Self-Indulgence and Autobiography

The dislike of Blankets in class on Monday about how self-involved Craig is certainly true, and I would understand why one wouldn’t like it. I, however, did in fact like the book. And this issue—that sounds a little too serious—of Craig being too self-involved in the text, too hard on female characters, and so forth. I know it sounds callous but I do think characters exist in order to advance the plot of the main character—oh, I guess that doesn’t sound too bad. And this is something I truly believe, which is that even when the story contains characters not so self-involved that the writer has spread his personality out through many characters. With Blankets, and because it is an attempt to write an autobiography, this process isn’t filtered through the other characters—sort of making it end up being The Catcher in the Rye on steroids.

For me this isn’t too bad though. I’m not the biggest Catcher in the Rye fans, but it was a book I enjoyed the first time I read. Ever other time I’ve read it I have been fairly annoyed by it, and that’s how I imagine Blankets would be.

What I would like to convey here is that the autobiographical form, more than fictional, lends itself to this over-indulgent storytelling.

It's The Sixth Sense All Over Again! Spoiler Alert

Last week on Friday, I was sitting outside of a class before it began. I had Blankets sitting next to me. Looking up I met this kid’s gaze, and nonchalantly says “Blankets”. Now, I’m fairly reticent and just sort of said “yeah, I’m reading it for a class. It’s pretty good.” Other Kid: “Sad ending though, when they break up, and hangs the phone up on her.” Me: “Yeah… I’ve only read half of it.” Me thinking: See that gigantic bookmark in the middle of the book. Just because I’m carrying it around doesn’t mean I’ve finished it. This is why I keep my head buried in a book all the time, even when I’m not actually reading it.

This is the Sixth Sense all over again. My brother’s girlfriend walked into our living room, and says, “hey we just saw The Sixth Sense.” Me: “Oh, I want to go see that. I hear it’s…” Interrupting brother’s girlfriend: “I Can’t believe he was dead the WHOLE TIME!”

Thoughts on the Bullies

Something about the bullies that was pointed out last week about the bullies was how generic they were. And though I think it is true that the bullies are indeed that archetype of the bully which, if not seen in the hallways of elementary or high school, have certainly been represented on TV or film for the last thirty or forty years—my favorite being the ones in Back to the Future WHAT YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT MCFLY!! A couple of thoughts I was having about the bullies was that the way they are presented which is as a stereotype, is that it is both true that they say the things quite a lot, are not the most clever bunch, and therefore portraying them as such serves as both accurate and a way to ridicule them.

Limits on Reader

So, one of the things I’ve thought about a little over the course of now having read a few graphic novels—which by the way sounds a little too professional for my taste, but then I’d rather be called a sportswriter than a journalist—is how does the art and imagery limit or expand the way I perceive and enjoy the story. One of the major reasons that I love literature, and am therefore majoring in English is the fact that my mind gets to play around with and create the landscape of the setting, the accent of the character’s voice, and layer the story with what in my imagination becomes the meaning, and is the thrill and enjoyment of the story—my imagination is put to work and the interaction between the words and me blend together. But it is my imagination which must produce the images. With a graphic placed in front of my face it seems to almost limit the amount of work the reader has to do.
However, I have not found this to be the case with Blankets or any of the other novels. And this is due to the fact that the storytelling itself is so compelling, and I get so invested in it that my mind doe get transported and does go into those places which any other story would go.

Hello All

One of the reasons that it has taken me so long to get into graphic novels is that I have dwelled so long on the nature of abstraction, what McCloud refers to as invisible ideas, represented by words. For the longest time I didn’t take the form seriously. However, I am one who rarely takes himself too seriously, and it seemed peculiar to my girlfriend that I could quote entire episodes of the Simpsons and yet hadn’t ever opened up a graphic novel. So, she lent me Watchmen to decompress with after reading a whole lot of Puritan lit. last semester, and oh my god…