One of my favorite graphic novels is Fun Home, Alison Bechdel working out her complicated relationship with her late father; there are complex literary references, this interplay with how these things connect to her life (and I tried getting through listening to the cast recording of the Broadway musical adaptation, but just too much was lost in the translation,) and I think that most of life can be put in terms of these frameworks, every moment a puzzle piece fitting more than one place, filling more than one role, a dew drop on more than one strand of spider web.
(One of my other favorite graphic novels is Neil Gaiman's Mr Punch, similarly autobiographical and frameworked into subtle cultural allusions.)
Right now, in my life (well, not my life, but the lives of the projects going on,) the literary framework is some cross between The Stranger, by Albert Camus, and The Outsider, the HP Lovecraft story with the twist ending I wouldn't dare spoil. L'Etranger's title is translated, outside of the States, as The Outsider. Yeah. That's the kind of, coincidence/interplay, I'm talking about, although it's not really playing out in my own life so to speak. But, those, and a host of existentialist philosophies, all weaving together and tightening the narrative that I'm writing (which I'd been thinking lately I'd never get to work, its initial conception being so juvenile.) That's good. Another project ripening.
(Alright, I'm not sure how entirely autobiographical Mr Punch is, but I'm led to believe it's at least semi-autobiographical.)
Maus, that's the one I couldn't think of! Also, also non-fiction. It's been a while. (There's this awesome book-with-CD ROM, Meta Maus it's called, and it's jammed with all sorts of archival stuff, alongside the original two volumes.) Pulitzer is fine and good, but I believe Art Spiegelman should get a Nobel prize in literature for his contributions to the form. None of my other favorites would exist without Maus...
Ripening, anyway, but no fruit ever falls from my tree under its own weight. It's always, the winds of deadlines, that kind of thing, that forces those morsels dislodged. And these are all personal projects; there are no deadlines. Hm.
Shatter was the first comic book ever written, arted, and published entirely digitally (am I going on a mind map of comic books now, it looks like I am, though that hadn't been my intent; hold on--) and for some reason the first issue began auto-playing as a slideshow sort of deal on one of our computers as part of its boot-up back in the 90s. Freaked me out if I read too much into it; I only realized what it must have been through some hefty research and a background reference to its existence as part of Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. It remains pretty obscure; I'm mentioning this now, though, because there was a physical copy of like issue 6 in the old comics section of the magazine rack at the gas station, as we traveled home back from college two weeks ago...!
(Thought it bore bringing up.)
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