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Flasshe - 2004-11-29 14:07:59
What's wrong with sentimentalizing old comic books? I think it's a nice trend.
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Paula - 2004-11-29 14:16:34
I'm just mad because by the time I come out with my gruondbreaking treatise on Archie Comics, the trend will be over.
I dunno, there's nothing wrong with it, but publishing trends always make me nervous. Like ever since that book about tulips, there are all these books about one object that changed the world--salt, cod, the stapler, etc.
I'm sure all of these books are fine and well-researched in and of themselves, but it depresses me on some pre-verbal level that publishers think that people only want to read about the same types of things over and over.
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Tom Ronca - 2004-11-29 16:32:58
I came to the comment page w/ the idea of asking the same question that Flasshe did, so I'll just elaborate. While 'trends' are always to be regarded w/ caution, nonetheless it's about time that the funny books were given their due, especially now that they're in their waning days (I don't think they'll be around more than another generation or so). Besides if they're regarded w/ some amount of respect now, hopefully whatever replaces them (Graphic novels or some such) will be all the richer because of it.
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Baby Party - 2004-11-29 17:05:02
The comic book thing in Lethem and Chabon doesn't sound to me like a publishing trend so much as a generation of young male writers who feel passionately about comics attaining a certain age and literary influence. Publishers do like a bandwagon, though. Most books make very little money for anyone, and they love to have their hands held. And hey, most people do like to read the same things over and over again. Though cod and staplers have little in comon...we called those "commodity" books when I worked in publishing. They ofter were excerpted in the New Yorker, and they also get used in college courses, both very appealing prospects to a publisher. And Paula, what about the yoga book trend? Or the dog book trend?
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Paula - 2004-11-29 17:08:48
I'm totally with ya there, TR. You're talking to a lass who worked in three different comic book stores at the same time (well, not exactly the same time) so I could get a discount on "my titles."
I just bristle at the fact of its being a phenomenon alla sudden. And although Jonathan Franzen or Micahel Chabon can write about it with depth and humor and humility, I don't trust other, lesser writers who will inevitably follow in their wake and just make a big hairy important deal out of it.
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2fs - 2004-11-29 19:01:25
I don't trust other, lesser writers who will inevitably follow in their wake and just make a big hairy important deal out of it.
Well, yeah - but isn't that true of, uh, anything? This "novel" craze, for instance...seems like a lot of folks are just writing bad ones cuz they're popular, you know? I think people have always liked "more of the same": we don't hear of them now, but 2000 years ago there were probably a whole mess of imitators going, hey, I got nailed to a cross too!
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Paula - 2004-11-30 00:05:51
Well, yeah - but isn't that true of, uh, anything?
I don't think my point has been made clearly, and I blame myself. Let me try again.
Big trends can be disturbing because they are just a li'l reminder of a sort of slow-motion mob mentality. And for the most part, I'm used to it and don't think about it.
However, some little trends are insidious, and I find them particularly annoying. I don't know why exactly. This is one of them. It strikes me as a little precious...by the time the 20th sentimental essay about Marvel Comics is published in The New Yorker, I'm just thinking maybe the subject wasn't worth so much attention.
Or another example: the first essay in 1985 calling Madonna a feminist icon and genius may have been quirkily funny and interesting, but by the time the idea caught on, it was officially even more annoying than the artist herself.
The first book about golf being a Zen sport was cool, but the 30th one makes me wonder if the metaphor isn't being pushed to its limit.
Does that make more sense?
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2fs - 2004-12-01 23:03:26
Yes. I guess it's just, for me, I try to ignore the zeitgeist if paying attention to it gets irritating.
(I suppose it's just possible that for a second, you believed me about ignoring things that irritate me, right?)
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Paula - 2004-12-10 18:38:06
I was busy ignoring you, what did you say?
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