolism, so the non-symbolic significance never quite “lives” for me.
But the grounding and function of the symbol keep changing; that’s the thing about Maus. Spiegelman keeps working on, fussing with, questioning, challenging, the foundation of the house even as he lives and works in it. His relationship, and therefore the reader’s, with the symbol keeps modulating, particularly in Vol. 2, in ways that make its function dynamic, not static. Indeed Vol. 2 betrays quite a bit of aggravated anxiety around the symbol itself, which finally works out as an overspill of self-parody, self-reflexive excess. This is a process, not a gimmick that keeps working exactly the same way throughout.
But I actually just find Spiegelman’s prose absolutely, utterly intolerable.
It’s not prose, exactly. It’s comics dialogue and comics narration. (It’s no more prose than are the long, hanging silences of Pinter.)
Noah, I do not presume to judge or dismiss Celan, about whom I know very little and whose work I have sampled in only an iceberg’s-tip sort of way.
Comparing Spiegelman to Celan, even to condemn him, is much more respectful than your really ridiculous plea that what he’s doing is worthwhile because it’s new to comics.
It’s not ridiculous. It’s an important historical point. I happen to value — not to the exclusion of other considerations, but highly nonetheless — formal innovation in art. Formal innovation emerges against the background of an art form’s specific history, and, yes, doing in a given form what no one has done in that form before, and doing it in such a way as to profoundly influence, even reroute, what follows, is an important and noteworthy achievement. I’m hardly alone in this view; indeed the history of art forms is routinely told in terms of formal innovation. That’s not an exhaustive way of looking at art; indeed, being something of a materialist, I’d argue that privileging formal innovation alone is inadequate to the history of forms. But it is an important and inevitable way of talking about changing values in art. Formal innovation is important to me, and it is widely important critically. Arguments about innovation must reckon on the specific historical development of forms, and, in comics criticism, Maus is a necessary part of the historical narrative.
You have a tendency, notable in your responses to Jeet, to dismiss these specificities as not only irrelevant to your interests (fair enough) but also as a kind of oppressive disciplinary boundary-drawing (unfair). I don’t believe it’s oppressive of me to insist on closeness and rigor in the critical interpretation of a comic. At times you seem so determined to demonstrate your independence of the so-called comics fan POV (which you construct monolithically) that you engage in a kind of slash-and-burn criticism that is not only ungrounded in but adverse to careful reading of the material.
But don’t tell me that I’ve violated some tenet of scholarship or criticism because I’m unwilling to qualify my opinions…
Criticism, no, you have not violated a tenet of criticism by venting your opinions without qualification. You may have violated, or more accurately disappointed, my expectations of criticism, but you have violated any sacred tenet.
However, scholarship is another matter. If you insist on trumpeting your refusal to spend more time with the work, then, yes, you are violating one of the tenets of scholarship as I understand it. Of course HU does not propose to be scholarly, usually (I’d say the same about most of the work @ The Panelists), so that’s no big sin. In another context, it might be.
BTW, no one said anything about rereading Maus infinitely. Just more carefully, and with less of an obvious, foregone determination to pillory it.
You may have violated, or more accurately disappointed, my expectations of criticism, but you have violated any sacred tenet.
Error! That line should read:
You may have violated, or more accurately disappointed, my expectations of criticism, but you have NOT violated any sacred tenet.
Ack! You just reminded me Charles to try to get an edit function in the redesign.
Charles, the problem with trumpeting Spiegelman’s formal innovations in terms of comics is that (a) comics has long been fairly backwards aesthetically, and (b) comics, and especially what Spiegelman does with comics, is closely related to prose narratives, so lifting techniques doesn’t look especially impressive. It’s certainly fine for you to point it out, and it’s interesting from a comics-centric point of view if what you’re interested in is disciplinary history. But to say that what he’s doing is great because of those factors; it just seems really condescending to me. It’s like praising Duke Ellington because he was the first (more or less) to use complicated arrangements in jazz. If that was Ellington’s achievement, he’d rightly be forgotten. HIs achievement was what he did with the arrangements, not that he had them.
As I’ve said before, there are different contexts in which to place art. One of them is by looking at the specific disciplinary history. Another is to compare to artists in different disciplines. One way is to look carefully at an entire work. Another is to look at and think about smaller pieces, perhaps in the context of an ongoing dialogue.
In this case…I mean, I have read Maus, some sections of it many times. I’ve read your book with its discussion of Maus. I’ve read Eric’s essay on Maus (a while ago, but still.) I’ve read Ernesto’s essay on Maus. I’ve read other books by Spiegelman. I’ve read autobio comics influenced by Maus. What exactly is the cut-off where I’m empowered to talk about it, Charles? Do I need a degree in Mausology? Or is the issue instead (as I suspect) that I have to talk about it, negatively or positively, in a certain way and with a certain level of respect?
You claim I’m constructing the comics canon monolithically. That’s bullshit. It’s you who claim that I’m out to enrage; it’s you who claim that I”m out to topple idols. I know lots of people who think that Maus is lousy, boring, ham-fisted, poorly written, pompous, and cliched. It’s no big thing to me to say it. Again, if it’s a big thing for you to hear it, that’s not my fault.
And I’m still interested in why you don’t like Celan. Just go ahead and tell us! Celan’s dead, you can’t possibly hurt his reputation, nobody thinks you’re an expert on him…but you’re a smart guy interested in culture and writing, and we’re having a discussion about him. Get out of your comfort zone for once, man.
Charles, I didn’t mean that it was a gimmick or immutable, just that it wasn’t subtle. Because it’s so explicit and because it’s an analogy/symbol, it’s always very foregrounded. It never slips into the background for me. Mutable, but not doubled. I agree with you that he explores the symbol and its complexity and that his treatment isn’t static, but it’s still a pretty direct, pointed symbol and one that isn’t terribly obscure. I also agree it gets at something big and essential and explores that — but aesthetically for me the result of that is something very blunt and loud.
I think this is a risk you always run when you put a symbol in an image. It’s very characteristic of cartooning, but it’s a GENRE of cartooning, not an inevitable choice. European cartooning does it far less. It’s because the symbol saturates the image that it doesn’t work for me. It’s related to Alter’s point about Genesis: it’s too concrete and tangible. Symbols are more concrete than many other devices even when they’re verbal, and when you make them into pictures, and make those pictures so central to the work, I find that overwhelming.
We’ll just have to disagree that it’s not prose! It may be a specialized kind of prose (in which case I would say it’s probably TOO specialized), but film dialogue is prose, newspaper writing is prose, tv talking heads speak in prose. If it’s “ordinary grammatical structure and the natural flow of speech” (per, pathetically, wikipedia) it’s prose. But to be clear, I find representational orality like Speigelman’s intolerable in film too. I’ll be writing about this more in my Alec piece — I find Campbell’s prose utterly delightful.
Well, Caro, what does that do to three thousand years of iconography?
Absolutely nothing, Alex. Iconography is strong symbolism too: it’s iconography because the symbol is foregrounded (although some of it is more subtle than Spiegelman’s, but it’s a related genre.)
Iconography, however, tends to be punctuated into single images or small groups of images, not pages upon pages of narrative. I think when you use iconography as the structuring principle for a long-form narrative, you get something inherently strong, loud, and overt, that I find highly aesthetically unpleasant.
I disagree in the particular instance of Maus. Once you have digested the conceit of animal people, I find that it recedes into the background and is forgotten.
But as Charles suggests, Spiegelman makes a concerted effort to foreground it again once it’s receded. He constantly talks about it, pushes at it (having the characters in Maus masks) etc.
I don’t think it’s a very good defense of the book to say that it’s central conceit doesn’t matter or is forgettable. (And in this case I don’t think that’s actually true.)
Darn; this was on the wrong thread:
Oh. And Hamburger’s translation is beautiful to me because I can read it. A translation is it’s own work of art, and can be evaluated as such. Whether it’s accurate is a separate matter. Celan wrote in German though, Alex, not French.
It does matter, and it’s not so much forgettable as lost to our conscious attention, but remains to color our perception.
Spiegelman’s decision to foreground the conceit every now and then stems, I think, from a very contemporary impulse to lay bare the artifice at the heart of art; if John Fowles or Italo Calvino can, why not he?
I also think he is aiming at a Brechtian Verfremdungseffeckt, not allowing us the comfort of a nice wallow in story. the climax is, of course, when he includes Vladek’s actual photograph at the end of the book– blowing his whole conceit to smithereens. That’s quite daring.
Yeah; Charles makes much of the photograph too, and has a nice bit where he points out the artificiality of the photograph itself (it’s a restaging, and clearly posed.)
I’m not a huge fan of Fowles either, and am ambivalent on Calvino. I tend to think they’re both more subtle and thoughtful in the way they foreground artifice (and not artifice) than Spiegelman is.
As Caro says, and as I argue in the post as well…I don’t’ think Spiegelman manages to figure out a way to translate the things he’s picked up from literary fiction very effectively into visuals. The central visual symbol comes across as very heavy-handed, and undercutting it (often verbally) tends to just call into question the drawn representation rather than getting at ontological questions. The picture too…there’s just something very obvious and leaden about introducing a photograph as real into an illustrated work — and even if it is posed, I think the emphasis is still very much on the idea that *this* is Vladek, posing, as opposed to an illustrated mask.
I think there are comics artists who are more sophisticated in the way they use visuals to ask questions about reality and knowledge. Moto Hagio, for instance, since I’ve been thinking about her recently…in Hanshin she uses repetition of images and elision of images to shuffle identity and exterior and interior; you’re never really sure what is true and what isn’t. The result isn’t unlike Celan; it opens up holes in interpretation which are not so much playful as unsettling…and for me, poetic.
Spiegelman never does that. He asks questions, but they don’t really open up interpretation. They close it down, if anything; as Caro says, the visual tropes are deployed in one-to-one way that is insistent and loud. The line between real and representation is pointed to, insisted upon, but never crossed or blurred.
In terms of Brecht; I think your comparison doesn’t hold up here either. Brecht insisted on presenting the action on stage as false, in order to reveal ideology. You were meant to be alienated from the characters on stage. Spiegelman works in the opposite way. He tells you the action he is presenting is false…*in order to make you sympathize more fully with his dilemma as a writer and a victim.* Maus does not alienate through highlighting artifice. It points to artifice in order to further engage your sympathies.
Only vaguely a propos, but one of my favorite essays on translations, by Harry Mathews http://www.altx.com/ebr/ebr5/mathews.htm
Noah, I disagree with your final paragraph. If Spiegelman wanted sympathy, there are far subtler and more effective ways to get it than depicting yourself as a manipulator and possible profiteer.
Alex…actually that’s false. Rogues and scoundrels are more lovable than just about anyone. Turn on any television drama if you don’t believe me.
Showing your flaws in order to get points for honesty and humanity is basic, basic confessional literature 101.
Spiegelman isn’t bad at it or anything, but it’s neither especially novel nor especially brave.
I think it takes a feat of dulling your senses to not notice that symbolism all the time…but even in more subtle works, if something is coloring my perception, I stay aware of it.
Noah, I never said I don’t like Celan! I’ve just not engaged his work to the degree you have.
The poem you cited deals with such ontological and epistemological difficulties that I think it far exceeds Maus, and also tacks in a different direction. Maus frankly needs straightforward representation to make its points accessible, meaningful, comprehensible. It is doing something far different than the Celan poem.
I don’t fault either Celan or Spiegelman for that.
Reading Celan, really reading him, will have to be a future challenge for me.
BTW, saying that comics have had a history of being backward aesthetically neither elevates nor denigrates Spiegelman. What’s at issue for me is the way he engages comics form and comics history. I find it brilliant. I can see that you don’t.
Hey Charles. Yes, we may just have to agree to disagree. Engaging comics form and comics history is certainly a worthwhile thing for a comic to do. I don’t find Spiegelman’s solution to those issues especially winning. (Alan Moore, on the other hand….)
“The poem you cited deals with such ontological and epistemological difficulties that I think it far exceeds Maus”
That was basically my point…specifically in response to the Priego essay, which was praising Maus (at least in my reading) for its treatment of ontological and epistemological difficulties. I think making a case for Maus on those grounds is really dicey, and I think a comparison with Celan suggests why.
And actually I think you’re comment here suggests why in other ways as well. Maus is, as you say, interested in accessibility and “straightforward representation.” I actually like it most when it just embraces that and tells its story. The self-referential moves seem tacked on, and not very skillfully. But…obviously mileage differs. I think I’d find it easier to buy a defense of the book which argued that it serves to popularize the ontological/epistemological issues in the context of an important and interesting narrative. That makes it a solidly middle-brow work, though…which could be folded into an idea of comics as the current laymen’s literature, in contrast to irrelevant high-brow poetry/lit-fic, etc.
I’ve probably read less Celan than you’re assuming. He’s great fun, but maddening, obviously. On the other hand, there’s something freeing about reading something that you know you’re never going to understand….
I’m coming to this discussion a bit late, and I’m certainly not going to be able to keep up with these early morning salvos (7am? Good Lord!), but the talk has gotten me worked up over some issues.
The idea that Spiegelman emerges from his therapy session “more mature” is a fundamental misreading of that scene. (I’m referring to the discussion that began over at The Comics Grid, but it has its function here. And to be fair, I disagree with both Noah and Ernesto on this.) He returns to what he was before he went to Pavel’s; the mask is still there, the representation of his character changes back from a toddler to an adult, and though he may feel somewhat less anxious, there’s no sudden maturity. In fact, the “Pavel” section ends the most self-consciously meta-textual portion of the book. Spiegelman returns to work, Vladek’s story continues. Pavel might as well say, “Get on with it.”
@Noah: “Spiegelman works in the opposite way. He tells you the action he is presenting is false…*in order to make you sympathize more fully with his dilemma as a writer and a victim.* Maus does not alienate through highlighting artifice. It points to artifice in order to further engage your sympathies.”
If you read that moment when “Artie” leaves Pavel’s as a moment of advancing maturity instead of an ambiguous return to functionality, I can understand why you’d see these tactics as some kind of plea for sympathy instead of a layer of self-interrogation. But for me, the self-consciousness of the book is not soliciting pity and adulation, but criticism and judgment of its author, encouraging the very alienation you experienced, Noah. That is the risk of his use of self-reflexivity, and there’s a strong example of it at the end of the very first chapter—hardly tacked on. Spiegelman critiques his own “cleverness” as the book proceeds, and as he has said often, the point of the cat/mouse metaphor is that it’s ultimately a failure. It falls apart upon closer examination and narrative propulsion.
The use of admitting and even highlighting one’s own weaknesses is certainly used often in any number of art forms, but equally as often—especially, it seems, in memoir—there is ultimately a redemptive moment in the narrative for that character or person, which often to me does seem cloying and self-aggrandizing. What here would be Spiegelman’s redemption? Finishing the book? That’s some pretty shaky extracurricular ground to be standing on.
I don’t see the benefit of making formal comparisons between a once-serialized graphic novel and a poem. A book-length comic will almost always seem leaden and clumsy compared to a poet like Celan, indeed, to just about any good poet, even if there are theoretical and thematic similarities between the two. (Hell, especially if.) Comparisons to prose are only a little better, but my beef with so much comics studies and criticism comes from this kind of reaching for supportive legitimacy on the one hand, and for baseball bats on the other, ignoring the formal uniqueness of comics. Maus and its caricature/iconography certainly calls back to Herriman and the anthropomorphic traditions in popular culture more than it does either Celan or someone like Borges, and there’s plenty to unravel there. Herriman had a taboo subject he couldn’t speak to, as well.
Sorry, but this kind of reductive either/or thinking strikes me as myopic and impotently hierarchical. The Ellington comparison is particularly short-sighted here, since The Duke is remembered for both his formal innovations and what he did with them, at least among the musicians and music critics I know. I suspect it will be same with Spiegelman. I fail to see the interest in arguing whether or not Spiegelman’s use of counterpoint was better than Ellington’s. It’s even worse, I think, to apply this approach to a reading within a work as is going on here with Spiegelman. I’m perfectly content with acknowledging his solipsism, sympathizing with his grief, and criticizing his perception of his own victimhood all at the same time, and I’m grateful to him for writing a work of art that gave me such a rich experience.
Poetry to me isn’t about understanding only. One of my favorite poets is Herberto Helder. He said that: “The Truth is the permanent repositioning of the enigmas.” Poetry is a feeling provoked by words. If we understand these words completely we’re having an intellectual experience, not a spiritual one. I don’t know if I’m making any sense though. Paul Celan thought that his most famous poem said too much. These (illustrations) paintings by Alselm Kiefer: http://tinyurl.com/68q2a3t http://tinyurl.com/4qwyl9n http://tinyurl.com/4ncxhk8
say too much too, maybe, but I like the materiality of the straw (followed by an index of combustion) and the referentiality of the painted flames. Maybe we can read something here that’s not quite so obvious: painting stands for the mythological quality of ideology. In the end Shulamith was killed by ideas as much as by Zyclon B. Here’s the poem: http://tinyurl.com/4m6btnl
That said I like _Maus_ enough to put it in my personal comics canon. I’m not deluded about its greatness though…
Hey Robert. Thanks for correcting me about the maturity bit. It has been a while since I read Maus.
I wasn’t kidding when I said that showing your faults is confessional writing 101. I was literally told to do just that in my creative writing course at Oberlin. Amy Hempel was visiting; she had us read a story in which she betrayed her best friend who was dying. There wasn’t any redemption especially; story ended when she left her best friend to die. She explained that you engage the reader’s sympathy more when the protagonist is flawed. I see nothing in Maus which contradicts that procedure.
You’re not at all alone in your belief that comics should only be compared to comics; I mentioned that this is a common prejudice above. I think it’s an attitude which is defensive, self-defeating, and depressing. Are comics their own little ghetto, where only comics standards can apply? Or do they have something to say to art and the world outside their particular fiefdom? Why anyone who cares about comics would choose the first over the second is something I have difficulty understanding.
The interest in comparing Spiegelman to artists in other arenas and eras is to better understand what he’s done and how successful he was at doing it. Celan confronted similar problems of tragedy and representation; Duke Ellington confronted similar problems of working in a despised medium with (by some standards) relatively undeveloped formal qualities.
The point about Ellington, incidentally, is that nobody praises him for being the first to bring classical elements into jazz. (Or not many people anyway, thank goodness.) The reason they don’t praise him for that is that that would be condescending to him and to jazz. They praise him for adapting some elements into a new idiom…an idiom which, not incidentally, has had a huge effect on the classical music he borrowed from.
Do you believe that Maus’ innovations (if such they are) are going to have a profound effect on the literary tradition that he borrowed them from? Have they done so already? Do they have any sign of doing so in the future? A conversation in the arts that is all one way is not a conversation of equal partners. And comics will never be an equal partner as long as it sees any comparison with any other art as an unfair demand, rather than as a challenge to rise to.
Domingos, I think your take on poetry makes sense. And I think I agree with Celan too; I like his shorter more elliptical poems better (though that one is nice too.)
Thanks, Noah, for your reply. Your explanation of the Duke comparison made more sense the second time around, though I’m still not entirely in agreement. Certainly no one should praise him for making jazz “better” by making it more classical; not only is it, as you said, insulting, it’s also pretty short-sighted about the brilliance of his fusion. But he is still appreciated for his formal innovations, just in the more nuanced way you describe, and there’s no reason this appreciation can’t comfortably stand next to the success and qualities of, as you said, the new idiom he created.
I’m not against comparison between the arts. As I said in my post, I’m leery of “formal comparisons” between those forms when there’s no recognition about what’s unique in each, and I’m particularly perturbed when one “fails” to do what the other can, and when that “failure” is used to place an artist on the leader board. If avoiding these tactics is too-careful criticism, so be it.
The way out of the fiefdom is not necessarily to make war with the king. To even see it as a fiefdom is basically a perception guided by profession and media, and not by what I’d consider particularly good criticism. If comparing comics to only other comics is defensive and self-defeating–which it is–then might not the same be said about valuing comparisons of comics to prose-only forms of literature, fiction or memoir? In that same post about Ellington, you said that “comics, and especially what Spiegelman does with comics, is closely related to prose narratives”. In the broadest sense, yes. So do movies and television. But movies have actual speech, and television is decidedly episodic. Must we always find some literature reference by which to judge them?
Do I believe that Spiegelman’s innovations are going to have a profound effect on the literary tradition he borrowed them from? Forgetting for a moment my hesitations about what we mean by profound, my answer is yes. They already have. But the literary tradition I have in mind is the graphic narrative/comic book/whatever we’re calling it today. I know this plays a bit into your argument. But even if Ellington had a profound effect on classical music, we wouldn’t say he had a profound effect on rock music, let alone film or the visual arts. And we certainly wouldn’t devalue his work because of this.
The bottom line for me is simply that comics have a unique language due to their blending of word and image. This doesn’t mean they must exist in their own little codified world, but neither does it mean that they have to match up against Borges.
As for Amy Hempel, I’m envious you were in a workshop of hers. But I have to ask, the story you mention, was that fiction or non-fiction? There again the expectations, conventions, etc., are different. And you and I may agree, perhaps, that the word she ought to have used was empathy?
Noah:
My take on poetry is also my take on painting. That’s why we can’t judge a painting by a small image on our small screen, let alone by how we translate its ideas into words. Those Kiefer paintings need to be seen to be believed. I also thought a little about why does he paint a plowed field? Maybe because the ashes have fallen to earth long ago?…
Robert:
When I participated on TCJ’s messboard I always compared comics artists to artists in other fields. The answer always was: you’re comparing apples and oranges (and they would say this even when I compared some hack to an alternative comics star). That may be, but my answer was (and is): why not?, they’re both fruits. To be an artist (and I’m including writers and musicians) means to create something and achieve some goal. People may disagree about what these goals are, but they shouldn’t look for them in one artist and not the next one. This means double standards. For instance, when people look for complexity of the characters in alternative comics (dismissing the cardboard) why do they say nothing about the subject when they’re writing about a superhero comic? Apples and oranges? Really? I didn’t know that there were no characters in mainstream comics… (Adrian Tomine has been consistently a victim of this.) Some devices cross art forms and genres.
Well, the TCJ messboard will do without you. It will in fact, do without anyone. It’s dead.
The Hempel piece was I think technically fiction, but it was confessional and heavily based on life. (And while I was wowed at the time, I really don’t like her writing at all anymore. Spiegelman’s better, I think.)
Ellington’s had more of an effect on rock music and than you’re letting on. Huge influence on Steely Dan, for example; a really central and seminal rock band. I’m pretty sure he’s influenced film as well. Jazz rhythms and aesthetics have been a mighty inspiration across pretty much all the arts. Certainly for film and visual art.
It’s somewhat like hitting a gnat with a bazooka to compare Spiegelman to Ellington, admittedly. But…Spiegelman has a comparable stature in comics that Ellington does in music. They both work in a mixed low art/high art idiom….. I don’t think it’s so unfair.
Comics may have a unique language. But you have to prove it, baby. And you can’t prove it without comparison, can you? How would you know it’s unique if you don’t look at other art forms? If Maus has a unique innovation to offer, then it has to show it’s doing something different, and presumably better, than other art forms. To see that you have to put it next to, for example, literature. I don’t see what Spiegelman is doing as a unique innovation. Neither have literary artists, as near as I can tell. Comics certainly may make unique contributions…and I think some have. Maus? I’m not convinced.
Can we have an HU thread with an overall look at the history of the TCJ message board? It was a pretty important and vital part of comics discussion for many years. Where aficionados could start their own threads on whatever subject caught their interest. Instead of waiting to give feedback on whatever a small group of chosen contributors decided to write about.
It had dwindled significantly, yet its being rendered inaccessible for what felt like an eternity (weeks?) during the transition to the new online “Comics Journal” is what really made activity there plummet.
Its killing goes along with the inexorable tide that sweeps away public spaces where messy, freeform engagements and discussions can take place, for far more controlled ones… (Some related thoughts at http://curiouscatherine.wordpress.com/2010/12/05/networked-publics-and-civic-spaces-or-why-i-dont-want-to-end-up-making-important-decisions-while-avoiding-adverts-for-viagra/ )
Guys, I think it’s still there, just without a link from the homepage at the moment. I don’t have a link, but I got incoming traffic from there after the new site launched….
Mike, if you want to put together something on the tcj.com messageboard history, I’m game. You can email me: noahberlatsky at gmail.
No, Dan Nadel made it clear in an interview at Comics Reporter that the messboard was kaput for good.
The TCJ messboard was where I first yelled at Noah…sigh…
Ah, my mistake. Seems like a shame….
I’m all for messy, free-form discussions. Sounds like I missed something grand at TCJ.
Again, I’m all for comparisons between artists and their work, and Domingos, I’m not in favor of just shutting down a conversation with some generic “apples and oranges” claim. I hope I haven’t given that impression. I just believe formal comparisons need to be made with distinctions in mind as well.
Your example about alternative and mainstream characterization is far more applicable and relevant, I think, than comparing a graphic memoir to a poem. There’s no reason why a certain audience shouldn’t want for richer characterization in mainstream comics, even if the market and its other audiences don’t mind the lack thereof. But Love and Rockets has different goals in mind than, say, The Incredible Hulk. Just like Sarah Glidden’s How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less has different goals in mind than L&R. I just think those should be recognized in the discussion, too.
If you visit the blog linked to my name here, you’ll see a recent post I made about Strangers in Paradise and dialogue. (Keep in mind, please, that the site is at this point mainly a supplement to the undergraduate class I teach.) I’m discussing the attributes of dialogue we tend to value in most contemporary American fiction and how SiP, and maybe comics, resists those. But I make a crucial distinction that comics can do this because of their imagetextual nature. I’m also borrowing from some basic feminist theory in that article. I hope it’s an example of what I’m talking about here, making distinctions and connections without being too narrow, or too broad.
Noah: Methinks you overestimate the Dan’s place in rock, but that’s a minor quibble. I do hear some of Ellington’s influence in their work, which I hadn’t thought about before, so thanks for pointing that out.
Again, I’m not against the comparison-making, and of course you need to look at other forms in order to understand the innovation. I’m less interested in “better”, though, and I think that’s where we part ways on this particular subject.
“I don’t see what Spiegelman is doing as a unique innovation. Neither have literary artists, as near as I can tell.”
Click here to listen to a discussion between poets Norman Finkelstein and Harvey Shapiro talking about the legacy of Objectivist poets (Zukofsky, Oppen, Reznizoff, etc.): http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Finkelstein-and-Shapiro.html
In the last ten minutes theres a discussion about the difficulty of creating art about the Holocaust. Finkelstein particularly commends Maus as a solution to the well known Adorno problem of creating an aesthetic work about the Holocaust. This is one example of many that can be pointed to.
Yeah; academics often aren’t so interested in better/worse. I think that’s a problem with academic criticism, actually.
Steely Dan is huge! Massively popular, and I think still an important influence on lots of alternative bands. Waylon Jennings covered them; Faith Evans name-checked them. That’s a pretty broad reach, I think.
They cover an Ellington tune on one of their albums…can’t remember which one right now though….
Thanks for the link Jeet. That just kind of depresses me, though…but I guess I shouldn’t expect more from contemporary poets. Compared to Carolyn Forche, Spiegelman looks like a genius, sure enough.
To sum up the debate so far:
Noah: Litarary artists don’t think Spiegelman has made an artistic innovation.
Jeet: Here are some literary artists — poets — praising Spiegelman for making an important artistic innovation.
Noah: Poems suck.
It’s always good to change the terms of discussion. You don’t have to think about your original position that way.
Also: “Comics may have a unique language. But you have to prove it, baby.”
Um, there have been many attempts to prove it, most notably Charles Hatfield’s Alternative Comics. I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of this book, since HU hosted a long (and at times very useful) discussion about it. But that’s the problem with your position in this post and others of this sort. I’ts predicated on pretending that the vast body of criticism discussing these matters doesn’t exist and doesn’t need to be taken into account.
It’s East St. Louis Toodle-oo on Pretzel Logic.
Clever reference to the album title by Jeet.
Also, the debate isn’t between people who think comparisons between forms should be done (Noah, etc.) and those who think they shouldn’t be done. That’s a false dichotomy. The argument is that comparisons when done should be done carefully and with an appreciation of historical and formal differences. To my mind the Celan/Spiegelman comparison makes no sense for two reasons:
1. Maus is a narrative while the Celan poem is a meditation.
2. Celan lived from 1920 to 1970 (in Europe). Spiegelman was born in 1948 and has lived most of his life in America. So for Celan any poem he writes is a reflection of events in his own lifetime. Spiegelman narrative of the Holocaust is explicitly a narrative of an event that happened before he’s born, of a tale he heard from his parents and their generation (which is one of the many reasons behind the anthromophism: the Holocaust first came to Spiegelman as a story heard as a child.)
This doesn’t mean that any comparison between Celan and Spiegelman is impossible, only that it requires a far greater historical and cultural sensitivity than you are willing to deploy. Given the larger tenor of your criticism it’s hard to escape the feeling that you don’t deploy such a sensitivity because you have a pre-determined judgement that you’re going impose no matter what the evidence. A hanging judge rarely makes for a good critic.
I like Charles’ book! I think it has interesting contributions to make on that front, and it certainly focuses in interesting ways on the back and forth between text and image. However…I don’t think it actually works to put Maus in the context of comparable works of literary fiction. As a result, I don’t think it actually makes the case for Maus as “unique” — other than in the trivial sense that any work is unique. I think Eric’s book may try to make more steps in that direction (though I haven’t read it; need to wait for publication just like everyone else.)
I’m still not especially convinced that contemporary poetry or literature has looked to Maus for guidance in anything in particular…especially not on a level comparable to Ellington’s influence. But! I’ll try to listen to your link, and maybe it’ll convince me. And yes, I’m conceding your point; poetry really would be helped by being more like Maus. That’s as much a comment on the state of contemporary poetry as on the greatness of Maus, but I think it is useful to be reminded that sometimes you can set the bar too high in these matters.
And come on Jeet — there’s not a “vast body” of worthwhile criticism on comics. Would that there were.
Well, the whole question of “influence” is a bit of a red herring in a way. I think a work of art can have a wide influence without being very good. You’ve expressed disdain for Hemingway but there’s no denying that Hemingway’s stripped down writing and dialogue had a huge influence not just on fiction but also film and theatre (and perhaps even comics).
Arguably the most influential cartoonists in terms of changing other forms were Ernie Bushmiller (Nancy is everywhere) and the nameless hacks who did the covers of romance comics (which are also everywhere).
1. I don’t see why narratives and meditations shouldn’t be compared. Especially when the question at hand is ontological and epistemological complexity, issues which can be addressed in either.
2. Yes, Celan is closer to the events. So this means Spiegelman should be given more credit for a less searching examination of ontological and epistemological issues why exactly? He can’t possibly be as insightful because he didn’t live through it? Or what?
I was discussing a particular issue brought up in a particular analysis. The comparison works perfectly well for those purposes. You don’t need to talk about everything in one blog post.
Just to return to something Charles said; I have no problem with careful scholarship. I think deploying it in order to suggest that only scholars can talk about art is deadly for scholarship and for art. As an example, if you have an actual argument based on either of your two points which contradicts or addresses what I said in the post, by all means bring it out. Otherwise, you’re just a wikipedia article crossed with a school marm, you know?
Along those lines, it’s true that a hanging judge rarely makes a good critic. Are hanging judge’s less likely to make good critics than sycophants? Less likely than even-handed, impartial observers? Good criticism’s just rare in general I think is probably the issue.
Jeet — yeah, that’s an interesting point about influence. Of course nameless pop can be very influential in various ways….
Comics has had a far more powerful effect on visual art, I’d say, than it has on literature. I have really mixed feelings about Chris Ware, as you know, but he’s huge; definitely an important figure in the visual arts. And comics in general are picked up in various ways by that world.
Spiegelman’s just a much more literary figure, for all sorts of reasons. And the arguments about his worth (like Priego’s) tend to focus on literary qualities. I think those qualities tend to pale if you look at actual literary works, is the thing.
I find Ariel Schrag much more sophisticated and interesting in those terms — which I know will provoke howls of rage from everyone. But there it is. (Charles Schulz too.) (I mean, I find Charles Schulz more sophisticated, not that he will howl in rage.)
“Comics has had a far more powerful effect on visual art, I’d say, than it has on literature.”
In general that’s true but it’s also the case that there hasn’t been as much attention to the actual impact that comics have had on literature. I’d argue that there is a tradition of highly visual writing that has been strongly influenced be comics (and also film): Nabokov, Updike, Davenport, Flannery O’Connor, Tom Wolfe, Nicholson Baker, Chabon, Lethem. It’s not just that these writers incorporate comics thematically (although some like Chabon and Lethem do) but rather that their way of writing takes its coloration and verbal zest from comics. Just as theire is such a thing as “Pop Art” I also think there is a thing as “Pop Lit”. Often these writers create “flat” secondary charcters who are very comic strip like.
I’ve written about this a number of times. See here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/mar/20/fiction.johnupdike
and heer http://sanseverything.wordpress.com/2008/01/30/guy-davenport-the-writer-as-cartoonist/
As for Spiegelman’s influence on literature — perhaps hard to trace althought I think he was an inspiring force behind Yann Martel’s (not very good, alas) Holocaust novel Beatrice & Virgil. Perhaps one place to look for Spiegelman’s impact would be in the general trend towards post-modern Holocaust fiction, much of which was written in the wake of Maus (and again, as with Martel, I’m not saying this stuff is good).
I’ve written about that too:
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2010.06-books-shoah-business/
Finally — I don’t think Spiegelman’s impact has been purely literary. There’s a whole tradition of formalism in comics which owes a lot to Spiegelman’s various storytelling strategies: Ware, Richard McGuire, and even lan Moore (whose work from the 1980s can be seen as a popularizing of Breakdowns in the same way Dashiell Hammett popularized Hemingway).
Finally — really finally this time — it occurs to me that you’re in the weird position of arguing that Spiegelman is over-rated and that he’s not been influential. It seems to me that these two claims work against each other.
Schulz is the Ellington of comics.
So there.
Robert, could you say a little bit more about the feminist theory in your post on Strangers in Paradise, pleasethanxmaybe?
Robert–
I’m curious, too. I look at that page you focus on, and I keep getting distracted by the expectation that I’m going to see some naughty bits–either the blonde’s towel is going to fall off, or the brunette’s nightie is going to get ripped in a revealing fashion. And I don’t think that response is divorced from the cartoonist’s intent.
Noah- Steely Dan is huge! Massively popular, and I think still an important influence on lots of alternative bands.
Steely Dan certainly has plenty of fans among the general public and musicians. But as far as critics goes, they may be praised to an extent but they’re not part of the central pantheon. And for good reason, I think. Their overly-polished sound belies their sincere jazz influences, pretty much to their music’s detriments. But I may be in the minority about this.
Okay, see, if you’re going to dis Steely Dan, you’re not allowed on the blog. I’m sorry, but I have to have some standards.
Jeet; Spiegleman’s over-rated in comicdom, and hasn’t been very influential outside comicdom. No contradiction!
Otherwise, thank you for those links; I’ll try to get to them. I’m badly backed up today….
I don’t know what Noah was meaning by influence, but for me there’s a difference between the claim that comics has influenced “literature” and the claim that comics influenced a specific literary writer. For the more general claim, I’d want someone to identify a modality of literature that wouldn’t be possible without comics having come first.
Like Beat writing’s relationship to jazz. Beat writing is jazz in prose. What’s the literary phenomenon that’s “comics in prose”?
Not that there has to be one, but that’s what I’d mean by “influence on literature.”
(I’m personally hesitant to draw parallels between comics and jazz because I think jazz is more specific than comics. I’m very resistant to critical and theoretical efforts to make comics as specific as jazz: I find understandings of comics that emphasize how dynamic and flexible the form is, how different they can be from each other, more compelling than understandings that try to identify some common aspect that connects them all.)
So while I think it’s certain valuable to know that a specific artist was influenced by comics (even specific comics), I don’t know that we can make any general claims from that. There’s no reason that a writer (such as, say, Delillo, or Dos Passos) couldn’t be inspired to highly visual prose by looking at painting or film…
There’s no reason that a writer (such as, say, Delillo, or Dos Passos) couldn’t be inspired to highly visual prose by looking at painting or film…
The poet John Ashbery certainly did it with Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, which is one of his most lauded efforts.
Yeah; Ashberry has a sestina about Popeye too. (And no, I don’t like Ashberry especially, though he’s certainly impressive.)
The pop art appropriation thing is pretty different than the beats and jazz though, right? I guess because it feels like appropriation rather than inspiration; the sense of taking something you found lying around and repurposing it, rather than being mentored by another artist.
Comics has long been the first; instances of the second are dicier.
Noah- Okay, see, if you’re going to dis Steely Dan, you’re not allowed on the blog. I’m sorry, but I have to have some standards.
Great! Let me escalate this further- Tom Petty > Steely Dan
I believe it was William Burroughs who told them they’re too smart for the idiom they’re in. But it’s not that that’s necessarily the heart of the matter or even the problem. Even to this day listening to their LPs it’s readily apparent how state of the art their productions were at the time. And definetly to a fault.
Now I suppose if I knew how to read music or if I paid closer attention to their lyrics maybe I would warm up to them, but there would still be their overly precise musical approach to deal with. Are they better live?
I think Joni Mitchell remains the nonpareil example on merging modern pop high values and technique without choking the life out of her music. For one thing, a lot of the musicians she used were even more accomplished than the ones SD used.
Yeah, see, I love the precision; the ridiculous artificial soulless sheen. Whether it’s the long vacuous emptiness on Aja or the funky burned out ironies of some of their other albums…
I much prefer my soulless white rockers to embrace their soullessness. This is why Tom Petty is such a wretchedly abysmal travesty. He’s trying to imitate the Byrds imitating Bob Dylan imitating some quavering icon of authenticity; barf barf barf.
Steely Dan, though, says fuck the authenticity. We are going to take this and transcribe it and polish out all the joy, and the polishing will be a joy in itself.
They remind me of June Christy a little, in a roundabout way. So does Joni Mitchell, more directly. Both favorites as well.
All better than Maus! (Well, not Tom Petty. Tom Petty really is utter crap. But even he is better than Shadow of No Towers.)
It’s official: from now on at TCJ site every newspaper comic that was published, say, until the forties, is a work of genius. Art Spiegelman will be pleased.
But how do they compare to Steeley Dan, is the question? Or Tom Petty?
Oh, they’re much, much, better! We’re not allowed to compare though, so, we’ll always be in dark ignorance of the fact. It’s a real shame!…
“Yes, Celan is closer to the events. So this means Spiegelman should be given more credit for a less searching examination of ontological and epistemological issues why exactly?” It’s not a question of more credit or less credit, it’s a question of differences of experience. An “ontological and epistemological” examination of your own experience is going to be different from an “ontological and epistemological” examination of stories that you heard from your parents. That explains the narrative strategy the Spiegelman adopted. Also, because he’s writing a long narrative rather than a focused meditative poem, Spiegelman’s examination of “ontological and epistemological” are threaded through the work rather than focused and localized in a single spot. To put it another way, both the Celan poem and Maus are about what gets necessarily repressed even in the act of telling or how representation creates its own silence. But Spiegelman’s dealing with these issues comes in a variety of narrative forms, not just the now familiar use of animal characters but also in things like the stylistic contrast between the the “Prisoner of the Hell Planet” sequence and the rest of the work, the diary like hand-writing (evoking the missing testimony of his mother which is destroyed), the use of photos or evocation of familiar photos in the drawings. Maus is a very complicated work and the best criticisms of it — I’m thinking here of Hillary Chute’s essays — grapple with the complexity. Your post by contrast is just a typical example of jerk-off blogging. Perhaps I went too far in speaking of a “vast body” of worthwhile criticism, but the fact is there are worthwhile critics like Chute and you’re postings are notable for their complete unwillingness to engage thoughtful with the writings of writers like Chute. It’s easy to win arguments in your own head if you don’t actually engage with real opponents. As I’ve noted above, you did host a (sometimes) useful symposium on Alternative Comics, but I’ve never seen any evidence that you’ve internalied any of Hatfield’s arguments or integrated them into your critical practise.
“Spiegleman’s over-rated in comicdom, and hasn’t been very influential outside comicdom. No contradiction!” This is almost exactly the opposite of the truth. Spiegelman is very highly regarded outside of comicdom (in places like The New Yorker and other literary publications, the university circuit, the museums); he’s had some influence on alternative comics but really that’s a small part of the comics world. Do you really think that people at Marvel, DC, Dark Horse etc. have been influenced at all by Spiegelman’s aesthetic?
We can argue about aesthtic quality all day, but there’s a disengagement from reality in a comment like that which is really quite amazing.
Hey Jeet! I should have said Maus hasn’t; Spiegelman’s obviously an influential mover and shaker and networker. For better or worse. Maus looms much, much larger in comicdom than outside it, though.
Saying spiegelman has had some influence on alternative comics is pretty funny. He’s the biggest fish in the pond, man! Maybe Ware is bigger…probably not though. Alternative comics isn’t that small compared to comics, and in that world, Spiegelman is a behemoth. And yes, he’s influenced Marvel, etc. Alan Moore has thought about him; I’m sure Grant Morrison has as well. No doubt Bendis has too, etc. The idea that comics can be an adult medium matters to everybody, and Maus is the thing held up to prove it.
” but I’ve never seen any evidence that you’ve internalied any of Hatfield’s arguments or integrated them into your critical practise.”
I mean, if you’re saying that I haven’t tossed over all my own ideas and adopted Charles’, thus making you a happy camper, that would be correct. I was already quite interested in thinking about the relation between text and image, which is one of Charles’ big points in the book. And his forthrightness made many things about academic approaches to comics clear to me that weren’t before. He helped me understand where you’re coming from better for example; better than you understand where you’re coming from yourself, you sometimes make me think, though no doubt that’s just the heat of battle talking.
Having said that…I liked Charles book, but it wasn’t valuable to me the way Sharon Marcus’ was, or Stanley Cavell’s was. But surely I don’t have to adopt every book I read as mine own?
I’m pleased that I goaded you into actually parsing out what you feel the differences are between Celan and Maus. I think you’ve adequately articulated them, and I think it is interesting to think about the differences between personal experience and reporting someone else’s. I don’t think any of the examples you provide actually demonstrate that Maus is a complicated work, however. The stylistic shift with Prisoner of the Hell Planet for example; I doubt that would meet Caro’s criteria for a blurring or shuffling of metaphor and meaning. It’s very upfront, on the surface — loud and shouting. I find the photos and the use of them (especially in light of some of the things I’ve been thinking about with Cavell) pretty unimpressive, and potentially quite stupid. I think they emphasize the sharp line between reality and representation. When they shuffle those factors, it’s always with a giant arrow pointing to it. I never find it destabilizing, or sublime, or revelatory. I think you suggest some reasons that that may be the case; narrative can be a blunt hammer for approaching these issues, and Spiegelman’s distance from the events may also contribute to his clumsiness. Those are interesting explanations, but I don’t see why they make it wrong to compare him and Celan. (They are doing different things of course; Spiegelman is trying to be a popularizer, in many ways. But that just means you have to evaluate the worth of the goals as well.)
Finally, your insistence again and again that I must read not only the books you’ve read, but take from them exactly what you take, is both depressingly pedantic and bizarrely fascistic. Your palpable frustration that I would dare to voice an opinion without reading whatever you think is the most important thing to have read, while introducing other texts that you insist are irrelevant — it’s all just ridiculous and pathetic, don’t you think? If you don’t want to hear other perspectives, turn off your internet. Or just talk to people who agree with you. There are plenty of them. I would prefer you wouldn’t go that rout, because I’d miss you and am usually quite interested in what you have to say. But, you know, you have to do what you feel.
“Finally, your insistence again and again that I must read not only the books you’ve read, but take from them exactly what you take, is both depressingly pedantic and bizarrely fascistic.”
Look, it’s an elementary rule of intellectual life that you have to engage with the most formidable opposition if you want to be convincing; which means if you want to dismiss the formalist element in Maus you have to engage with the critics (like Chute) who have made the best case for the alternative position, that Maus is a rich work in part because the formalist techniques Spiegelman deploys. And if you want to argue that comics don’t have unique formal properties that are valuable, you have to engage with writers like Hatfield. To shy away from these writers, or to pay lip service to them without engaging their arguments, reduces your own criticism to being nothing more than ad hoc opinionizing. You can drop all the names of all the theorists you want — Cavell or Marcus or Eagleton or Zizek — but this name-dropping will be merely arbitrary pontification if you don’t also engage with writers who have written, with great care and intelligence, on the very subjects that are under debate. I’m sorry if my manner seems curt but it’s frustrating to have to rehearse and repeat (in a brief and inadequate way) arguments that have been made much better elsewhere. Chute’s taken a lot of time and intellectual energy to write her Maus essays, so it’s frustrating to me that you can pretend they don’t even exist, even when you’re dealing directly with the very topics that you’re writing about.
I myself enjoy many of the theorists of your hit parade — Eagleton and Zizek in particular — but it seems pretentious to constantly and airily allude to theory without integrating them into your work in any coherent way and without engaging with those writers who do the best theoretically informed criticism (like Hatfield and Chute). Of course, not all criticism has to be theoretically engaged but if you are bringing in theory you have to do it in a much more systematic and intellectually consistent way. Using theory as just a bunch of words and phrases to throw into the blender does a diservice to criticism.
About Spiegelman’s influence — aside from Moore I don’t see it all in superhero comics (and Moore learned more from Breakdowns than Maus). Its true that Maus has had a huge effect on alternative comics, but that’s a very small slice of the market. Take a look some time at any of the various sales charts that come up. The topselling books are almost ivariable superhero books, manga, and various other popular genres. Of course the comics world pays a lot of lip service to Spiegelman — in the same way Hollywood used to pay lip service to Orson Welles. But most Hollywood movies didn’t try to be Citizen Kane and there aren’t that many cartoonists, in the grand scheme of things, who are working in the Maus tradition.
Jeet–
I’m an erstwhile academic wannabe myself, and I certainly get where you’re coming from. In academia, one is trained to acquaint oneself with the critical history of a work before commenting on it oneself. But most people aren’t academics and haven’t had that training, and what you’re essentially saying is that, on that basis, they aren’t entitled to a reasoned judgment of a work. You’re not allowing naive responses or responses grounded in different thinking any validity. As such, it’s hard for me not to feel that you’re trying to constrict and control the parameters of discussion, which will ultimately retard it.
If you feel Noah’s views need to be tested against Chute’s, present Chute’s views to the best of your ability and watch how he engages with them. Otherwise, you’re just faulting him for not being properly credentialed in Mausology. I don’t think anyone’s here to preen their erudition; we’re here to present, challenge, and develop our thinking about the topics at hand.
As for Spiegelman’s influence, I think the literary pretensions that fire Maus have been exceedingly influential among English-language comics creators. I feel pretty comfortable saying that it changed the career trajectory of every comics creator who ended up bringing literary ambitions to their work. Maybe you were right in calling him the most influential living American cartoonist in that piece I criticized after all.
Orson Welles’ impact was pretty similar in Hollywood. He is a key influence on Kubrick, Altman, and the Movie Brat directors (Coppola, Scorsese, Spielberg, De Palma, et al.), all of whom saw it as their artistic duty to be like Welles and make the most artful use of cinematic resources possible in realizing their material. And the influence of those directors has been felt in nearly every U.S. filmmaker since.
Influence is more than lifting solutions to aesthetic problems. It also relates to guiding attitude behind the work.
Robert’s point about people outside of academia is especially valid and important since humanities academia has made so few efforts to make work available to the public without going through paywalls. There’s no Open Access movement in the humanities like there is in the sciences (which seems completely backwards to me.) It’s not impossible to get access to these articles without academic affiliation, but it’s a huge hassle.
Noah:
“Maus looms much, much larger in comicdom than outside it, though”.
I’d contest that. Outside comicdom Maus has sold millions of copies in many languages, far, far more than within comicdom. It’s been the object of intenses scrutiny by the mass media, academia, Holocaust survivors and their families.
Within comicdom, it barely rippled on the surface of the fanboy herd.
Noah, you should resist this tendency to assert nasty statements, however untrue, just because they demean whatever the current target of your hatred is.
Alex–
I don’t think the fanboy herd counts for much anymore, and that’s been the case for quite a while. By the end of the ’90s, Daniel Clowes was outselling Rob Liefeld in the direct market. These days, I see the DM sales reports over at The Beat, and I can’t help but shake my head over how far periodical sales at Marvel and DC have fallen.
I believe Maus has outsold every graphic novel in the bookstore market except for Watchmen, and Watchmen only began to overtake it in the past few years.
Alex, I didn’t even consider it especially nasty! It’s just a statement of fact. Sheesh.
The fact that you and Jeet appear to believe that Maus is not influential in comics is kind of stunning to me. Maus isn’t going to be loved by people who love pulp. The idea that it should be is so confused it kind of beggars the mind. But it essentially created an entire market for literary comics, and as Robert says it looms large in the mind of any comics creator who takes their work seriously — certainly including pulp creators (Alan Moore has argued with it, I’m positive.) This sense that it doesn’t get it’s due in the comics milieu is insane.
Outside that…it was a best seller. It would have had to have sold more outside comicdom than within…outside is so much bigger. But inside comicdom it’s an enormous fish in a small pond. Outside…it’s another book, one that was fairly popular, had a certain level of respect, but hardly makes people’s greatest-art-object of the ages list, I don’t think.
I mean, I don’t even hate Maus. It’s fine. I turned the pages; I enjoyed the story. I’ve read worse. I liked it more than the Years Have Pants.
There’s also a lot to be said against the accuracy of any sales figures we have to look at, particularly looking back at the years when Maus was widely available in bookstores and Watchmen had yet to crack that market.
In terms of academia, both Watchmen and Maus may be taught in pop culture classes or lit classes that include comics, but Maus is also regularly included in courses on Jewish culture and history. When I was in grade school, we were required to read a certain number of pages of fiction or non-fiction per semester outside of assigned class readings. Maus was the only comic anyone was allowed to read and count towards those pages.
It’s also the only comic book my girlfriend’s octogenarian grandparents own. Anecdotal, but maybe worth mentioning.
“Maus looms much, much larger in comicdom than outside it, though”.
That’s what I responded to– I didn’t in any way say that “Maus is not influential in comics”. Please point out where I made any such claim. You can’t, can you? Illustrating again the point I made: that you’re capable of stating anything, no matter how untrue,to bolster your arguments.
“It’s just a statement of fact. Sheesh.”
But it isn’t. That’s my whole point.
Robert: your view of fanboys leads to the next question.
What, exactly, do you and Noah mean by ‘comicdom’?
Alex–
Comics creators and readers.
I’m not denying that Maus hasn’t had an impact on alternative cartoonists. I’m just saying that alternative comics is a small slice of the comics pie. If you go to Comics Beat, they regularly feature sales charts for both the Direct Market and bookstores. Here’s a recent direct market sales chart:
http://www.comicsbeat.com/2011/02/03/sales-slide-in-january-marvel-tops-dc-image-up/
As you’ll note, pop and pulp material dominates: the largest companies are Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse etc. You’d be hard pressed to find any evidence of Maus-influenced work selling well here.
But Maus itself continues to sell in university book stores and in regular book stores. In some ways, Spiegelman’s position in relations to comics is the same as Kurt Vonnegut’s relation to science fiction in the 1960s. Sometimes the SF community, for the sake of public relations, claimed Vonnegut as one of their own, but SF readers were leary of his work (seeing it as too challenging and ironic); and most of Vonnegut’s readers came from outside the SF ghetto.
About asking Noah to be more familiar with writers like Chute: I’ll simply note that by quoting writers like Zizek and Cavell, Noah is situating himself in a theoretical debate that includes academia (although is not, thankfully, confined to academia). I appreciate the difficult of accessing academic books and articles. But in an earlier post Noah mentioned he was looking at A Comics Studies Reader; one of Chute’s essays is found there. So I think it’s fair to ask Noah to engage with a writer who deals directly with a topic he’s engaging with (formalist play in Maus) in a book that Noah has access to. That’s not an outrageous or unreasonable request.
Jeet appeared to be saying it was not influential in comicdom.
And you appeared to be claiming it was more influential outside comics than within it. Which I think is kind of ludicrously wrong.
And Alex, accusing your interlocutors of bad faith is something you do a lot, and it’s really unhelpful. It turns simple misunderstandings or the normal push-pull of conversation into name-calling nastiness. I’m sure it’s just because you get heated up, but just think about it. If you actually think I’m operating in bad faith, there’s no earthly reason to talk to me. If, on reflection, you don’t think that, saying it just makes it impossible to communicate.
I think of comicdom as people who identify themselves with comicdom, basically. Obviously the edges are porous, but I don’t think so porous that the concept is meaningless.
Jeet, you’re making the pulp confusion again. Expecting Maus to sell like pulp is crazy. It’s huge among anybody in comics who is going to care about art.
I mean, Maus looks even more completely insignificant next to Harry Potter than it does next to Spider-Man. But when you talk about it’s place in the world outside comics, you switch the terms so that you’re talking about universities. It’s apples and oranges.
It’s not wrong to request me to read Chute, or to say, “you might find this interesting.” It is wrong to suggest that only those who have read Chute are allowed to take part in the conversation. You’re claiming that your intellectual furniture is the only valid furniture. More than that; you’re claiming that your furniture must be arranged in exactly the way you have it arranged. It’s not enough that I’ve read Charles’ book for example; I have to evaluate it and utilize it in the way you proscribe.
It just seems like a very narrow world, Jeet. I guess I understand the attractions, but it’s not where I want to live.
Jeet, I’m not saying Noah shouldn’t read Chute — I think everybody should read as much Chute as possible ’cause she’s awesome! Three cheers for reading more of Charles’ work too!
My point is just that humanities academia is locked behind paywalls and as such, it’s a problem for the position that people outside of academia ought to keep up with the literature. Academia does everything in its power to make it hard for them.
I think that anybody holding the position that a literature review is important to critical conversation ought to ALSO take the stance that broad, easy public access to that literature is extremely important.
It’s a big deal. I just bought a house in College Park SPECIFICALLY because of its proximity to an academic library. At present, to read most of Chute’s work, I have to drive in rush hour, walk around after dark, or take a big chunk of my weekend to travel 30 miles. I do this because, despite my lack of affiliation, I am an academic and I actually kind of like going to the library. But it’s a hassle, and I’m not surprised most people don’t do it.
There really should be some kind of revolt by faculty against the closed network for scholarship that benefits nobody but big publishers. We’re the humanities for God’s sake — if our ideas aren’t for the world’s gain, why the hell do we bother?
I just read a little bit of Chute, and my desire to read more is extremely limited, unfortunately. But! Pleased to hear that others get something from her. Perhaps the Maus essay was not the thing to start with….
What don’t you like about it Noah? Style or orientation?
and…you’d be a lot more likely to read something you’re not really interested in if it were free online.
Caro,
Speaking of digital scholarly publication, there’s been a new bibliography on it just released. It’s open access.
http://digital-scholarship.org/sepb/annual/sepb2010.htm
Well, that’s just cool, Vom. Thanks for sharing it.
Caro, now you’ve made me go back and read more of it, which is making no one happy.
It’s style and orientation. At least this seems like a pretty good example of the down side of academic writing. Dry, ponderous, pompous style, and hagiographic nonsense content wise. I mean, the opening speaks in reverent terms of Shadow of No Towers, which I think may be the worst comic I’ve ever read.
I don’t know. Things like this:
That’s such bullshit. The form doesn’t have a grasp on nuanced political expression; most comics’ take on politics is egregiously simple-minded and stupid. And what in fuck are postmodern politics? It’s just so rah team, go comics…could we have some vague sense of perspective maybe?
Or what about this:
“The first volume of Maus is subtitled, significantly, My Father Bleeds History. The slow, painful effusion of history in this “tale,” the title suggests, is a bloodletting:”
There’s analysis for you. That’s an insight I couldn’t have gotten on my own. And, oh, by the way, let’s just ignore the fact that “My Father Bleeds History” is itself thumb-fingered cliched melodrama, really a depressingly trite way to talk about a man’s relation to his experience in the Holocaust. It really is Carolyn Forche worthy.
I’ve probably given Jeet a hernia already, so I should probably stop. I’m not against the idea that comics can do interesting things with time, nor with the idea that Maus in particular could be seen as doing so. I’m actually really interested in the way comics use space as time; I’ve written about it a bit. But she’s just gushing so obtusely it’s hard for me to believe there are going to be useful insights there. And I can’t read that prose, so I guess I wont’ find out.
I’m pretty impressed with page 8. I’m not sure I agree with the notion that comics’ Baroque-ness is an “out” for the moral issues inherent in representation — I’m pretty sure I don’t entirely, although I haven’t thought through why — but the connection between narrative closure and discursive power is interesting in the comics context.
I agree with you about the misery of academic writing but it is in an academic journal…
But Charles doesn’t write like that! Nor Craig; not even in their academic work. It doesn’t have to be this way….
If you make me go read more of this, I am going to be displeased.
LOL, you don’t have to read it! I didn’t mean it HAD to be written like that, just that it’s not unusual for it to be. I’m prone to writing like that when I’m not thinking about it. Hell, I’m prone to TALKING like that — ask my husband. Not so much the hagiography but the convoluted sentence structure definitely. I think it happens when your mind’s on some loopy theoretical something or other and not on your prose. The more theoretical the work, the more likely it is to read like that. It just takes a little effort to get it out of the jargony shorthand and into more deft language, and it’s not always worth the work when the audience is just more academics anyway.
Of course, that’s part of the reason why it’s so important to make the crosscurrents between academia and the public more vigorous. The over-professionalization of humanities discourse is a net negative, I think. And the things you’re pointing to are very much examples of the over-professionalization of the humanities.
I can be okay with jargon sometimes. The combination of the jargon and the reverence is just really ugly though in this particular piece.
All right, I read page 8. And some of page 7. Damn you.
I think it’s right, and interesting, to point out the way that time in comics becomes space. And I think she’s right that part of the moral message of Maus is contained in the idea that the past is not past, but is layered onto the present. And I can see her point about how those two intersect; space as time becoming a visual representation of the continuity of the past.
The problem is that it’s really unclear to me (a) that this is something comics does uniquely well, or (b) that this is something that Maus does especially well. The “message” that past is not past, or the resistance of narrative closure (on page 9, damn you again) — these are pretty tried and true topes, aren’t they? Generational novels are pop culture staples; movies have a whole range of techniques for connecting present and past (dissolves, flashbacks; rhyming images.) Something like the Sound and the Fury surely jumbles past and present in a more sophisticated manner, and resists narrative closure (and indeed narrative) more thoroughly. Those techniques don’t work exactly the same way…but that doesn’t mean they’re worse. Maybe it means they’re better. It’s hard to tell if you don’t think to make the comparison at all.
I’ve been thinking about this a little in other contexts recently, but…I think there’s a tendency in academic criticism, and perhaps especially in comics criticism, to think that an analysis of the form is in itself an evaluative effort. That is, if you can show that comics form is deployed in the interest of meaning, you’ve shown that the form itself and the particular work are both valuable.
The thing is *any* work of *any* kind deploys its particular formal resources to create meaning; that’s how art works. The question is, is that meaning particularly interesting, and are those formal resources deployed with especial skill? I don’t see her making that case for Maus, or even being especially aware that the case has to be made. (I found Charles’ take more convincing, I think.) The insights she attributes to Maus don’t seem revolutionary; quite the contrary. And she seems utterly unaware that Maus is vastly, vastly superior to In The Shadow of No Towers; she treats both with equal seriousness and reverence, even though the latter is a failure on almost every imaginable aesthetic level.
Her discussion reminds me too how much of Maus’ standing seems linked to its subject matter. That’s inevitable I guess. I think it’s something to be suspicious of, though.
Well, and this is precisely where the hagiography becomes problematic, not just in Chute’s essay but period. Literary criticism during fiction’s experimental period vigorously pointed out limitations and failures and really challenged artists to evolve the formal toolbox, and literary theory was essentially making the claim that a great deal of art as it existed and was understood at that time was actively bad for the world.
The investment among comics writers in demonstrating that comics can achieve significant formal sophistication — and, really, even in explaining how that formal sophistication works — is almost inevitably going to interfere with the kind of ambitious critical dialogue grounded in theory that you’re looking for.
That’s because REALLY good theory sets its standards from the theory, not the form. You set a theoretical bar and you invite art, any art, to fly over it, and you critique where art fails. The characteristic attributes of form are generally viewed as bugs rather than features, because the bar is theoretical, not formal. That approach is largely incompatible with the kind of validation and well, affection, that underlies so much of comics criticism. Theory kills art. Art is, fortunately, a phoenix, and it rises from those ashes. But if you want to really do the kind of theory you’re looking for, someone has to be willing to kill art off. I think people feel like comics need protecting from that.
If you survey the disgruntled diaspora of literature grad students who have left academia, a common complaint is “I used to LOVE [insert literary work] until I had to read it for that seminar!” Part of really embracing theory’s “anti-” stances is transferring your affection from the art form to the theoretical principles themselves, from aesthetics to logic. There aren’t a lot of people writing about comics whose primary affections are for theory, and I think that really limits the imaginative engagement with theoretical concepts in this context.
I’m going to say that again: in the kind of theoretical writing you’re looking for, the theory is the primary source. To write like that, the theory is what you have to love, not the work of art. The aesthetic commitment of that work is to philosophy, not art. Of course it’s possible to pass through theory and return to loving the art object, but loving theory is transformative in the same way that loving art is. You don’t go back to art in the same way.
Comics inspire a lot of passion in people, and most people write about comics because they love them. So in comics criticism, even academic criticism, you mostly get applications of theoretical concepts with varying degrees of nuancing for the comics context rather than the fierce ugly challenges to comics from a theoretical place. (Groensteen’s Systeme may be an exception, maybe?)
I think you’re often looking for the latter, the fierce challenges of actual theory with comics as the focal point, rather than theoretically inflected criticism about comics. I would really love to see that kind of work done too, but it just seems like comics isn’t entirely open to or even ready for the bloody sacrifice that those projects require.
Yes. Death to comics!
Actually…I don’t draw as hard and fast distinctions between theory and art as you do quite, I don’t think. They’re both aesthetic objects. I’d agree that you want a willingness to break the art object in the name of theory; I think there’s value in smashing the theory in the name of the art object too. I think comics can speak to and challenge theory…I tried to do that a little with that Cavell essay…. But yeah, even if it’s not all one way, you want a bloodier back and forth.
That’s kind of exactly what Jeet and Charles are accusing me of too, I think. Taking Celan and using it to dash Spiegelman’s brains out. They’re arguing that it does damage to the form…but that’s why I picked up that sharp, shiny, beautiful thing to begin with. The art I want isn’t some delicate flower that needs shelter. I want the art that’s left after the hammer comes down.
I’ve mentioned I love metal, right? That may be showing overly here….
I’m not sure I was completely clear in the above: I agree with you when you describe what’s going on thusly: “That is, if you can show that comics form is deployed in the interest of meaning, you’ve shown that the form itself and the particular work are both valuable.”
I agree that’s exactly what most of these analyses are trying to do, but I think that critics think they are evaluative, because their bars are formal and aesthetic. But the theoretical question isn’t whether a comic makes a meaningful formal or aesthetic achievement. The theoretical question is whether the forms of comics conform to or challenge the theoretical concept. The important point isn’t whether Maus or comics do it uniquely well: the important point is whether — and how — Maus and comics do it uniquely period.
I think Chute gets as close as anybody to a real theoretical engagement with the work, but I also think that broadly speaking, foundational theoretical analyses aren’t really aesthetically evaluative at all. I think her hagiography interferes with her theory because it is TOO evaluative. There is a point at which she will not deconstruct the text any further, because she is committed to the text. And that’s stopping her from getting to the questions that matter to you.
Basically I’m saying there’s an extra step in here that you’re not accounting for: I think you’re slightly underestimating how much the kind of literary criticism you like relies on pure literary theory having been written first: there really just isn’t enough pure comics theory for that kind of comics criticism. What’s frustrating to me is how thin-on-the-ground the debates around pure comics theory are…it’s all so grounded in an appreciation of the form, and that’s a real limitation.
The form just has to be fully deconstructed, its logics laid bare, before theory can actually operate on it successfully. And a lot of the work on comics form is, as Charles Hatfield noted recently (obliquely), interested in reading protocols rather than in internal formal logics.
Crossed posts there: I agree there’s an aesthetics to theory – but I think it’s essential to acknowledge that theory is logic, not aesthetics. If you miss that, if you ONLY treat it as an aesthetic object, you don’t get that deep rigor that makes it so satisfying. Loving it involves an aesthetic commitment to logic, but it still matters that it’s logic and not beauty or realism or whatever…
Yeah; this is you being more rigorous and me being more ad hoc, in our approach to theory as to probably most things.
I’m interested in banging two texts together and seeing what happens. A complete formal deconstruction of comics; I’m not against it, but I don’t know that it’s needed for the kinds of criticism I’d like to read and write.
On the other hand, a world in which formal deconstruction was the focus of criticism would be pretty radically different from the world we have now. And I’m not very fond of the world we have now. So….
I’m pretty much in agreement with most of what Caro has written here, and since she expressed herself with an equanimity and poise I’m incapable of, I thought it best to stay out of this.
But I will add one thing (or rather reinforce something Caro has been saying) which is that for the purposes of criticism it might be best to side-step (perhaps temporarily) the question of evaluation.
Let’s take a text better known and more controversial than Maus: Joyce’s Ulysses. You’re free to dislike Ulysses (in fact I’m pretty sure that Ulysses is on Noah’s lengthy shitlist). But the question of whether Ulysses is a good novel or a bad novel, a subjective question we all have our own answers to, is less interesting than the question of whether it is a critically productive novel. And here, the answer is not subjective but actually something we can easily answer by dipping into the vast literature surrounding Joyce’s book: from the day it was published (or actually from the time its early chapters were serialized), Ulysses has been an amazingly productive book for critics. It’s provoked the thinking of several generations of critics from a host of perspectives (formalists, modernists, Catholic moralists, Marxists, Jungians, feminists, deconstructionists, among many others).
Again, this doesn’t mean that Noah or anyone else has to like what Joyce has written, but it does mean that for the purposes of criticism Ulysses is an undeniably fruitful and rich text.
The same can be said of Maus, which continues nearly 3 decades after the earliest serialization to be a very productive text, as demonstrated by the fact that even Noah can’t stop writting about it.
The other interesting thing about Maus is that its a liminal text (sorry to use standard academic language but the word liminal is useful here). Maus can be read both in a comics context, and in a wider literary context.
While looking for something else I discovered a book called Ethical Diversions: The Post-Holocaust Narratives of Pynchon, Abish, DeLillo, and Spiegelman by Katalin Orban (see here: http://www.amazon.com/Ethical-Diversions-Post-Holocaust-Narratives-Spiegelman/dp/0415971675/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1)
I haven’t read it yet and can’t vouch for it, but it does show that Spiegelman’s book is seen by the larger world as being part of a literary discussion, not just a comics discussion (which is a point that Noah has a hard time accepting).
I don’t think you’re understanding what Caro is saying if you think she’s saying that we need to sidestep evaluative criteria. Or maybe I”m misunderstanding her; I guess she’ll tell us!
“But the question of whether Ulysses is a good novel or a bad novel, a subjective question we all have our own answers to, is less interesting than the question of whether it is a critically productive novel.”
Why is it less interesting? You seem to be suggesting that it’s less interesting because it’s subjective. But subjectivity is a big part of our response to art. We’re not building a better widget here, where productive scientific advances are going to help us get nearer and nearer our goal. We’re discussing aesthetic responses. If you sidestep evaluative criteria, you’re left not with objective truth, but with letting your evaluative criteria, by default, be bid out to committee. You end up assuming that it’s worth talking about something because other people are talking about it, and more, that it’s worth talking about it in the way those other people are talking about it. That’s not thinking; it’s not responding to art. It’s turning mysterious beauty into professional drudgery. And then people wonder why no one wants to read your crappy monographs, you know?
I think you’re making basically the mistake I was pointing out in academic criticism before. I”ll reiterate it slightly differently. You’re claiming that Ulysses is a productive text and therefore worthwhile. But *any text can be a productive text!* Literally anything. You can do Freudian analysis of a cookbook. You can do structural analysis of an instruction manual. You can get Foucaultian on catalogs. Theory can be applied to anything. The fact that people are talking about a book just means that people are talking about a book. You want productive texts, look for internet fan fiction on Harry Potter. Byte for byte, it will give your Joyce a run for its money and make the responses to Maus look like puny pitiful whining little baby bytes. Just because you’re talking about it means diddly bubkus in terms of evaluation. But *you can’t figure that out if you refuse to think about your evaluative criteria*. By sidelining evaluation, you just assume that anything you talk about is worthy because you’re talking about it.
I don’t think Maus is as central to literary conversations as you seem to. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t get discussed at all. But even if it were the most discussed literary production of all time, it would still be mediocre.
I haven’t read Ulysses, by the by. I like some Joyce I’ve read and have misgivings about some. I think he’s clearly a superior creator to Spiegelman. I don’t think that’s all that controversial anyway.
Hmm. Reading it again I guess Caro is saying that we need dispassionate breaking down of comics before we can get to evaluation. I dont’ think I really agree with that…but I also think your move to then look to which *texts* are productive is wrong-headed based on what Caro is saying. The whole point (for Caro) is that the comics don’t matter. It’s not Maus that generates the theory or the discourse; it needs to be theory which generates itself and is then brought to Maus (or whatever.) The work Caro is talking about would almost be better done on comics no one has written or cared about, the better to avoid the evaluation which she thinks sidetracks the analysis. Once that work is done, you could bring it *back* to Maus, and then see if it holds up to the theory you’ve created.
Of course you can and should write criticism about any cultural artifact — I write criticism about Little Orphan Annie for Buddha’s sake! But it’s its hard to deny that Joyce’s text has been very fructive indeed and that Joycean criticsm (running from Levin and Wilson to Ellmann and Kenner to Adaline Glasheen to Helene Cixous) has been very strong and intellectually challenging, often at the cutting edge of the criticism of the times. Perhaps Harry Potter fan fiction has produced something comparable but I’d like to see more proof of this than your simple assertion. And it’s funny that that you’re willing to make hostile comments about all sorts of works of art by people like Joyce and Hemingway but are so respectful of fan fiction.
Thank you for the compliment, Jeet!
I am saying, yes, that advanced theoretical work in comics should probably suspend evaluation at least temporarily. I don’t mean that it’s really an either/or between evaluative or theoretical criticism — there was, of course, evaluative criticism long before there was theory.
I think there are still a lot of questions, in academia broadly, about what’s necessary to do really rigorous theoretical criticism that’s ALSO evaluative. I think theory and evaluation make an uneasy hybrid right now, because a theoretical evaluation is subject first to theoretical judgment and standards, not to aesthetic ones. And the question of how to put theoretical standards, which are very suspicious of humanistic aesthetic values, to work in the service of those evaluations, is challenging. This is the case, IMO, in all the humanities where theory is operative, not just for comics.
One of the things that got lost when theory rose to prominence in the ’80s was the kind of sophisticated and challenging evaluative criticism that writers like the New York Intellectuals did — oversimply, there was a division of arts criticism into increasingly impenetrable theoretical writing, which is a highly professional discourse, and increasingly facile journalistic writing. There were a lot of pressures that caused this, not the least of them the realities of academic jobs, but ONE of those pressures was the philosophical method that backed up theoretical work. That method is not evaluative.
This came up in that interview with Gary Groth and Ana Merino, where she commented that choosing a text for analysis is a de facto evaluation, and Gary rightly called her on it. The choice to turn a theoretical eye to a text is not an evaluation of that text. Theory does not entail a properly rigorous method for aesthetic or historical evaluation: it is, at its most rigorous, a purely philosophical practice. Rigorous theory — even in literature where it is the most evolved — is not easily molded to the demands of journalism or aesthetic critique.
I do think in prose literature there’s sufficient rigorous theoretical foundation — the mix of linguistics and formalism — that it’s well past time for critics to turn their attention to possibilities for aesthetic and historical evaluation based on theory, as well as to whether highly counter-intuitive theory can ever become part of a broad public conversation. (The recent “return to beauty” was a little mixed on this front, as it basically amounted to an effort to theorize beauty, rather than to consciously work out how to put theory in general in the service of evaluation.)
But it’s a challenging project, and I’m not sure comics is ready to do that. I think that an emphasis on evaluation — and yes, even in terms of productive texts — can interfere with the rigorous philosophical component of theoretical work. As opposed as I am to an “exceptionalism” that views comics in isolation and ignores insights from and comparison with other fields, comics are obviously a specific case, and they need and deserve their own rigorous theoretical oeuvre.
But that oeuvre need to actually be theory, it needs to be based on a rigorous reading of theoretical texts and contribute to a rigorous theoretical conversation that conforms to philosophical standards. Theoretical work in literature was based not primarily on reading literature. It grew out of a rigorous reading of philosophical texts that were not fundamentally about literature, but about the key questions in philosophy: ontology, epistemology, language, mind. The guiding questions were about what this philosophy meant for the way we understand literature and the way literature and its assumptions shape our world and our consciousness.
So when you’re talking about ontological and epistemological questions in comics, I don’t think evaluation is an appropriate part of that exercise, not at the stage where the reading of philosophical texts and questions is the focus of the critical activity. So I zero in on Jeet’s word “temporarily.” Philosophical theory is groundwork. Theoretical work in comics needs to be based on a similarly rigorous reading of those same philosophical texts, as well as others that are deemed relevant. That’s what I mean by theory being primary.
That doesn’t mean evaluation and conversations about evaluation can’t continue apace at the same time — or conversations about history or more old-fashioned formalism, or even purely ad hoc conversations which I think are often extremely valuable for triggering the imagination and making lateral connections (as well as building a conversational community of non-like-minded people, which I think is really important — sort of intellectual genetic diversity.) I’m only talking about what I think the most rigorous approach to advanced theoretical work in comics is, not trying to insist on a hegemonic approach to talking about comics period.
Ah Jeet…you should see what people who write fan fiction say about me. They don’t think I’m particularly respectful, trust me. You just don’t read those flame wars.
Oh…and I wasn’t actually making evaluative statements about Harry Potter fan fiction. You were specifically forswearing evaluative criteria, was my understanding. I was merely going by reams of type.
You can’t say, “we’re going to put aside evaluation and focus on productivity” and then backtrack and claim that you’re going to make judgements based on the value of the products. If you’re evaluating you’re evaluating; if you’re looking at productivity sans evaluation, you’re presumably number-crunching.
Or to put it another way; if you can evaluate Joycean criticism, then you should be able to evaluate Joyce without referring to the amount or value of the criticism he’s generated. Either evaluation matters or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, you have to accept that Harry Potter is worth as much as Joyce and a lot more than Maus. It if does, you need to make up your own mind and not just count citations, even important ones.
Noah: you’re conflating two types of evaluation: aesthetic evaluation (is Ulysses a good book or not?) with intellectual evaluation (is Joyce criticism a rich field with cutting edge theoretical and practical criticism being done?). The first is really not that interesting to me: whether you like Joyce or Hemingway or says more about you than the book. The fact that Ulysses generates intellectually engaging books that challenge how we think about literature isn’t an aesthetic question at all. Of course aesthetic and intellectual judgements can overlap somewhat (some criticism is aesthetically pleasing and works of fiction offer intellectual as well as aesthetic pleasures) but this overlap is only partial. It’s still possible to make distinctions between the two.
I’m still puzzled why you brought up Harry Potter fan fiction; I suppose it can be seen as a type of criticism but really I think the pleasures and challenges it offers are different enough from criticism to think of the two separately.
Evaluation of art is something we all do all the time, but criticism that is primarily evaluative is ultimately boring. It’s like listening to an endless conversation of “my five desert island albums.” Intellectually productive criticism lies elsewhere, in the formalist, historical and theoretical questions that this blog isn’t interested in exploring.
I think Noah’s interested in theoretical questions. I know he’d support my publishing that kind of work here, and I’m VERY interested in those questions — it’s just, writing theory is really hard work and I don’t have a lot of time to work on it. I wish corporate jobs came with sabbaticals!
That’s so funny. We explore those questions all the time! e It’s just not in exactly the way you like, and doesn’t come to the conclusions you prefer (all the time, anyway.) And since you can’t admit to your own evaluative criteria, you basically are forced to claim that it’s not being done.
“intellectually engaging books that challenge how we think about literaturel”
That’s absolutely an aesthetic question. “intellectualy engaging” is an aesthetic evaluation. You’re desperation to find an objective point for your aesthetics requires you to lop off giant portions of aesthetics. Then you can happily natter on about formalism in Maus secure in the knowledge that you’re intellectually engaged because you’re talking about structure and everyone loves structure and it’s important and it doesn’t have anything to do with opinions, no no no.
I mean…the only time you really engage with theory on the interwebs is in comments here as far as I can tell, Jeet. Most of your blog posts at CC have been of the, “hey, this is an interesting factoid — awesome!” Or, “hey, these important cartoonists did something nifty,” or “this is a good book that says important things and I’m endorsing it.” Sometimes that’s fun and sometimes I’m less interested, but I don’t really see how any of it rises to the historical and theoretical questions you claim you want to explore.
I assume you keep that stuff for print more or less. Which is cool, but brings up the issues of accessibility Caro was talking about.
I write about theory regularly! I wrote two big honking posts about Cavell! I did a long interview with Sharon Marcus which was wall to wall theory more or less! I write about space and time in comics! I publish academic papers!
Jeet only comes over to read us when we kick his idols. But that’s okay. Happy to have him when we can!
…and Jeet is even now typing a post that says, “I thought interviews weren’t criticism.”
I haven’t read any of your academic papers!
But I think we’re talking about slightly different genres: your work is indeed very engaged with theoretical questions, but I was talking about writing actual theory, not theoretically informed criticism. I’d assert that Groensteen is the only critic/scholar in comics who writes anything particularly noteworthy in that genre. I don’t think any of us do it, this blog or otherwise.
And there’s some low hanging fruit we could pick up. It’s just that even the low hanging fruit is still REALLY hard work.
No, no; I haven’t published academic papers myself. I mean I publish academic papers by other people on this blog. Confusing phrasing; my apologies.
We’ve actually got a pretty amazing academic piece on Tsuge and Tatsume coming up, which I presume Jeet will approve of.
Anyway, yes, I was talking about theoretically engaged criticism. I think Jeet was talking about that as well; he can hardly expect me to be publishing Groensteen. ( I guess he could, which would be flattering…but I still don’t think he is.)
But yes, absolutely Caro, if you write theory I will publish it.
This is probably my most theoryish piece in a while that looks at comics form specifically. I think it was actually partially inspired by Charles’ book, in a roundabout way.
Right, I think HU is easily as concerned with theory in the academic sense as the academic blogs; it’s just less concerned with academic writing. I’m not sure how HU could get MORE concerned with theory without actually becoming an academic blog. The point of HU to me is that it’s kind of pushing against that line where academic and popular conversation meet. Sort of “Dinner with Lacan and Lester Bangs.”
But actual theory writing in comics is just really rare, everywhere. The academics do theoretically informed work, and formalism and history seem to be more compelling to people in non-academic contexts.
Caro: “I was talking about writing actual theory, not theoretically informed criticism. I’d assert that Groensteen is the only critic/scholar in comics who writes anything particularly noteworthy in that genre.”
Is it possible that you are overrating him, Caro? I just see a neosemiotician at work. I enjoy his book like the next person, but still…
As for Jeet: Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye but fail to notice the beam in your own eye?
No evaluation implied, Domingos! LOL. All I mean is that Groensteen’s work is squarely in the genre I’d call “theory” rather than “theoretically informed criticism.” I agree that he is a neosemiotician, and I think there’s a lot that he didn’t get to. But Systeme is still a solid example of comics theory and there aren’t many other books that are doing quite the same thing.
Caro: OK, sorry I used the word “overrating.” I really meant: are you sure that Groensteen is in the cutting edge of theory, whatever that may be? Isn’t comics theory as poor as the art form itself?
Cutting edge of theory or of comics theory? I don’t know of anything much edgier on comics (ok, probably some Jan Baetens is up there…I’m overstating his isolation.)
It’s not Jameson or Zizek or Rosalind Krauss, but they have the advantage of vibrant and broad theoretical conversations and really strong predecessors and folks working on image/word stuff are a little alone in the wilderness.
Caro:
“Theoretical work in literature was based not primarily on reading literature. It grew out of a rigorous reading of philosophical texts that were not fundamentally about literature, but about the key questions in philosophy: ontology, epistemology, language, mind.3
Yes, that pesky literature really gets in the way of building beautiful sand castles of Theory, doesn’t it?
The ghost of F.R. Leavis weeps unheard…
“Most of your blog posts at CC have been of the, hey, this is an interesting factoid — awesome!’ Or, ‘hey, these important cartoonists did something nifty,’ or ‘this is a good book that says important things and I’m endorsing it.’ Sometimes that’s fun and sometimes I’m less interested, but I don’t really see how any of it rises to the historical and theoretical questions you claim you want to explore.”
At the risk of sounding touchy or vain, my blog posts at CC (and now TCJ) are only a small part of my critical activity. I’ve co-edited 7 books and have helped edited many more. I’ve also written the introductions to about 25 or 30 volumes (I’ve lost track of the exact number). Most of those introductions are quite long — up to 8,000 words. And aside from the words, the actual books themselves (the images used in them, the way they are edited) are also designed to make a critical statement. I’d say that the Walt and Skeezix book and the Annie books, plus the two anthologies from University Press of Mississippi constitute my main contribution to comics criticism. I don’t expect you to be familiar with these books — they’re outside your area of interest — but they do exist and they do take up historical and theoretical questions.
Man, Jeet, for a careful reader you don’t actually read what I say! I mentioned your books! I said they took up historical and theoretical questions! Go back up and see!
Ah, I’ll repeat it:
“I assume you keep that stuff for print more or less. Which is cool, but brings up the issues of accessibility Caro was talking about.”
I have read some of your non-bloggy pieces. Responded to one even back in the day I think (about Little Nemo, right?)
Jeet: “they [the Walt and Skeezix book, the Annie books] do exist and they do take up historical and theoretical questions.”
I didn’t buy the Annie books (I’ve enough of those already), but I did buy the Walt & Skeezix ones. I read the intros ages ago, so, I may be unfair here, but I just remember the usual: facts + facts + facts. I don’t remember any “historical and theoretical questions.”
Alex: exactly why I said that theory belongs to philosophy and why in theory, the primary texts and questions under examination are the theoretical ones and not the literary ones.
There’s plenty of literary work that does examine literary texts as primary material: but that work isn’t “theory.” Theoretically informed or otherwise, that’s criticism.
I could easily have used Leavis as an example where I used the New York Intellectuals. Leavis was essentially a New Critic (although not technically so.) That kind of work is basically gone from academia, and you can’t just pick back up and start doing it again unchanged, as if time had stopped in 1975.
I think…isn’t the Walt and Skeezix one where he talks about gender issues? That was in the BACC wasn’t it?
Yes. Here’s Derik’s take:
“Jeet Heer’s piece on Gasoline Alley is almost wholey history and biography containing only brief glimpses of critical engagement with the strip. He hints at gender issues and misogyny on the strip but does not elaborate: a missed opportunity. It probably wouldn’t fit in with the almost hagiographic writing that serves as introductions to the collected strips, anyway.”
I thought that was a little harsh, actually. Or at least, I thought the history and biography were fairly valuable, and I appreciated the hints at gender issues, though like Derik I wish there had been more. (Looking at my BACC review, I realize that I thought the ending of Jeet’s piece was pretty terrible…but you’ll have that.)
Caro: Jan Baetens is way edgier than Groensteen. Unfortunately his essays are too scattered and he seems to have lost interest in comics. Who can blame him? This must be the mother of all anti-intellectual milieus. I’m sure that someone like Baetens had to lose interest sooner or later. Also: appart from his book with Pascal Lefèvre (again, way too much leaning on formalism) I don’t remember any comics theory by him.
Caro:
“There’s plenty of literary work that does examine literary texts as primary material: but that work isn’t “theory.” Theoretically informed or otherwise, that’s criticism.”
Well, no. That’s your take.
Literary theory didn’t just spring into being some time in the mid-50s, you know. It dates back at least as far as Aristotle, nearly two and a half millenia ago.
Leavis’ contribution was on the literary, historic, and critical planes– but his elaboration of the ‘Great Tradition’ was theory of the purest water.
I agree, Domingos; that’s basically why I went to Groensteen as the example instead. Baetens’ stuff is just incredible, really exciting. I was just hesitant to attach it really firmly to comics since it’s a little further removed. Some of it is relevant, though. The exact boundaries between image/word theory and comics theory are pretty loosely defined.
Wonder if it really is the subculture’s anti-intellectualism that pushed him away. I guess insofar as it affects creators, maybe. That’s awfully depressing.
What should I read by Baetens?
Baetens has a book on politics and bd, “Formes et politique de la bande dessinée” I’ve only read bits and pieces though I have scans of a few chapters.
I don’t think much of his comics work has been put into English. Though there is piece on Jimmy Corrigan and Understanding Comics here: http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/webarts/graphic
A brief review of Charles’ book: http://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/surrealism/hatfield.htm
There’s also a chapter in “The language of comics: word and image”
Jeet Heer- Evaluation of art is something we all do all the time, but criticism that is primarily evaluative is ultimately boring. It’s like listening to an endless conversation of “my five desert island albums.”
So the “New York/London Review of Books” is boring? Harpers? New Yorker? New Criterion? etc. etc?
Alex: you might want to note that “theory” is not entirely synonymous with “literary theory.” I’ve used the term “literary theory” exactly twice in this thread and only once without modification. The shorter form, “theory”, is a term of jargon that refers to a specific philosophical tradition. The jargony meaning has largely colonized the more general one, and you’re entitled to ignore the specificity of the jargon if you want to. But you’re not talking about the same thing I am. Semantic quibbles over whether the term that’s in use is a good one is a waste of time. If you want to replace the term “theory” with one that suits you better, please go ahead. But “theory” in the academy in 2011 does not refer to the thinking of Leavis and Aristotle.
Noting that does not diminish Leavis’ standing as one of the 20th century’s most significant and intelligent literary critics.
Even by the broader definition of literary theory, though, that you’re using, I would still consider The Great Tradition overall to be a work of criticism. You can argue that the thesis/conclusions are “literary theory,” but the readings he uses to get to them are not, and they form the bulk of the book. I’m not sure why criticism isn’t a good enough word for them. It’s rather exemplary criticism in that tradition.
I’d argue, in fact, that eliding the difference between Leavis or Trilling and Derrida or Lacan, as you are attempting to do, is in fact more damaging and much more dishonest that maintaining it.
If you want examples of a critic who is also a theorist, scholars who contribute more substantively to both modes, the best are Jameson and Kermode. You can make Leavisian arguments against the thing that academics use the word “theory” to denote, but those arguments won’t make the term mean something it doesn’t mean.
Oh there’s also this one (by Baetens) on comics and constrained writing:
http://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/graphicnovel/janbaetens_constrained.htm
I’ve read the chapter in The Language of Comics. I think that Constrained Writing one might be more interesting. Thanks!
He’s just really incredibly sharp. I wish he wrote more on comics. But all his stuff is great.
Should be pointed out that the reviews of Charles book and Jimmy Corrigan are criticism, reviews. The Constrained Writing piece is theory. Good examples!
I was going to suggest Image [&] Narrative.
Caro: did you ever read anything by John Ronan (he was a student of Derrida)? Did you read Donald Ault’s lacanian take on Carl Barks?
I don’t think so, Domingos. I’ll check it out. I’ve read other stuff by Donald Ault though — he’s responsible for the pro-theory curriculum changes at Berkeley back in the ’70s, and that curriculum was a major seedbed for the particular sort of theory education I received. (Most of my faculty were Berkeley trained.)
I think very highly of Ault’s approach to teaching it — and also extremely highly of his strong support for Open Access journals. ImageText is a treasure and a model that more academic publishing should follow.
Thanks Derik. I’ll read a couple of those.
I don’t remember where the Ault essay was published. Apparently it was published, here: http://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/illustrations/aarnoudrommens.htm
@Noah. “I think…isn’t the Walt and Skeezix one where he talks about gender issues? That was in the BACC wasn’t it?”
There have actually been five Walt and Skeezix books, each with a long introduction (and a sixth is on its way). The chapter in BACC is merely the first of those introductions. The intros, like the comics themselves, are designed to be read as serialized stories, so each one goes deeper into the life. I have more to say about gender (and race, and politics, and other matters) in the intos than are found in the first volume. Again, I don’t expect you to read these, but I want to note that they exist.
***
@Domingos Isabelinho
“I read the intros ages ago, so, I may be unfair here, but I just remember the usual: facts + facts + facts. I don’t remember any ‘historical and theoretical questions.'”
Sigh. I don’t know how to write history without bringing facts to the table. Given the dearth of archival research into comics history, I thought I was doing a service by bringing so many facts to light. The argument of the Walt and Skeezix books is that Frank King was an autobiographical artist and that in Gasoline Alley we see him working out issues in his family life, so that a deeper appreciation of the strip as a personal work requires biographical knowledge of the artist’s life. In some ways what I’m doing is similiar to what Mark Scroggins did with his recent biography of Louis Zukofsky. I’m not sure if the fact (le mot juste) that this argument wasn’t clear is due to my incompetence as a writer or not, but there it is. All the facts that are in the various intros are deployed in servive of that argument.
***
In terms of theoretically informed comics writing, I’ll revert to a statement that many here don’t like, that the various comments by cartoonists like Spiegelman and Panter about their craft offer a richly suggestive critical literature, one which has yet to be fully appreciated. I’d especially suggest that Noah read several long Spiegelman interviews….
Jeet, I’ve seen Spiegelman interviews. You don’t want me to read several long Spiegelman interviews. You really, really don’t.
My differences with you aren’t going to be solved by having me read more of the things you want me to read. The issue isn’t reducible to a reading list. Though thinking about it I guess it’s probably impossible for you to admit that. So it goes.
Your intros sound interesting. I do occasionally like your writing; I never meant to say I didn’t. The conversation with you about Eisner was really entertaining and illuminating.
I have a lot of differences with you, but that really doesn’t mean a wholesale rejection of everything you’ve done or are likely to do. I’d just like more space for different approaches and opinions, that’s all.
My favorite interview with Spiegelman is the one where he and Gary Groth and Kim T. and some guy whose name I can never remember and Francoise Mouly are talking — it’s from maybe 1982 in the Journal, and Mouly is just the absolute smartest person in the room.
She’s GREAT. DOUBLE GREAT. I wish she got loads more attention.
I wouldn’t use the word criticism to describe it, but it’s incredibly stimulating reading.
Agreed about the importance and greatness of Francoise Mouly. I tried to redress her underappreciation here:
http://sanseverything.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/francoise-mouly-underappreciated-and-essential/
Jeet: As I said, I just remember reading the first intro. I have four of the _Walt & Skeezix_ books. Unfortunately I can’t read or reread the other intros right now.
I’m not against facts. I just think that facts are a starting point, that’s all. A collection of facts isn’t history. History is formal analysis, sociology, psychoanalysis, you name it (but I would say: mainly sociology)… As for your discovery of autobio elements in _Gasoline Alley_ name one writer of fiction worth his or her salt who doesn’t mine his or her life in search of inspiration? I use to say: all fiction is autobiographical and all autobiography is fiction. I’m sure that someone said it first, though…
I particularly like Iconology as an historical method. It’s incredibly difficult nowadays because people have lost all the Classical references needed.
Baetens; the takedown of McCloud seems pretty dead on; I especially like his skepticism about the infinite canvas. The points about Ware are interesting…but I think he runs afoul of the problem I’ve been discussing; that is, he gets so excited at parsing the structure that the content rather recedes into a hagiographic blur. Ending an essay with a claim for the universiality of the experiences presented is pretty much always a sign that something has gone badly wrong. His points about the structure are really interesting though…I like the idea that Ware’s small panels force you to look at more than one panel at a time, thus ending the rule of the panel as the unit of comics. I’m not sure I quite buy it, but it’s fun to think about and its implications.
The Hatfield review is nice; very balanced. The note of condescension to American scholars is a little painful, but probably just.
These aren’t really telling me why folks are so excited about him though. Maybe that other one Derik linked….
@Domingos Isabelinho
“As for your discovery of autobio elements in _Gasoline Alley_ name one writer of fiction worth his or her salt who doesn’t mine his or her life in search of inspiration?” But I think most newspaper cartoonsists weren’t autobiographical to any significant degree — Opper wasn’t an Irish tramp like Happy Hooligan and Dirks wasn’t a spoiled kid like the Katzenjammers (as far as I know). I think King was an exception, although there are strong biograpical elements in the best comic strip artists (Herriman and McCay). But they’re the exception.
@ Noah.
Agreed, the issue isn’t reducable to reading lists. I just wanted to tease you with the idea of reading more Spiegelman interviews.
By the way, its a major travesty that the Comics Journal has never run a full-length interview with Francoise Mouly (I mean by herself, talking about her career). That’s a serious ommission.
A travesty indeed. Someone should get right on that!!
Noah, the Baetens essay in Language of Comics is here. I like it a lot.
“So the ‘New York/London Review of Books’ is boring? Harpers? New Yorker? New Criterion? etc. etc?”
The New Criterion is super-boring, for reasons I try to explain here:
http://www.jeetheer.com/culture/newcriterion.htm
AS for the others, they tend to publish essays that mix fomalist analysis with evaluation. Usually I find the formalist stuff interesting and the evaluation less so. To be concrete: do I really care if James Wood likes the new Philip Roth novel or not? No, I don’t care. But I like to read Wood as he takes apart a Philip Roth sentence and shows how it works.
Jeet: “But I think most newspaper cartoonsists weren’t autobiographical to any significant degree — Opper wasn’t an Irish tramp like Happy Hooligan and Dirks wasn’t a spoiled kid like the Katzenjammers (as far as I know). I think King was an exception, although there are strong biograpical elements in the best comic strip artists (Herriman and McCay). But they’re the exception.”
I said: worth his or her salt.
“I said: worth his or her salt.”
Oh, ok. I wasn’t sure where King stood on your pantheon — I thought it was not very high, but I guess I was wrong.
I should add that while Opper, Dirks and many others did lesser work, they still had some merit as craftworkers, so we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss them. In comics as other fields, there are lots of good secondary and tertiary figures.
King is high on my comic strip pantheon. What’s low on my pantheon is the comics strip pantheon.
“Agreed, the issue isn’t reducable to reading lists. I just wanted to tease you with the idea of reading more Spiegelman interviews.”
Ah, okay. That is funny. Point to you, sir!
My favorite piece of criticism ever is probably James Baldwin’s “The Devil Finds Work.” He certainly is attentive to some aspects of form (acting styles mostly) but the reason it’s so devastating is his evaluation — of individual films, of the history of American film, and finally of American and Western history. I can’t imagine wishing that he had instead written a shot by shot analysis of the Exorcist….even though I quite like the Exorcist, significantly more than Baldwin does.
But I guess mileage differs in these things.
I quite like that New Criterion essay Jeet. Knowing you, the defense of pop culture is a little predictable, but it’s put across with verve and I generally agree with most of your points (low culture isn’t evil, culture changes, etc.)
But…that essay does exactly what you say you don’t want to see done! It’s entirely evaluative! You’re not taking apart the sentences of New Criterion writers; you’re giving your opinion of their work, and providing reasons for those opinions which connect to broader cultural issues. You should hate that essay!
Well, evaluation is inescapable in journalistic criticism: people want to know whether you like a book or movie or magazine or whatnot. Journalistic criticism is a form of consumer service (thumbs up or thumbs down: what movie should I see this Friday).
Since I’ve done a my share of journalistic writing for many publications, I’ve written evaluative criticism.
But I don’t value evalative criticism as much as I do more formalist and theoretical and historical approaches that leave evaluation to the side and try to deepen the understanding of art.
As I said before, evaluation is inescapable but the primacy we give to it isn’t; and its possible and useful in some circumstances to set evaluaton to one side in order to get at certain truths that a judgemental attitude would block. And I raised the whole issue of evaluation because I think the writers on HU — with a few exceptions — are too quick to judge or take up the cudgel. The deferment of evaluation can sometimes be a useful thing.
That’s not so hard to understand, no?
It’s not hard to understand, but it belies that essay on the New Criterion, I think. You’re not giving a thumbs up or thumbs down there. The purpose of that essay is not to tell people whether to buy the New Criterion. The purpose is to make an aesthetic and cultural stand. You’re fighting the good fight for popular art and against entrenched conservatism.
The deferment of evaluation could in theory be a useful thing I guess..but as you say at the start of that paragraph, it’s not actually possible. Evaluation is I think an integral part of the aesthetic experience. Do you assent to the world the art presents you? Why? Why not? The evaluation can be more or less intellectualized, but it’s there, and it colors your reactions. You seem to want to get to a place where you can treat art like a math problem. I think that’s a betrayal of art; it’s a refusal of the demands art makes on you. It’s insisting that the art object be an object that you can experiment on rather than a soul that you interact with.
Which is maybe another way of saying that the formulation you’ve created seems to me duplicitous. The reason you’re willing to go after the New Criterion polemically, rather than do structural exegesis, is no doubt in part because of the venue…but it’s also because you think the New Criterion deserves to be kicked. The reason you want to do structural analysis of Maus and aren’t interested in my opinion of it is because you really like Maus. You’re claiming the argument between us is primarily methodological, but it’s not. It’s primaily evaluative. The methodological argument is a blind…both in the sense that it conceals the real issue, and in the sense, I think, that it keeps you from seeing the art.
You aren’t setting evaluation aside. You’re putting it front and center. The proscription of the way to talk about Maus is an evaluative proscription. It isn’t that you’re being objective and fair-minded and I’m rushing to judgment. It’s that I’m willing to admit my reactions and attempt to tease out where they’re coming from, and you resist doing that with your own.
I know this doesn’t jibe at all with where you think you’re coming from, and I really don’t want to dictate to you how you write or what your interests are. But I’m trying to explain to you why I write the way I do. I love tinkering and arranging and putting pieces together, and that’s part of art and part of criticism, but to make that the whole thing just seems soul-killing. If art isn’t about passion, it really might as well be algebra. If it isn’t about love and philosophy and figuring out my relationship to other people and to society and to God, it might as well be data entry. This isn’t a job for me, or a profession, or a way to build a widget. It’s a way to talk about things that matter. And pretending they don’t matter seems dishonest; pretending I can set my own feelings to the side and hold off judgment while I reach an acceptable moderate conclusion seems dishonest. I won’t write that way.
“The reason you want to do structural analysis of Maus and aren’t interested in my opinion of it is because you really like Maus.”
I can understand why you think this — it’s a perfectly reasonable surmise — but it’s not true. And the reason I can confidentally say it’s not true is that I’m also interested in reading structuralist analysis of works that I don’t care for. I don’t really like superhero comics or Alan Moore’s work, but I do think that they are historically and culturally important and I welcome the scholarly work that’s been done on them. (Annalisa Di Liddo’s book on Moore, for example, was very exciting).
Or to pick an example closer to home: I don’t like many of the cartoonists that Frank Santoro and Dan Nadel champion (Howard Chaykin, Wally Wood, Marshall Rogers, etc.). But I think the way that Frank and Dan talk about these cartoonists — doing a formalist close reading of their practices — is very valuable and I’ve learned a lot from this line of critical inquiry. So it’s really not a question of my personal taste in comics. And I’d also add that Frank’s work and Dan’s work shows that formalism doesn’t have to mean dry as dust or passionless or academic.
Noah: ” You’re fighting the good fight for popular art and against entrenched conservatism.
Isn’t “the good fight for popular art” “entrenched conservatism” by now?
Yeah, it’s kind of odd to think of anti-popular art as a conservative position. It’s refreshing when you run across a conservative who can get past his capitalism.
Domingos:
“I particularly like Iconology as an historical method. It’s incredibly difficult nowadays because people have lost all the Classical references needed.”
Good Lord, I actually find myself agreeing with Domingos on something.
Even banal allusions like ‘a Parthian shot’ or ‘sprung from the brow of Jupiter’ must be avoided because nobody gets what you’re talking about these days.
Jeet,
I don’t think formalist writing has to be dry necessarily. I actually do formalist analysis on occasion myself, so I’m not opposed. Matt Seneca’s formal take on Liefield was one of my favorite pieces of criticism from last year.
But my understanding was that you were talking specifically about formal analysis that sidelines judgment, as some academic writing does. That doesn’t describe Frank’s work at all.
Man, I only saw a bit of that Alan Moore book, but it looked pretty dreadful, I have to say.
I’m sure you’ve mentioned it before, but I’ve rarely seen you talk about cartoonists you don’t like. You’re not a Watchmen fan? How come?
Oboy. I take Ash Wednesday off, and I come back to find that everyone’s gone on a comment bender. Before I jump completely into the pool, let me dip a toe and correct something Jeet wrote, although it’s probably just a typo. However, I’ve seen it appear as a genuine misunderstanding often enough that I think it needs to be addressed.
Formalist criticism and structuralist criticism are not the same thing. In a nutshell, the differnce is that formalism is concerned with the aesthetic, while structuralism is concerned with the linguistic. The structuralist project doesn’t really concern itself with questions of artistic quality or the dynamics of aesthetic effect. The dynamic it focuses on is the linguistic, and the ultimate goal is to describe the coherent semiotic system that underpins a work or works. Structuralists fault formalists for ignoring the linguistic and anthropological determinants that shape a work. A typical formalist complaint about structuralism is that it turns art into math.
Major formalist literary critics include Cleanth Brooks and Wayne Booth. Structuralist heavy-hitters include Ramon Jakobson and Roland Barthes.
Part of the reason for the confusion between the two schools is that structuralism never defined a major period of work among English-language critics. It was always a continental movement. English-language critics pretty much shifted from formalism to post-structuralism without any in-between period. This has led a lot of people to assume that the latter developed from the former when they really have very little to do with each other.
That’s all for today’s exercise in pedantry.
Thanks Robert!
The funny thing is, I like Barthes. S/Z is great. It is like math in some ways…but there’s such joy in it. I find it much more honest about its interests and enthusiasms than formalism can be. Certainly, S/Z is an extravagant, boisterous book in its way.