Books: City of Glass

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City of Glass
By Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli
1994





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City of Glass started life as a novel (non-graphic) by author Paul Auster before it was chosen as a candidate for an interesting experiment. Basically - in an attempt to show the world that comics can do "high art" Art Spiegelman (creator of Maus) - wanted to create a comic adaptation of a "proper" highbrow book - City of Glass: The Graphic Novel is the result. With duties split equally between two artists - Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli - this is a book that wants to probe big, meaningful questions like language, representation and authorship. I should admit now that I haven't read the novel that it is based on - and after reading the comic I'm in no hurry to start. No doubt both books compliment each other in nice ways - (there's a long speech in the comic that taken by itself seems to be strange just for the sake of it - that I guess is probably referring to things in the novel) - but taken by itself the comic is a little well... dry. There's lots of referring to existential questions that always seem to blight the lives of everyday new yorkers but not much in the way of human interest, humour, entertainment or excitement (maybe I'm just not in the target demographic). If you want to try something that is super-serious and highly refined then this will be what you're looking for - it was apparently selected as one of the Top 100 English-Language Comics of the Century - but for anyone else then I would point you in the direction of Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp which is more inventive, more human and more fun.

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Further reading: Asterios Polyp, It's a Good Life if You Don't Weaken, Couch Fiction, Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book Stories.

All comments welcome.