Recentemente mi sono imbattuta nel termine ‘ergodico’ (letteralmente deriva dal greco ergon, che vuol dire “lavoro”, e hodos, ovvero “via/percorso”): ergodica è quella letteratura che richiede al lettore uno sforzo in più, non solo a livello di contenuto, ma anche di forma. Chi si approccia a questo tipo di letteratura vi si deve immergere, deve faticare e sudare, deve capovolgere la propria visione (molto spesso in senso letterale, perché bisogna rivoltare il libro per leggervi tutto quello che c’è scritto). Ecco, Jimmy Corrigan. Il ragazzo più in gamba sulla terra è un lettura di questo tipo.

Jimmy è il classico ragazzo disadattato, un loser, chiuso in se stesso, incapace di esprimere una qualsiasi opinione o anche solo di rispondere alla domande più banali senza incorrere in silenzi imbarazzanti. Ovviamente ha difficoltà relazionali ed è vessato dalle morbose chiamate della madre, che non gli lascia un attimo di respiro. Il distacco tra Jimmy e il resto del mondo è chiaro anche dai disegni di Ware, che nella prima parte del libro offusca quasi sempre le facce degli altri personaggi con cui Jimmy si imbatte.
La sua routine fatta di lavoro e chiamate alla mamma viene spezzata quando riceve una lettera del padre, che lo invita da lui in Michigan per conoscerlo. Jimmy va all’incontro, sognando ad occhi aperti i vari individui che potrebbe trovarsi di fronte (tra cui un supereroe ovviamente: Superman). Non è però preparato ad incontrare un individuo inetto, insicuro, goffo, che non riesce a rimediare alla sua assenza con le parole (e nemmeno con i gesti aggiungerei, vedi il fallito tentativo di comporre un saluto mattutino col bacon, che può funzionare per la figlia adottiva, che ha accudito, ma che fallisce con Jimmy, incapace anche solo di comprenderlo come tentativo di avvicinamento).

Continuando nella lettura delle tavole scopriamo che Jimmy non è stato il primo Corrigan ad essere abbandonato, c’è stato prima il nonno, che dopo aver subito la durezza e la violenza del padre viene poi abbandonato in tenera età alla grande esposizione universale di Chicago del 1893. Il peccato del bisnonno viene quindi tramandato di generazione in generazione, e ogni Corrigan cerca come può di sopravvivervi (chi da vittima e chi da “carnefice”).

Ware riesce a ricamare un bellissimo e organico intreccio intergenerazionale sul rapporto padri/figli: c’è pochissimo di positivo in questi disegni, fatti soprattutto di abbandoni, silenzi, incapacità comunicative ed emotive. Ciò che sembra suggerire è che quello che rimane irrisolto nel passato torna, in un modo o nell’altro, a ripresentarsi nel presente, lasciando strascichi notevoli a chi di colpe non ne ha, ma deve subirne le conseguenze.

Good god this was crushingly sad, and not in the sense of epic tragedy but in its depiction of loneliness, isolation, and social inadequacy. The story flits around and often veers off into quite beautiful and poignant fantasies that seem to be the main character's only means of engaging with the world. Amazing art work.

Warning: Take the quiz in the front back cover of this book. It accurately assesses whether you will enjoy this graphic novel. Ware is preparing you for a not so normal adventure. As with many of this genre, the author is not your average schmoe. He is a thirty-something, virginal, father-less, mother-dominated, insecure, daydreaming social misfit. Pathos pours from every page with a shade of self-pity and suppressed rage. In the story, Jimmy receives a letter from his estranged biological father. He doesn't know the man. The invitation to visit him throws Jimmy's sterile and lonely life into temporary confusion.

The invitation comes on the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday. Jimmy accepts his stranger-father's invitation and heads to small town Michigan from his hometown in Chicago. His father is outgoing and jovial and mostly avoids the elephant in the room. He briefly touches on his leaving Jimmy's mother but mostly treats Jimmy as if their father-son bond is sound and unbroken.

Jimmy's also meets his father's father and also his adoptive half-sister. Through the visit we get a view into Jimmy's heritage, mental state and personality. He is a desperate man. It is rough to see into the soul of Jimmy. It is filled with anxiety and self-doubt. Ware bares all and uses the graphic medium to create a thin transparent barrier for protection.

The style is original. The graphics are mostly comic-book realistic rural scenes reminiscent of Edward Hopper's work. The humans in contrast to the detailed and realistic scenery are cartoonish, almost stick-figure drawings. This anonymity gives the humans the feeling of inanimate and inaccessible objects. Women often lack facial features or head shots, suggesting the artist is too timid to look a woman in the eye. The panels often repeat without alteration as Jimmy searches for words or grapples with his anxiety.

Ware boldly shares his fears with raw intensity. For the reader, it is almost too much to bare. Consider this a well-crafted "feel-bad" graphic novel made by the lonely for the lonely.

This graphic novel is truly poignant. Flipping through the book, you find little superficial evidence to corroborate my statement. Which is precisely why you ought to plunge in and get past your initial impression. If you are looking for artwork à la Sandman or Kabuki, you may wrongfully judge the more simple style of Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. Push forward and don't miss exploring his mind and emotions.

As other readers have mentioned, the pace can be a bit sluggish and due to the subject being so dismal, oftentimes it is difficult to build momentum--which resulted in my taking over 3 months to complete reading it.

I just finished it a few minutes ago and experienced a bit of my own catharsis. While my life does not mirror Jimmy's, there are certainly some parallels, namely the feelings of confusion and loneliness that he has experienced his whole life.

Having dealt with my own demons, examining Jimmy's made me face some of mine in a bolder manner. The Corrigan men have been somewhat of an unfortunate lot, with hurtful and traumatic experiences from previous generations snowballing into equally harrowing childhoods and lives for the descendants. While it is much easier to write and even understand how an uncontrollable past can harm from afar, the truth--once one can grasp it--is that upon comprehending this, one can feel empathy and perhaps forgiveness and move on. I still look on from a distance.

While painful to read, either due to the dullness in certain parts (which so accurately reflects real life because not everything can be an adventure every second of everyday) or the wretchedness of events, once completed, the reader is left with a peek into a man who is simultaneously so delicate yet incredibly strong. So insanely human. Jimmy's story is worthy of being read, if not for anything other than for you to see how similar you are to him. Or to me.

I read Jimmy Corrigan sitting in a Denny's in Florida in 2000, watching the Bush/Gore election returns. I just finished rereading it again today. It's nowhere near as depressing as it was the first time, but then, how could it be?

I remember putting the book down in 2000 when I got to the last page and realized the complexity of the joke that has been pulled on him, the author, and us. He will never be happy. It will never end, and never change. Superman is not going to save him.

This time it was nowhere near as bad. Instead of thinking "He'll never be happy," I thought "Yep, he's still never going to be happy." It was less terrible. Of course, things have changed. We survived Bush. My friend that I went to Florida to visit in 2000 continued his inevitable decline, and inevitably died of an overdose, and has inevitably remained dead since.

Many of the things we worried about came to pass, and we survived.

Jimmy Corrigan is a living character in a way that most characters never dream of. Somewhere, right now, sandwiched between two sheets of cardboard, Jimmy Corrigan is alive, and suffering terribly. The book is a blueprint of his failed, miserable life, the lives that came before, the damp and clinging hope that maybe there will be lives after.

He is trapped. When you read the book you bring him to life, and that is the meanest thing you can do to him. But we are not trapped. This is a book about the 90s. Time has passed. The elder Mister Corrigan is certainly dead by now. Jimmy still hasn't found love. He still calls his mother every day. His journey to personal growth was to find that the journey was too far, that he can never do it.

But we can go visit him.



On the technical side, this book is a formal masterpiece and it's easy to see why it has dominated the visual conversation of the last decade -- this is the book that invents the language of cartooning that we use today. That said, I'm ready to move beyond it and try a new visual language with a bit more zip. But Jimmy Corrigan is a monolith, an era-defining book.

DNF.
Não aguento mais. Li um terço do livro.
Por mais bonitos e originais que sejam os painéis desta novela gráfica (que são, sem dúvida nenhuma!), de cada vez que pego nela fico com uma mini-depressão. A cara do Jimmy é sempre a mesma! Nunca sorri, o pai é mau, as pessoas são más para ele, a vida dele é uma porcaria e ele lá se arrasta de um sítio para outro com aquela cara de esfregona. :((

Det første jeg vil si er at denne tegneserieromanen er trist, veldig trist. Der andre jeg vil si at den er vakker, utrolig vakker. Foruten sine skjønne tegninger er komposisjonen av rutene et kunstværk i seg selv, som til tider kan ligne på ordløs informasjonsgrafikk som setter personene og hendelsene i tid og rom.

I begynnelsen kan historien oppleves rotete. Størrelsen på rutene varierer fra side til side, og historien i seg selv er ikke bare tree parallelle historier vevd inn i hverandre, men drøm, fantasi, og forestilling tar like mye plass som den virkelige verden. Likevel, om man lener seg tilbake og hever tvetydighetstoleransen, blir alt klarere etterhvert.

Rekkefølgen på hvordan man skal lese rutene kan blant annet noen ganger være uklar, men Ware har i de fleste tilfellene lagt inn små piler eller linjer som setter de tilsynelatende rotete sidene inn i et nett lite system. Andre ganger, om det fremdeles skulle være uklart, kan en heller stille seg spørsmplet om rekkefølgen virkelig har noe å si.

Tamatikken derimot er tragisk, svært tragisk. Vi følger det stusselige livet til Jimmy Corrigan, hans tragiske barndom uten far, og bestefaren hans (som også heter Jimmy Corrigan) og hans oppvekst med en voldelig alenefar. Gjennom disse historiene blir følelsen av å ikke strekke til, ensomhet, fedre som som svikter, død og passiviteten alt dette kan medføre - som oftest uttrykt gjennom fantasi- tematisert. Alt dette blir tatt opp uten noen annen konklusjon enn et snev av håp helt til slutt.

Flere steder drar Ware leseren ut av fortellingen, blant annet gjennom satiriske besrivelser av bygninger i en amerkansk småby som storslåtte serverdigheter. Flere steder blir man også oppfordret til å klippe ut sidene i boken for å lage ulike former for papirskulpturer. Allerede på innsiden av omslaget, på bokens "nullte" side, står det instrukser til leseren om hvordan boken bør leses, samt en liksom artikkel publisert i et litterært tidsskrift skrevet av Ware selv (går jeg ut i fra) om tegneseriers plass framover i tid. Gjennom dette løfter Ware historien opp og ut av livet til Jimmy(ene) og de brutte løftene til deres fedre blir til brutte løfter fra det amerikanske samfunnet/drømmen, begge representert gjennom supermann.

Si ya dejé dicho que Watchmen era el Quijote de los comics, sin ninguna duda este es el Ulises de Joyce de las novelas gráficas. Con todo lo bueno y malo que ello conlleva. Visualmente es innovador y una maravilla pero a ratos también un quebradero de cabeza por la dificultad de seguir el relato de los acontecimientos, tanto en fondo como en forma (esa letra minúscula). Hay varias líneas temporales mezcladas sin previo aviso y como dos millones de viñetitas ora reales ora ensoñadas.

Sin embargo el balance es positivo y la historia te encoge el corazón como pocas he visto. Merece mucho la pena el esfuerzo y como toda buena obra de arte es inagotable ya que admite múltiples relecturas. ¡Ánimo y al toro!

This is the first book I recognized how much my mindset and emotions while reading the book affected the reading of a book. The Smartest Kid on Earth is deeply emotional, and the rollercoaster is only as enjoyable as the reader makes it to be. Over the days I read the book, I experienced periods of 'total rationalization' during which this book was nothing short of painful to read. On other, more regular days, when you read the book understanding human faults and irrationalities, the book felt so profound that it shook me, often throwing me into bouts of introspection. This, of course is a very personal tale - perhaps your mindset and reading capability will give you a totally different perspective which is what I found beautiful about this book. I am certain that when I reread it, I will think of each character in a different way, and be able to relate or stay aloof to them depending on my experiences at that point of time.

If a book is able to achieve such real like simulation in a graphic media, would you want to pass the opportunity to read it? Definitely recommend it for the experience, perhaps not for the plot itself.

read for uni (and probably would've appreciated more if i hadn't have to cram it in within one weekend)

Wow, definitely 5 stars, no discount for being a ’mere’ graphic novel. I guess I always thought literary fiction is somehow superior to cartoons. Well, there are exceptions to the rule and I’ve just read one.

It’s a a beautifully told and drawn story of Jimmy Corrigan, his father, grandfather and great-grandfather. The story flows in two narratives - ca 1990 and ca 1890, sometimes also moving into Jimmy’s dreams and streams-of-thought. Excellent, mesmerising artwork and a bitter, weirdly relatable story.

I’m pretty sure this story could not have been told as well in a different medium. So I’ve badly missed graphic novels as an art form and need to check out more (I do enjoy cartoons, but this feels literary) :) Also need to reread Jimmy Corrigan, as I have a feeling this book will improve further on a re-read.

Goddamit. This book was an overwhelming masterpiece. I cried 4 times during this book, a new record for me. Despite the overly emotional reaction, this book isn't just a tear jerker, but a work of art. Dense and beautiful, this book makes you work for the heart breaking ending.

An examination of trauma through history, the background story hurts just as much as the main story arc, if not more. On top of juggling multiple story lines, Chris Ware also handles lots of complex symbols and motifs that gently move through both story lines, keeping things connected and cohesive. Chris Ware takes on A LOT, and makes it seem effortless. Yes, you need to stop, absorb, and constantly make sure you're grasping the story line and the various symbols, but the thinking is part of the process, and was absolutely worth it. This book is a pictoral expression of pain, discomfort, and trauma with a narrative attached. Although the narrative is important, well-constructed, and obviously central, the author's use of symbol and image to convey pain is what kept me so heavily invested.

Quite honestly, I'm seriously considering re-reading this entire book as soon as I finish typing this review. There is so much I've yet to explore, and the sheer volume of what Ware has created is daunting an exciting. I'll probably add on this review with future re-reads.

Go read this book, and DON'T SKIP THE "APOLOGY" ON THE ENDPAPER OF THE BACK. Just reading the apology made me cry a final time.