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Monday, August 14, 2006
Monologues for the Coming Plague
Before I even read this read this book I felt bewildered by it. The cover and interior selections I’d read in Fantagraphics’s catalog featured Anders Nilsen’s simple doodles of figures that looked like something a bored student would scribble away in his/her notebook. Others I knew scoffed at the title when they saw the same images. It was when I started reading Nilsen’s contributions to Mome and I saw that Tom Spurgeon enjoyed the book that I became curious about reading it for myself. I’m sure there are still plenty of people who would look at this book with some skepticism but to quote Spurgeon “it's hard to believe that in 2006 people get caught up in thinking that all art has to be of a certain type to be effective.”
Reading Monolouges for the first time felt both stimulating and frustrating. The back cover informs us that amongst “items included in this kit” there are “automatic writing” and “stream of consciousness image generations.” When I was reading the early chapter “semiotics” I didn’t know if Nilsen’s experiments were going to payoff. There certainly seemed to be interesting ideas going on. I was intrigued by the first chapter where an act of bird feeding turned into a comment on the twisted dynamics in many modern relationships (there’s a reveal near the end that’s perfect). But soon I worried that Nilsen would provide plenty of absurdity but with no reason to consider or to absorb it.
Fortunately about half-way through it (Monolouges is a quick read) the chapter entitled “the wilderness” makes things a lot more interesting. One of Nilen’s simplest creations, the man with a head of pen scratches (whose name is in fact a flurry of scratches), gives a monologue from the point of view of a god-like creature that offers real existential cynicism. It’s not from someone who is living in an absurd world but from someone who is partly responsible for it, which is both more chilling and funnier. Here Nilsen’s art choices reveal themselves to be deliberate and successful. The man with a head of pen scratches has his opposite in the other person on the book’s cover, the man with a simple face. The former is someone who is so powerful and knowledgeable he can barely register. Whereas the other man is a naïve earthbound creature who harbors earthly concerns like employment oppurtunities and is willing to listen to all of his heavenly pal’s advice. He has a face that so basic he is everyman. Nilsen’s choices work as he sustains them throughout the book. The only real change happens as he builds on them or rather further deconstructs them. The man with a simple face gives way to the man with no face and a man whose body is a complete blank. The last one appropriately enough gives a monologue on committing himself to mediocrity in what is of the best chapters of the book.
The book balances this dark outlook on humanity with dry wit. A lot of this is thanks to the dead simple pacing, really so primitive it’s immediately recognizable. For most of the book Nilsen has every page be used for one image in a continuing narrative. Ever page is a panel and soon chapters of the book feel like giant comic strips. It makes the stories feel both big but it also creates a rhythm so straight the sensation is like taking a steady walk through the stories. If the pace of the narratives resemble a comfortable stroll the text becomes a conversation spoken in hushed “library voices.” One of the strengths of Nislen’s “doodling” is that the speech bubbles and the drawn characters have the same amount of durability to them, there’s absolutely no contrast. It makes the long speeches and ponderings that these characters make inviting when they could be tedious.
One of the things to enjoy about Monologues is seeing how it could go so wrong but doesn’t. Nislen’s commitment to spontaneity is potent enough so he can work out many ideas at once. As challenging as it can be the book leaves readers with something worth thinking about, whether it be the mechanism of the comics medium or how an individual reacts to an out-of-control society. Everything looks simple at the start but Monolouges is one of the most complicated and engrossing books I’ve read in a while. There are not many types of art like this being used to make comics but this is the type of art that is very effective.
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