The graphic novel has entered literary awards. Is this (finally) the watershed moment?
Vindication for doodlers everywhere? It was amusing but nonetheless heartening to see Dotter of her Father's Eyes (great title) win the biography award in the Costa book awards (hereby dubbed forevermore by me as the Costas). Amusing because two decades earlier across the Atlantic, the Pulitzer Prize winning Maus by American Art Spiegelman was reckoned to be the 'serious' literary breakthrough that many who know a bit about the graphic novel with arguably a much more powerful subject (guess) than this week's winner.
This honour may go to a magical-looking graphic novel that intertwines and meditates upon the daughter of James Joyce, one of the great writers of our time, and the daughter of an eminent scholar of that writer; and that, I guess, feels like a very 'literary' thing to do. The couple Mary and Bryan Talbot, the former a distinguished academic and author, the latter a well-known and liked graphic novelist of many years, have finally earned the graphic novel the prestige it should surely have garnered a long time before.
Leaving aside the charming names Joyce gave his children (I have never met a Giorgio but would love to) the story of Lucia Joyce is a fascinating and ultimately sad one. Blessed with being conceived in a century still rife with upheaval, she was party to many famous events and some of the 'A listers' of the time, including Samuel Beckett, whom she dated, and the dancer Isadora Duncan (who, on a complete tangent, appears to have had a fantastically odd - and brief - time of it with the tragic Soviet poet Sergei Yasenin, who killed himself in 1930). She suffered from strabismus (a crossing of the eyes) from an early age and, obviously being the daughter of one of the greatest literary geniuses ever known, tended to move around a lot; five different addresses before the age of 18.
I don't intend to ruminate on something I haven't read (but want to - you can buy an iVersion from the Talbots' website direct or the book from Amazon) but it's so good to see the graphic novel finally come into the sphere of, um, 'high art'. I guess the pertinent question for me is: why not sooner?
'Comics' for me have connotations of two-bit threads, Reds under the bed and scabby knees on boisterous schoolkids, and have been building toward a critical mass for years. Spiegelman is undoubtedly a significant contributor but ignoring other such luminaries as Moore and Joe Kubert (whom appears to me to live on in Chabon's Kavalier and Clay) would be disrespectful; all have moved a genre forward in narrative style, reach and perspective.
The echoes of graphic art found in Lichtenstein, Warhol and pop philosophy have served to do for art in literature what a similar expedition failed to do in popular music over the same period (perversely art has always appeared to stay below the eyeline of the average consumer, emboldening its vision of possibilities whereas the repositioning of music appears to have killed any serious artistic pretensions it had). And that's only the start.
History has provided plenty of opportunities to take the graphic novel seriously: Weird Science and Captain America both reported on the Cold War with varying degrees of satire and straight moral horror at what was unfolding. Artist Robert Crumb depicted the mind-altering Sixties in a characteristically surreal fashion, and Moore of course wrote that fascinating revision of Nixon's Watergate moment in Watchmen in 1985.
Attributing the dearth of graphic novels at the highest altar of art in the face of this mass of activity feels odd. In light of the initial reaction to Stravinsky, Duchamp, Joyce et al it's tempting to simply suggest that art necessarily moves faster than those principles it grows out of (and, admittedly, frequently against).
This could be a question of perspective of course - are literary awards gravitating ever-closer to the middle ground of popular culture (remember that uproar around the Man Booker last year?) and thus the graphic novel simply met in the middle? Hard to say in the present tense. All in all a possible watershed moment and one that should be taken seriously for what each medium - the written and the drawn - can offer the other in expression and ingenuity.
One final thought (and hope): that as the title suggests, comics now use the both the mainstream and artistic power they wield intelligently and with a light touch, and above all, aim high. A great moment - but don't let it go to waste.
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