Monday, April 28, 2008

The Thing


Wilder Voice
It's coming.
If it doesn't kill me first.
Photo by Savannah Mirisola-Sullivan

On another note: Northlanders, issue 5 came out last Wednesday, and it was a doozy. Wood was going back and filling in some of the gap's in our anti-hero Sven's life, which was quite kind of him.


My interpretation may be all off here, but I'm pretty sure Wood was setting him up as a rather ordinary anti-hero, and he was doing it well. But in this issue, the architecture was a little clearer, distilling the anti-hero archetype into an almost adolescent rebellion. It's all quite insightful, and very American.


I'm probably talking out of my ass, but I see the coming-of-age tale as a very American narrative: On The Road, Huck Finn, Gatsby, Scalped, Y, Veronica Mars, pick it. Contrast this with some non-American "coming-of-age" tales. Kipling's Kim, for example, can hardly be considered thematically similar to Huck Finn. They both follow comparable plots, but the themes are all wrong. Or, think of the difference between The Matrix and The Invisibles. They are, arguably, the same fucking story. The difference? The Matrix is a true "coming-of-age" story, while Invisibles starts off that way, and, in the end, becomes something very different--King Mob and Robin are the main characters, not Dane: the boy who's growing up.


I should make the caveat, coming-of-age narratives--especially traveling, coming-of-age narratives are very much white American, if you catch my drift. Scalped, the only example I listed written from a non-white perspective, was written by a white guy for a (largely) white audience (oh god, I know I'm generalizing, but, Marc, don't bust my balls about this one). This might be why Murikami is so celebrated in white America. His books are all travel coming-of-age books, with some pomo twist--the best of both worlds for me and my gen pomo brothers and sisters.


Getting back to the point, Wood has Americanized Northlanders, and, by doing so, he's raising the bar on the book. Good move. I've waxed eloquent before on his work, and I'm not going to do so again here--I'm too tired--but, do note, his other books are all also coming of age: DMZ, Local, etc. Another tangental note: White, adolescent, coming of age--and I mean emotionally adolescent, not actual adolescent. Not all character growth is American, just adolescent, white, pushing against society character growth.


This is a little disjointed, so I'll stop. Just add Northlanders to your pull sheet. Or go out and get it. Or wait six months and pick it up in trade. Or borrow it from me.


One more thing. I hate our media. But go read Elizabeth Edwards's (yes, Sen. Edwards's wife) takedown of our Serious and Respectable media, here. Perfectly, it's called "Bowling 1, Health Care 0." A choice quote:

Watching the campaign unfold, I saw how the press gravitated toward a narrative template for the campaign, searching out characters as if for a novel: on one side, a self-described 9/11 hero with a colorful personal life, a former senator who had played a president in the movies, a genuine war hero with a stunning wife and an intriguing temperament, and a handsome governor with a beautiful family and a high school sweetheart as his bride. And on the other side, a senator who had been first lady, a young African-American senator with an Ivy League diploma, a Hispanic governor with a self-deprecating sense of humor and even a former senator from the South standing loyally beside his ill wife. Issues that could make a difference in the lives of Americans didn’t fit into the narrative template and, therefore, took a back seat to these superficialities.
.


Sound familiar? I've been writing that for the last month.


One more thing. There was a dance performance tonight, choreographed by a senior (and I can't remember her name right now) and scored by a sophomore. It was amazing. Go to these events while you can. I'm saying that as much for me as for you (my gentle reader(s)).