Astoundingly clever and emotionally affecting. Ware's multigenerational story is intimate, and achingly plausible - especially in its dealings with race.

The presentation is mind-boggling - our story moves nonlinearly, and often dips into the surreal to illuminate the inner life of our protagonist. All of the choices feel justified - the result is an authorial tone that hovers in a peculiar, bittersweet place between tender affection and withering scorn towards its characters. I have reasons to hug and spit on every one of these people.

9/10

Reading this for the second time, nearly 5 years after the first, it is no less great for all the work that i've read between. Complex and interwound, a multi-generational story of loss, life and finding one's way. Ware is obviously one of the masters of the graphic novel form and this is probably his most exceptional work.

Chris Ware, Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (Pantheon, 2003)

I don't think it would be overreaching to say that, even if it is not, Charis Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth has been touted as the single book that ignited the renaissance of popularity (and social acceptability) in graphic novels in America; it was almost certainly the first to be widely discussed in entertainment magazines and on National Public Radio. It took me a while to get round to it, and I'm thankful for that; I am sure that had I started reading graphic novels again with this, instead of in the places I did, I would not have continued on (and discovered books like Charles Burns' Black Hole and Jeff Smith's Bone, which actually deserve all the praise-- and more-- heaped upon Jimmy Corrigan).

This is the first graphic novel that's ever taken me more than two weeks to read. Why? Because every time I put it down, I felt no desire to pick it up again; I forced my way through the last two hundred pages. Even now that I've embraced the fifty-page rule, I can't bring myself to abandon a graphic novel; it seems like cheating. That said, I've never even come close to abandoning one before. I was treading the line the entire time I read this one.

There is a plot: the life of four Jimmy Corrigans, from great-grandfather on down. None of them is in any way sympathetic. And while the episodic, dragging nature of the novel was probably not helped by the fact that it did start its life as a comic strip, there have been many graphic novels that began as serial work that have done it much, much better. (The aforementioned Bone is one obvious example, but many others are out there.)

I'm sorry, I guess I'm one of those who just didn't get it. *

This book was everything I had expected it to be: thought-provoking, funny, clever, beautiful, heartfelt. At first I was afraid I was going to find it difficult because of its non-linear structures and abundant information, but I gradually entered its flow. The story is magnificent and the art is simply astonishing. I had known Ware for his drawings, in a New Yorker magazine a friend of mine had brought me from a trip to the US. Since then I had always wanted to buy this, his masterpiece, which I finally did in Paris' famous bookstore "Shakespeare and Company". If you have the chance, you won't regret it.

I can't with this book anymore. I picked it up cause it was on Amazon's 100 Books to Read in Your Lifetime. I hated it so hard. It's depressing and confusing and even more depressing. I couldn't find any redeeming qualities for this book. It also confused me like crazy, I liked the "The Story So Far" part because then I actually had a clue as to what was going on. It jumped around so much between present, Jimmy's "daydreams", the past and who knows what else that I couldn't keep track. No thanks. Finally gave up on it.

A story of trauma, loneliness, abandonment and the slightest acts of hope.
I have never seen the graphic novel medium used _so visually_
There are many sparsely worded sections, with intensely emotive drawings laying bare all of Jimmy's visceral fears.

If this were made into a 7 hour movie I would fully watch it. A lot of reviews have called it the greatest graphic novel ever and compared it to real life Great Literature™️ like Ulysses and Dostoevsky books and I really truly get it. It’s so dense and layered and so so innovative in the way it presents a four-generation-spanning story about fathers and sons and trying to break cycles of abuse. It’s maybe one of the most consistently bleak books I’ve ever read, and it broke my heart many many times and made me wish Chris Ware had injected it with at least a little more levity/joy, but I appreciate that it ends on a(n arguably) hopeful note. Not something I could see everyone enjoying because it can be monotonous in just how depressing everything is, but it’s a capital-G great book that gave me a lot to think about and I’m really grateful I read it.

The story is so-so, the art work better. Perhaps not for me, but I'm sure others will appreciate it more.

Imagine life eclipsed by imagination. The bloodiest, the most beautiful, the most vulnerable imaginings, and the disintegration of wishes as we make them. This is how life unfolds in the mind of Jimmy Corrigan, the desolate main character in Chris Ware’s graphic novel. Jimmy speaks full sentences—only when he imagines. In his mind he has courage, kills people, commits suicide, has sex, and is “the smartest kid on earth.” In his actual life, Jimmy is a spineless, aging man, with no friends and no romantic ties. It is only with some courage and equal trepidation that a reader might see his/herself in Jimmy. With a little of both, I found that I could. And I did. It’s the language of this piece that I identify with most. This book assembles history, memory, and make-believe in such a poignant way. It speaks a language that reflects how we build the narrative of our own lives. A single moment in the novel can span across several illustrated panels that call the reader to absorb information—to taste and savor the moment—and hold off on situating it within the chronology of the story, at least not immediately. Jimmy’s imagination works alongside the narrative to shock and dissemble it. You never know what to expect. His imagination is so easily pierced, so fragile, that it bleeds. The image I see of this character, both figuratively and physically, is one of a big walking wound. Even in the story, Jimmy walks around bandaged most of the time.

As you may expect, this story is depressing. It’s not about plot or character development—these features of the narrative endure little change. Early on, we learn that Jimmy is abandoned by his father. A few pages in, we see Jimmy as an older, insecure, socially inept man. The story’s life carries on despairingly. Even after Jimmy gets a letter from his absent father inviting him to come visit, the father and son’s time together suffers from Jimmy’s volatile mind. Old memories, family history, and violent make-believe interrupt what could have been new development in the relationship between father and son. Time shifts between the past and present, with repeated returns to 1893 and the Chicago World’s Fair, the year Jimmy’s grandfather was also abandoned by his own father. We see here a pattern of father abandoning son. Jimmy remains lonely, unwanted, disturbed. He does not grow out of the mold. This instructs the reader not to wait for ‘what happens next’ but rather to give an eye to how moments flower. A single page may rest on capturing a memory, a sound, a place, even a bird, from different points-of-view. The sequence may be interrupted suddenly by a memory, by a violent wish. A new image may evoke a previous one, asking the reader to retrace his/her steps or to borrow and bring into play clips from an earlier scene. What’s special about the performance of this novel is that it uncannily reflects how we make into a story our own lives. It quietly captures how we edit our life time, moment by moment, on the fly, calling on memories, fears, visions, prophesies, to help us assimilate the conditions of our present world. This novel is visually and grammatically stunning. Yes, the story is deeply sad, but the language is arresting and beautiful.

This is probably a 6 star book. It definitely needs a re-read, re-view and then a re-review. Even then it will still be a half-baked thing.Melancholic, funny and at points weird(?). So re-read and re-read and then probably I can rate the book. The 4 stars are for me, the reader, someone who needs to learn to step into Ware's shoes and look at Corrigan through his eyes.

Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth war ein kleines Abenteuer. Startete vielversprechend, dann zuerst sehr verwirrend über einen spannenden Mittelteil bis zum bisschen unbefriedigten und doch total passenden Ende. Chris Ware hat da schon etwas Tolles geschaffen!