The more I read and think about graphic novels, the more I feel like they can't really be successful equated with "word" novels at all. I used to think that, depending on a given story, either or graphic novel or a "word" novel would be 'better' at expressing the ideas and the action. I realize now I was wrong. We can talk about what they achieve relative to one another, and how they might each tell the same story in disparate ways, but in the end, rather than one being more successful than the other depending on the goals of the story, they are simply differently expressive-- they offer different advantages and techniques in the novel's common pursuit of expression and evocation.
I think part of why City of Glass makes such an awesome graphic novel is the fact that perspective in general is a huge part of the story. From one perspective, an atom is a world in and of itself, while from another, it an infinitesimal part of a larger whole. In the same sense, a person's role in the world, in a city, in a story, seems dramatically different depending upon the perspective from which you view it.
The story of City of Glass is one of Quinn attempting to re-assimilate in a world and city from which he has become removed, alienated by grief. In inhabiting the persona of "Paul Auster", he examines and reexamines life from various perspective, and, ironically, becomes more fully himself. Through hearing the stories of older and younger Peter Stillmans, he travels into and out different perspective, seeing the world from the small and large perspectives, the literal and the absurd, the comic and tragic. Slowing, the perspectives themselves begin to overlap and accommodate one another-- they become part of a whole reality.
The brilliance of the graphic novel is how clearly it illustrates each of these perspectives, the whole in (like the fingerprint) and the far away (the maze of city streets that it becomes) and then builds a language using those perspectives such that reader can come to assimilate the various perspectives for him or herself, just as Quinn in learning to do.
For example, when, on page eighty-five, the image of the fingerprint and the maze flash up, at this point we know what they represent, we understand that they are meant to convey the limitlessness of Quinn's search, and also the specificity of his experience. It is this remarkable visual language that makes the graphic novel differently expressive than the book.
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2 comments:
I agree, and that was one of the things that stuck out the most to me in Karasik's interview was his claim that "the adaptation should be valid in its own right." This book more than any other we've read so far brought home for me the idea of graphic novels (sorry, comics) as a MEDIUM rather than genre.
I really like your idea that graphic novels coul dbe considered a medium rather than a genre. According to the dictionary a medium can be defined as: "an intervening agency, means, or instrument by which something is conveyed or accomplished" (taken from dictionary.com). The definition reminded me of Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics." The definiton led me to think about McCloud's belief that we take just as much of an active part in the graphic novel as the comic or his/hers characters. In other words, the graphic novel gives us the parts, we actively make it a whole.
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