Scrap-Book: (n) A blank book in which pictures, newspaper cuttings, and the like are pasted for preservation (taken from the OED Online).
I have to admit I fell in love with this book immediately after flipping throughout. The entire layout reminded me of a young girl's scrap-book. I'm reminded of being a young girl and collecting little odds and ends that meant something to me at a particular moment and time. Many of which I still have and often wonder why I even kept. This is one of the main reasons I was drawn to this book. I feel like Lynda Barry's "autobifictionalography" is a collection of these memories from her childhood.
Each chapter begins with a collage of sorts, similar to a messy scrap-book. We see this style immediately in the "Table of Contents." On the first page of this two page spread is the publication information. The main publication information appears to be a wrinkled, torn piece of paper stolen out of an old dewey decimal system pre computers. The other information on the page looks to be taken from various pieces of paper (handwritten or typed) as if they were collected over time and pasted onto the first page. The same goes for the chapter list on the second page. The other graffitti on this page seems to be made from a young girls hand. The scribbles, the awkward script, the check this box game, and the funny looking animal drawings all attest to a young girl decorating her scrap-book. Moreover, there are what appear to be different colored pieces of paper, foil, and even fabric scattered throughout both pages as if a little girl found these lying around her house. We also see the picture (a very important aspect of the scrap-book) of a presumably teenage Lynda leaning against a building. The picture indicates that this will be Lynda's scrap-book, a collection of her memories.
This scrap-bookesque style perseveres throughout "One Hundred Demons." The scrap-book feel begins every chapter. Furtheremore, each chapter can be taken as a picture, a snapshot, or a time in the past complete with a seemingly hand-written caption. This style added a much more personal touch to the graphic "autobifictionalography" novel. In a text such as this, where it is difficult to seperate fact and fiction, the personalized scrap-book style allows for the reader to forget that everything is not true as it seems to a "preservation" of Lynda's memories.
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3 comments:
I also like how certain items keep appearing randomly in future chapters of the scrapbook, as if they are continually floating in and out of the author's conciousness, amid the main scrapbook theme of the moment (examples: the little "sensitive" nose stamp, the photo of her leaning against the wall, and the two blue birds stamp).
I agree with you that the scrapbook quality tends towards an activity a young girl would participate in and (as I mentioned in my post) this quality of the work, for me at least, forced attention onto Barry's feelings and conflicts with "girlness" in the text.
I think that Ben makes a great point about the repeating images. I wondered about their relevance and relative importance to the text. There doesn't seem to be any explanation in any of the stories, but I'm sure there is symbolic meaning in each of them--the sensitive nose, her realization of her family's "otherness," the two birds, her constant search for a "partner" (whether friend or boyfriend).
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