cyphomandra

In a tenuous connection to actual work I’ve been reading back issues of the journal Children’s Literature, which turned up a useful article on Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War that explains much of why I found it so discomfortingly repellent by viewing it as a book in which there is no moral agency held by any of the characters, rather than as the more conventional interpretation of “rebel versus corrupt system”. Another essay on Lurlene McDaniel’s dying teens series focusing on death/illness as an alternative to adulthood, specifically female adulthood that made me think about the physicalities of illness in fiction. And this, from an essay on Maurice Sendak’s “Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or, there must be more to life”, a quote from Sendak:

“You must not ever be doing the same thing. Must not ever be illustrating exactly what you've written. You must leave a space in the text so the picture can do the work. Then you must come back with the word, and the word does it best and now the picture beats time. . . . [The pictures and text] become so supple, that there's this interchangeableness between them and the words, and they're both telling two stories at the same time.”

which leads me, inevitably, to all the manga I’ve been reading. The more I’m enjoying it the slower I go, and the more I fall into these spaces between text and image, these areas of tension where the story happens.

Hikaru no Go, v1-23. Obata Takeshi, Hotta Yumi. An irresponsible school kid is possessed by the ghost of a former Go instructor, who only wants a chance to play again. I have accepted that it is impossible to describe the concept for this series without making it sound wildly unappealing (or else dramatically re-enacting the entire plot and, really, this entry is going to be way too long anyway) so I’ll just say here that it’s extremely good and I love it, far, far more than I was expecting to after reading the first few chapters. It’s also the first manga to make me cry (and only the second ever comic) and every time I try and check something in it (for example, trying to work out where I got hooked – I think I decided Shindo was not a complete lost cause in chapter 3 of v1, and realised I was completely hooked during the tournament in v3) I end up either reading large chunks or just beaming at (most of – I will never gaze fondly at Ogata, and I’m okay with that) the characters, neither of which has made this entry any easier to finish. It is, basically, a sports manga about a board game, complete with passion and knowledge about the game (ever since I’ve finished I’ve been having urges to re-read Walter Tevis’ The Queen’s Gambit, which is a favourite book of mine with a similar passion for chess, although it is equally about self-destruction and addiction), as well as excellent art, and a large and organic cast of characters that I cannot help describing as well-drawn.

( Lengthy babbling, complete with series-wide spoilers. )