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This 32-page Xeric Grant winner is made up of three stories:
 | "My Favorite Roadshow" (the centerpiece of the book at 26 pages) |
| The Artist at Sixty" (a 5-page short) |
| Beat the System" (a filler page on how to steal from big companies) |
The main story is a tale about a
struggling wannabe stand-up comedian and the night he met Bob Hope.
Well, sort of; while the first person narration is relating the
encounter, the art, combined with a less starry-eyed perspective,
shows the real story. Turns out Tim is a waiter, and it's more
likely that Mr. Hope is laughing at how clumsily he did his job.
This refusal to face reality is a continuing theme of the
story. What Tim calls getting gigs, we see as performing at amateur
nights; he thinks he's entertaining, we wonder how boring he is; he
"studies the masters" while we see that he's ripping off those much
more talented than he'll ever be.
The story raises a good
question; dedication to your chosen field is important, but when is
it smarter to just give up? How many years does one say, "Sooner or
later I'll get discovered. It's just a matter of time?" Tim's love
for something he's so obviously unqualified for blinds him to the
expectations of normal human behavior. Delusion is comforting, but
to the outside observer, it's pathetic.
When he lists his
comedy strategies, we see that he's only approached the most basic
items of his craft, and yet he clings to them as if ... if he could
only get the rules just right, he'd be a success, not realizing that
he needs heart and creativity and something special as well.
(As a reviewer, I could really understand this type of
character; I'm too often faced with how to gently tell aspiring
artists that persistence isn't enough, that it doesn't matter how
hard they've tried with their comic, it's just not that good.)
Although I at first thought otherwise, this story turned out
to be a good choice for the medium, since the contrast between the
optimistic monologue of the captions and the reality of the art is
obvious but not glaring. I particularly noticed the scene where his
boss takes him to task for deserting his assigned section to go wait
on Bob Hope; good dialogue reveals just how bad a screw-up he is,
especially when he mentally shakes off the truth to descend back
into his fantasy. The only negative is that the balloons overwhelm
the art to a degree, so the page looks a little crowded.
The
protagonist's glasses make him a blank slate to us, since his eyes
aren't revealed, which ties into the contrast between his emotions
and reality. We're forced to watch him as an observer instead of
identifying with him, allowing us to understand what's really going
on.
The figure work is good enough to support the needs of
the story, but a bit vague/flattened at times; it doesn't always
look fully three-dimensional. The line weight also varies a good
deal.
The backup story deals with the same theme in a
different way. An old man in ragged clothes is trying to sketch at a
McDonald's, but when parents start complaining, he's thrown out for
loitering. In this short piece, I see the artist's fear of the
future (the old man is penniless and seen as insane for still
following his art) combine with an odd wish fulfillment (since the
man is still creating and still feisty).
At almost $4, the
book is a bit pricey, but the heavy cardstock cover and thick white
matte paper show where the money went. There's no fear of damage
while rereading this, and I was surprised at how much more I
discovered when I did.
--Johanna
Draper Carlson
September 20, 2000
Posted at: 10:39 AM
EDT