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Saturday, October 28, 2006
Mnemonic Devices
I’ve been reading a lot of Seth recently - Seth being the cartoonist/illustrator/graphic novelist. I just finished It’s A Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken
Then there’s, for example, the scene where Seth - as himself - is discussing life with Chester Brown.
"I’m screwed up - I’m so full of contempt for everyone and everything. I mean, sure, I like lots of things but ... I don’t know. I’ve just become too goddam judgemental! [It’s ok for him to spell it that way because he’s Canadian (?)] "It’s ok to be judgemental Seth." "No, I’m too harsh. My judgements aren’t just opinions, they’re laws. My problem is I either love someone or I hate them." "Isn’t everyone like that?" "No, I don’t think so. I suspect most people have more of a grey area in their feelings ... and it’s not like I don’t meet any nice people - they are nice! It’s just that’s not enough. When I meet someone they have to be something special or that awful judgement comes down on them. All they’ve gotta do is tell me they like crime novels or Marvel comics or something and they’re out."
Yeah, I remember when Daredevil’s girlfriend was talking about that:
Then Daredevil, like, saved her from being run over by a truck, and that’s how she became his girlfriend.
The nostalgia theme in "It’s A Good Life" is just about as thick and direct as you could hope, if you hope for that sort of thing. He’s found a few old gag strips by a mysterious unknown cartoonist, ‘Kalo", and eventually tracks down the man’s daughter in a small Canadian town. Along the way he wonders whether it’s worth it. Again, to Chester Brown: "It’s funny. There’s something in the decay of old things that provokes an evocative sadness for the vanished past. If those buidlings were perfectly preserved it wouldn’t be the same. It’s the difference between a dilapidated old farmhouse and a pristine deco hotel lobby. Somehow that lobby doesn’t convince you of the reality of the beauty of yesterday. I’d hate to think that my belief in the superiority of the past was really just a misplaced over-rationalized aesthetic choice. No, forget I said that. Things are obviously getting worse every year. [Beat.] It occurred to me the other day that maybe I’m wasting my time looking for Kalo. He’s kind of a nobody - a one-hit wonder. I suppose I should be researching just about anybody else - anybody with a significant body of work. That would be the smart thing to do."
If you like that sort of thing, you’ll probably like Seth. (I like the author pic from the D&Q site.)
I’ve recently had a run-in with pseudo-Tintin nostalgia myself.
One last thing. I’m a bit puzzled by the title. The old song is "It’s a great life, if you don’t weaken" MP3 (thanks, Ray!) Great lyrics:
It’s a great life if you don’t weaken,
You’re a great guy if won’t weaken,
If you don’t lose heart,
The hardest part is the first hundred years,
It’s a great life, if you stick to it,
It’s a great life, with a kick to it,
If you come up strong, it won’t be long,
Till the sunshine appears.
If you let him beat you,
Mr. Gloom will knock you cold;
Get him, never let him
Use the well-known strangle-hold.
It’s a great life if you don’t weaken,
You’re a great guy if won’t weaken,
If you do, oh well, what the heck,
It’s still a great life!
And the Faron Young song - different lyrics - "if you don’t weaken/But who wants to be strong?"
Apparently the Tragically Hip song "It’s a good life, if you don’t weaken" is inspired by the Seth book.
The whole thing has been going on for a while, even in gag strips. So it seems to me a bit mysterious that Seth would go and change ‘great’ to ‘good’. It seems very unlike him.
Comments
In fact, my MP3 posting was partly prompted by a discussion thread on Seth’s series, but that context has been obscured by the Comics Journal’s unfortunate habit of entirely wiping out its discussion board without warning. As I remember, though, someone on the thread volunteered (from an interview?) that Seth’s title came from a memory of someone who sang the song from memory (his father?) rather than from a recording or the sheet music, and at least one of those memories must have tended to understate. We’re talking Canadians, after all.
Thanks, Ray. I wondered whether those dead links might not be Seth-related. And when it comes to Canadians: all bets are off, clearly.
Seth’s book is actually an example of pseudo-nostalgia too: Kalo isn’t real. Seth invented him. It was harder than I thought to find documentation of this online, but here’s an interview with Seth (scroll down about halfway for the relevant bit). I once tracked down the New Yorker page with Kalo’s cartoon, which was shown on the back cover of one of the issues of the comic where the story was originally serialized, and found that the actual page displayed a different cartoon (see here for more details.)
Thanks, Adam, and now I’ll tell you something funny. I told Belle and she said: I assumed as much. One of the Kalo cartoons was clearly drawn by Seth. So she deduced on internal grounds. I think it must be in the blood. Her grandfather drew cartoons for the “New Yorker”. I was going to say that the wonder of it is his name was Calloway (Kalo). But actually that’s the other side of the family. His name was Chriswell. Charles Chriswell. We should try to find some of his old strips. Belle isn’t sure but she thinks he did them before WW II. (He came back from the war shellshocked - Pacific Theater. Didn’t have a good war.) I’ve never seem an Chriswell “New Yorker” cartoons. (And no, this is really true. Where would be the sport in lying to you about such a thing?)
"One of the Kalo cartoons was clearly drawn by Seth.”
In fact, the one that supposedly appeared in the New Yorker, iirc. Though I confess that I wasn’t as sharp as Belle: I didn’t notice this until after I’d done my New Yorker search.