Maybe I'm just playing the devil's advocate here . . . maybe . . .

I fear I may have come off as a bit rigid in my suggestion that Lynda Barry is being equivocal by refusing to place 100 Demons squarely in the realm of either non-fiction or fiction; and I was hoping that my reading of its second half would somehow convince me that there's a point to her decided line straddling . . . but I'm still not buying it.

Maybe it's just that 100 Demons follows so closely on the heels of Maus, which I think we can all safely classify as non-fiction, yet so skilfully uses ironic authetication to question the veracity of the stories that it tells. As Hatfield describes it in "Irony and Self Reflexivity in Autobiographical Comics:

"ironic authetication, then, need not boil down to self-regarding playfulness or mere navel gazing equivocation. On the contrary it may represent a passage through skepticism and anxiety - anxiety at times strong enough to threaten the singularity of self image" (151).

Of course Spiegelman's stakes are set higher than Barry's. In tackling the Holocaust he is portraying the unprotrayable. It is of the utmnost necesity that he validate his account by denying that a valid account is possible. Barry on the other hand gives us one panel in the book's introduction implying the falsity of portions of it by asking, "Is it autobiography if parts of it aren't true?" It's too easy and makes me question then, what the purposes of the made up parts are. Are they only in service to the lofty, universalizing statements she is so fond of making? I'm not saying that's the answer, but if she leaves me guessing as to what parts are fictional that's the sort of answer I'm going to come up with.

We all know that tools from the fiction toolbox must come into play when writing nonfiction. Otherwise it probably wouldn't be very interesting to read. But when too many liberties are taken with the facts, it's time to call a spade a spade. 100 Demons gives us no clue as to where on the spectrum it falls, and though I found it equally, entertaining, poignant, and humorous, ultimately it left me frustrated . . . probably just because I'm more rigid than I like to think.