City of Campbell

Pretentious or not pretentious, that seems to be the question. In the end, I am left feeling that The Fate of the Artist has an affected air at times, but I am also torn between how much of that supposed pretension is intentional, serving the purpose of the work, and how much is to be attributed to Campbell being full of himself. As far as pretension serving the purpose of the work goes, being that this graphic novel focuses on, as stated in the title, the “fate of the artist,” and artists are often seen and depicted as having an air of superiority, the pretentiousness benefits the piece by supporting in tone (however disagreeable that tone may be to the reader) the subject of the work.

As I already mentioned, I am torn between liking and not liking this book, which is why I waited a day to post, I needed more time to stew in it. After completing the book and two days of discussing it in class, I still don’t have a solid opinion about this graphic novel one way or the other; I am hovering between thinking it is great and not liking it at all because this seems to be one of those works where there is not much middle-ground…you either like it or hate it (as far as was revealed in class). However, it is not just a matter of liking or disliking the work, but rather a question of the overall effectiveness of the work. This work appears so disjointed, constantly shifting from one thing to the next with each turn of the page, that it is hard to feel grounded in the story since it is forever shifting, despite the (at times weak) thread of the investigation into the author’s death. In a way this shifting reflects the role of the artist. This elusiveness of what begins as the storyline and then gives way to other, seemingly unrelated elements, mimics the ‘fate’ of artists as people who exist for their art and, as such, are elusive to a certain extent themselves.

One other thing I wanted to mention briefly, to tie in the title of my post, was that I could not look at Campbell’s crayon image of God without thinking of the similar image in City of Glass. This similarity, though probably not intentional or particularly relevant, became comforting because it served as a point of familiarity in a text that was so different from that which we have read so far; so while not really an academic point, I thought it worth mentioning if just to give a reason for the title of the post.