The problem with Franz

Zadie Smith takes on Franz Kafka over at the New Republic. I find the mere concept fascinating. Delightfully, the actual
piece itself is intriguing as well. She begins by puzzling about Kafka’s place in literature and his successors-which I find amusing, as I recently pegged Zadie Smith as a successor to John Irving.

Then she gets to the heart of the matter: Kafka in relation to other novelists–and the art of the novel itself for that matter.

One aspect she tackles is how the novel’s most basic premise, the assumption of life is at odds with Kafka’s feeling of “the impossibility of being alive.” To wit:

The novelist’s question “What does he do with his life?”
is made strange in Kafka’s parabolic world, where “life” is
not a fact but a transitive state; not something one could do things with but
rather a process (Der Prozess is the title of The Trial in the
original) to which we submit. Kafka’s question is harder to listen to
and harder to answer: “Is it possible to be alive?”

This, and other points that Smith explores, serve to remind me why Kafka has such an appeal for me—not to mention the anecdote of Kafka bursting into laughter as he read aloud The Trial to his bewildered family.

And, naturally, Smith reinforces the idea that Kafka lived at the heart of metaphor. It was while studying Kafka that I learned the importance of understanding well placed cultural reference–like the word “jump” as a slang word for sex. Or was it masturbation? Maybe it was “falling” for orgasm. Or “flying.” Guess it depends on the translation.

Huh. Now that I think about it, Kafka seems an excellent choice to follow my re-reading of Peter Pan. Maybe I should dig out my Kafka collection and give him a go again. Should probably hunt down the Raw with “Good Ol’ Gregor Brown,” by R. Sikoryak as well.

Look busy

Kip has begun the second episode or “fit” of City of Roses. Never before seen material folks! Complete with a snazzy new picture.

His also been posting a little more than he has, including one entry about the the photography of Edward Burtynsky and the matter of shipbreaking. Kip found out about both from one of the nifty magazines we subscribe to called Granta. Some of the others we get delivered are Gastronomica, McSweeney’s, Nest, Cabinet and, naturally, the New Yorker.

Now, as I have already bitched about not having time to read said magazines, I will resist doing so again. Most of these magazines have websites that are very worth while, as do Bitch and Colors, which I try to buy at Reading Frenzy. But in particular check out Cabinet’s this month. it has some fun online writing plus the “Out of Site” links are particularly good, including Maps of the London Underground from 1889 to present, the Sound Mirrors of Greatstone, Kent and Adult Movie Posters of the 1960s and 1970s.

Humph

Kip’s comfy in bed on a properly chilly Portland summer eve reading the latest Harry Potter. Since he happened to be home when the postman delivered it, he got dibs. (Actually, since he can devour text at super human speed, there was little doubt he’d be reading it first.) As I ordered it to round out a free shipping order from Amazon.com, I’m surprised it’s already here. I was fully prepared not to be on the cutting edge of Harry.

I’ve been cheerfully amused by the whole Harry Potter phenonemon all week, from the midnight release parties to the various scandals around leaked copies. I find the excitement over a book and book series very pleasing. The only thing I regret with all the hoop-la is being reminded that one of the characters die.

You see, I like going into stories head first, armed only with a friend’s recommendation or a whim. Little fore knowledge as possible. I just know I won’t truly setle into the book until the poor slob bites it. But then, it won’t be as bad as The Italian Caper, who’s trailer is basically a video Cliff Notes version of the story.

But since I do know, I can’t help but wonder if the book’s release on the Summer Solctice is a mere coincidence. I’m wondering if the character who dies happens to make a perfect Oak King, who on this day in Celtic tradition is supposed to die/make way for/be reborn as the Holly.

One of these things is not like the other

So, as you most certainly have read Dylan
Meconis’ amazing journal entry about her uneasy relations with comics.
If not, go
read it, I can wait.

It’s a great, revelatory piece. It resonated very much with me and echoed
many of my thoughts. I made a point of dashing off emails to people I thought
would enjoy it. But there is one small point I want to quibble about.

From Dylan’s journal:

I was talking last summer to a well-known speculative fiction writer who happens
to be a patient of my mom’s (…no not that one, the other one). She had
been told that I was a writer and artist, and had a silly comic about vampires.
She asked me if I was working on anything at the moment.

“Well, I’ve got a story,” I replied. “It’s going
to be a big sucker, and it’s a comic, so I dont know if I’ll have
the skills to actually produce it once I finish the script.”

“Then turn it into a prose story!” she cheerfully retorted.

And, yeesh, in a way I wish I could: heaven knows it would be a lot easier.

Where on earth did cartoonists get the idea that writing prose was easier?

Okay, actually, I do know where they get the idea. It’s you, a pencil
and that damn blank piece of paper—traditional or digital or whatever. Or let’s
add an eraser and that hand that just wont come out right. Or that brow, the
cat in the background, or whatever. And it’s important, everything hinges
on it. And there are all those stages of frustration, as you have drawn this
thing a hundred times before, and so on. And the actual writing of a comic takes
so little time in comparison.

But having known, loved and lived with writers, I can attest that a page a day can be a monumental task for them as well. I mean, yes, the physical task of actually typing a page of prose can take only 15 to 45 minutes-so can scrawling out a page of comics. But would you want to show it to anyone? Or, for that matter, read it?

Ive seen writers bang their heads in frustration over a paragraph that they have been wrestling with for the past three hours. The words wont obey them any more. Then there are the rewrites, rewrites, rewrites. Never mind the reviews and feedback of friends and cohorts. Spouses who say, “I know what you are trying to do and it doesn’t work.”

I have heard that James Joyce once said in regards to his story Finnegan’s
Wake, “It took me 16 years to write the damn thing. It better take
you 16 years to read it.”

Which takes me to the other main aspect of prose vs. comics that most cartoonists get hung up on: it takes people longer to read a page of prose than a page of a comic.

This is true, but aren’t we over the whole longer is better mentality?
I mean, it’s really an apples and Studebakers type of comparison. Comics
tell their stories through a whole range of icons and hieroglyphics that can
be more efficient and evocative than the hundreds of words that would be needed
to describe them.

But, okay, let’s look at time sent processing the story. Lets say that
the average pamphlet size comic book takes 15-20 minutes to read. The average
chapter of a book, that would deliver the same amount of story, two hours. Lets
take that as a given.

Now, I’ll wager that the average comic book about the house gets read
3 to 5 times as much as the average book about the house by the same reader
of both. And this isn’t counting the re-perusal of a certain section (which
is often done with a prose book) or the quick re-read when you get the next
issue in the series. Why this is, I couldn’t say. It could be that comics
are more inviting because of the visuals or the fact that because it isn’t
a book, it’s not as daunting on whatever level.

Don’t get me wrong, I love prose, heck I love all forms of storytelling
from books to plays to TV to songs and so on. I wouldn’t chose one over
the other, they all fulfill a need, any can haunt me or skew my thoughts. But
I, like Dylan, have an obvious preference for my own storytelling: comics.

There are many reasons why I don’t think Dicebox would work as
a prose piece. Beyond the desire to play with colors, symbols and shapes, there
is the problem of describing details in an engaging yet unobtrusive way.

One of my main sticking points is Molly’s missing finger. I like the
fact it’s not noticeable to many people for a good long while—and
having known people with missing fingers, I can attest you wont necessarily
notice in real life either (okay both these people were missing pinkies and
had good surgeons, but still). But to do the same in prose would deny readers
a chance to discover it for themselves. I would want it out there at the get-go.
But to describe it right off would make it so important, much more significant
than I would want.

Then there’s Griffen. She’s a scrawny tall woman in her early 40s,
large nosed, flat-chested, with a sharp chin and odd, overly large eyes and
a constant bad hair day. Now, something that commonly happens when people become
enamored of a character in prose is to subtly and gradually make them more attractive
in their imaginations as time goes on. That’s normal, in real life friends
often become more attractive as they become more dear. But it is important that
Griffen is who she is, not grow younger, develop curves and the like. Constantly
reminding readers of a characters physical traits can be annoying and sometimes
down right cheesy. Moreso if you try to be clever about it.

Then there’s the setting. John Aegard, a prose writer of no small worth, commented
on how I was able to easily establish the character of a place in Dicebox,
and how neat it was I could do that without interrupting flow. As he pointed
out, in prose it sometimes takes pages of description that usually stops the
action dead and still doesn’t always get the feeling across. I actually
admire prose authors who can create a sense of place while continuing the story
immensely—even more when they avoid making any one thing very important.

Not that I am too worried about Dylan succumbing to the glamour of prose. As
she has already stated, she is thoroughly in the thrall of her comics muse.
I just hope she doesn’t get too discouraged over the relative levels of
respect the two mediums command. Because I’ve often been told that Dicebox
is a good enough story that it could be a real book.

Update: This entry has under gone some edits. And this is actually just my own ramblings on comics vs. prose, not a manifesto, nor really a direct response to Dylan, just some thoughts sparked from reading her entry.

The side effects of spring fever

Deciding I had spent just about enough time in front of the computer, I slipped out to bop around the Pearl District and beyond. Eventually I found myself at Reading Frenzy, a common enough thing when I’m feeling restless at work. Browsing,
I discovered that Joe Matt’s latest collection is called Fair Weather (ah well) and was startled into laughter by an art book with a blue delft china AK-47 on it’s cover. (still not sure
why I laughed)

I ended up leaving with the latest Bitch(the theme being obsessions) as well as the latest Colors
(the theme being food). As if I have all this freaking time to read. As if I didn’t have all those magazines Kip and I subscribe to through the mail at home waiting for me to more than glance at them. Oy.

I tell ya, it’s a good thing I take the bus into work and am inclined to taking baths. Otherwise I’m not sure if I’d ever get to read. Oh, right, and doing cardio at the gym, when I’m not distracted by political messages.

The main book I’m reading now is The
Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade by Wendy
Doniger, which, for those of who check out my about me page on occasion might have noticed that this is a book I’ve been “Planning to Read” for about seven months. And I’ve had it out from the library even longer.
I was just so reluctant to start it. I mean, I adore Doniger’s writing, which is engaging, and her books and usually touches on everything I like from a non-fiction culture studies book– myth, symbolism, social history, sex, gender and sexuality. Two of her books: Women,
Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts and Other
Peoples’ Myths: The Cave of Echoes are among my favorites. As with most academics presenting their polemic, I don‘t always agree with her conclusions, but reading her work has always been an entertaining and thought provoking experience. But I just couldn‘t bring myself to start a 500 page book that focused on a plot device beloved by Shakespeare.

I finally took the plunge and as this book also deals with doppelgangers, animal brides and grooms, somnambulists, cross-dressing as well as theories of defilement and divinity and much more, I am happily two-thirds of the way through. And, as usual, there is a heavy emphasis on the tales and folklore of India.

Many of the non-fiction books I read reference and reverberate off each other. Not surprising as about eighty percent of them deal with what I listed above and then I steer towards books on tricksters, fool, shamanic practices, death, the human body, the human mind, liminal spaces—not to mention women specific
cultural studies. So I’m not to surprised in knowing quite a few of the authors she quotes through out—Marina
Warner, Thomas
Laqueuer, Midas
Dekker, Margorie Garber and so on.

But I was surprised when she made an observation that somehow resonated with the book that I am casually reading concurrently with the Bedtrick, Pharmako/Poeia
by Dale Pendell, a book that falls into another category of book I read, ritualistic psychotropic drug use and the various cultures it exists in.

The passage from the Bedtrick is using an analogy of the Biblical bedtrick story of Rachel and Leah (and Jacob) in association to the approach taken by the designers of medical drugs:

(Roald) Hoffman first likens the strategy of
drug design to the Trojan horse…and then goes on to describe how a drug
fools the disease into thinking that it, the drug, is actually the body on which
the disease wishes to feed….Hoffman and (Shira) Leibowitz then turn to
the metaphor of two bedtrickster sisters, Rachel and Leah, suggesting that the
NK (natural killer) cells might be renamed NL (natural lover) cells. “How
much more appealing to deal with L cells (after Leah) which mimic R cells (Rachel
cells), snuggling up to unsuspecting bacteria. Immunological terror can be turned
into erotic trysts, battles into orgies. As Laban set up his daughter for his
duplicity, so drug designers craft molecules that deceive…”

This passage just seemed to resonate with something that Dale Pendell said. I searched Pharmako/Poeia back and forth to find what might be like calling to like before realizing that what I was thinking of actually came from an interview of Pendell conducted by David Levi Strauss and Peter Lamborn Wilson for Cabinet
Magazine:

DLS: In Poeia, there’s a beautiful passage about “a power greater than the poppy.” And later on, you write, “The first poisons were love philters, potions to ensnare the heart. Other seductions came later: knowledge, the Elixir of Life.” Do you think this is literally true?

DP: Yes, I think so. We’re speculating, but the etymological basis is certainly there. And looking at ancient classical books on magic, so much of it is love magic. And in popular magic, love charms are so often the major thrust. Bury a lock of hair before your door, and she will come to you. I think looking for eternal life was a later development. [laughter]

DLS: Immortality can wait, baby.

DP: Love is really the last socially acceptable form of divine madness. I’mworking on a piece using the Poison Path methodology on love and desire. Looked at as a drug, love is certainly more dangerous than anything else out on the street. It kills more people, and inspires more murder and mayhem, than any
other substance by far.