I think the conclusion that Lynda Barry reaches at the end of "Two Questions", that she does not need to know exactly what it is that she is doing or whether or not it is good, is illustrated in "One Hundred Demons". Barry is quite frank about the fact that this book is not one hundred percent true, but she did not let this hinder her creative process. If anything, it helped to make the book easier to follow. Instead of attempting to tell her stories in chronological order, she chose to depict them in a seemingly random order which she chose. The stories sometimes end abruptly and there are many things about her life that she only briefly alludes to, but this lack of cohesion enabled her to tell her stories without the pressure of making huge moral statements or points about why she made the decisions she did. She was able to write this book the way she wanted without questioning "if this is good?" or "does this suck?"
The question of Barry's self-loathing was brought up in class on Thursday, and I must say that I do not think she is as unhappy as other people do. She seems rather satisfied with where she is at this point in her life, and is writing about some of her more difficult experiences with a sense of humor instead of regret. While Barry is aware that she may not have always made the correct decisions, I don't think she would have changed anything. Unlike Alison Bechdel, she is not trying to come to terms with the pivotal events in her life, she is just trying to depict them in a creative way. Perhaps it is her honesty concerning the "autobifictionalography" of her work that allows her to write this way.
I personally think "One Hundred Demons" is an excellent book. I found Barry's art to be equally comical and poignant, and was intrigued by how openly she wrote about her life. And, as opposed to "Fun Home", I never found myself questioning which parts of the book were real and which were fiction.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
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I think the humor of Barry definitely applies to the "autobifictionalagraphy" of this text. Barry is poking fun at so much with this term alone and isn't concerned with the "what is it?" question. It seems, too, Barry's episodic narratives (almost like sitcom episodes) show her writing style of "humor instead of regret" and her ability to write without "pressure" quite clearly. But it's in this laid-back style that Barry does seem to hit on a consistently positive, if not uplifting, tone to these episodes. And if this positive tone is how her writing naturally comes out, then Barry must be satisfied with herself (in many respects) and lack the self-loathing that critics fish for in One Hundred Demons.
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