bookblogging
Jun. 7th, 2008 07:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceruseeGraphic novels:
Various: Graphic Classics: Jack London
(I don't know if these adaptations are sub-par or if I just don't like Jack London that much, but I'm finding these stories unsatisfactory, especially the endings. It feels like the stories just...stop.
I thought I liked Jack London, but maybe I don't any more, because I've gotten muchpickier more sophisticated as a reader since I was a kid.
Or maybe the adaptations are just bad).
Fies, Brian: Mom's Cancer
(can a work be heartbreaking when the ending is as happy as a story about enduring cancer can be? I read most of this with tears standing in my eyes. I'm trying to figure out how to describe it without sounding like an idiot, and I guess the thing is--I recognize so much of this.
I had quite a lot written out about the sense of recognition, but it turned out too personal. Sorry.
Anyway. This deserves its Eisner. How heartbreaking this is, and--I'm glad for Fies and his mother and sisters that they found whatever pleasures and peace they did while his mother was alive).
Manga:
Matsumoto Taiyo: Black and White aka Tenkkonkincreet vols. 1-3/all
(The library had the old flipped volumes, so that's what I read. Flipped, unflipped, what the shit, I don't care! That's something artists care about because they can see the flaws in their own work when it's flipped. The rest of us don't care and we generally do not notice--but it's cheaper not to flip, so please let us pretend this about artistic integrity, not money.* Because when we talk about "experiencing the manga the way the artist intended it," we conveniently forget that the artist, assuming that the artist is also the author (and if not...fuck the author!), also expected intended the reader not only to speak and read Japanese, but also to be Japanese with a shared cultural experience and centuries of mutual history, and that whether or not you flip the art, translation from one language to another, no matter how tone-deaf and literal, cannot replicate the experience of reading the text in the original language! It never can! That's what translation means! Translation isn't photocopying! Compromise is inherent to the concept! Suck it up.
*The Blade of the Immortal-style compromise of cutting up and rearranging panels to read in a different direction so as not to tick off the manga-ka doesn't make me want to growl or bite things because every time I've seen it discussed, the publisher or translator has acknowledged the need for compromise in translation. Really, I'm easy. I feel the same way about Tezuka works being flipped because Tezuka knew I normally read from left to right. I'm flexible! Just don't lie to me or condescend to me about why. There is no right way to eat a Reese's, and there is no right way to read manga.
Ahem. I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. There was more plot than I expected. There wasn't much plot, but I'd been led to believe there would be none, and some is infinitely more than zero).
Various: Graphic Classics: Jack London
(I don't know if these adaptations are sub-par or if I just don't like Jack London that much, but I'm finding these stories unsatisfactory, especially the endings. It feels like the stories just...stop.
I thought I liked Jack London, but maybe I don't any more, because I've gotten much
Or maybe the adaptations are just bad).
Fies, Brian: Mom's Cancer
(can a work be heartbreaking when the ending is as happy as a story about enduring cancer can be? I read most of this with tears standing in my eyes. I'm trying to figure out how to describe it without sounding like an idiot, and I guess the thing is--I recognize so much of this.
I had quite a lot written out about the sense of recognition, but it turned out too personal. Sorry.
Anyway. This deserves its Eisner. How heartbreaking this is, and--I'm glad for Fies and his mother and sisters that they found whatever pleasures and peace they did while his mother was alive).
Manga:
Matsumoto Taiyo: Black and White aka Tenkkonkincreet vols. 1-3/all
(The library had the old flipped volumes, so that's what I read. Flipped, unflipped, what the shit, I don't care! That's something artists care about because they can see the flaws in their own work when it's flipped. The rest of us don't care and we generally do not notice--but it's cheaper not to flip, so please let us pretend this about artistic integrity, not money.* Because when we talk about "experiencing the manga the way the artist intended it," we conveniently forget that the artist, assuming that the artist is also the author (and if not...fuck the author!), also expected intended the reader not only to speak and read Japanese, but also to be Japanese with a shared cultural experience and centuries of mutual history, and that whether or not you flip the art, translation from one language to another, no matter how tone-deaf and literal, cannot replicate the experience of reading the text in the original language! It never can! That's what translation means! Translation isn't photocopying! Compromise is inherent to the concept! Suck it up.
*The Blade of the Immortal-style compromise of cutting up and rearranging panels to read in a different direction so as not to tick off the manga-ka doesn't make me want to growl or bite things because every time I've seen it discussed, the publisher or translator has acknowledged the need for compromise in translation. Really, I'm easy. I feel the same way about Tezuka works being flipped because Tezuka knew I normally read from left to right. I'm flexible! Just don't lie to me or condescend to me about why. There is no right way to eat a Reese's, and there is no right way to read manga.
Ahem. I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. There was more plot than I expected. There wasn't much plot, but I'd been led to believe there would be none, and some is infinitely more than zero).