Funnies [Paperback]

J.Robert Lennon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 16, 2000

Carl Mix's comic strip immortalised his family as a loving group of wisecracking imps. When he dies, his estate is divided between four of his children - in reality a dysfunctional brood. The fifth, Tim, a struggling artist, is given three months to successfully draw the strip and inherit a gold mine. If he fails, he will get nothing.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In J. Robert Lennon's fine, wistfully funny second novel, The Funnies, the comics turn out to be very serious business indeed. New Jersey cartoonist Carl Mix was an alcoholic tyrant who used his "Family Funnies" comic strip to transform his real family into a set of puckish, dimwitted cartoons. The only thing worse--he left one of his children out of the strip entirely. "Maybe Dad conceived of it as a way to control us," his slacker son Tim muses, as he receives news of his father's death. "In the unbreachable box of the comic strip, we could be charming and obedient, and we would stay that way, year after year." Carl's will has left nothing to Tim, a talent-free installation artist, except the "Family Funnies" themselves. If he can draw the strip in three months, then all rights and proceeds are his; if he can't, he gets nothing at all. Tim studies his father's craft, and he learns not only about cartooning but also about his father, families, even the small, redemptive miracle of work itself.

There are many fine touches in Lennon's tale: the sad, chain-smoking brother Pierce, who takes pills to get rid of the "extra people"; their town's annual FunnyFest, in which visitors can buy Timburgers and Coca-Cola à la Carl; Brad Wurster, the grim-faced artist who teaches Tim how to draw ("'Family Funnies' sounded, on his tongue, like a fraternal order of concentration camp doctors"). But in the end, it's the funnies themselves that stay with you. As Tim works obsessively on the strip, its stylized visual language and bland gags eventually become an object of genuine, capital-M Mystery--weirdly compelling and symbolically fraught. In its own, stubbornly shallow way, the strip is a document of their family, or at least of their father's self-loathing. "Cartoon characters are deformed freaks we are convinced are like us," Wurster tells his reluctant pupil, but in Lennon's hands, it's the American family that looks more freakish than ever. You'll never look at the Sunday comics in quite the same way again. --Mary Park --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

A dysfunctional family that has been idealized in a comic strip finds harmony upon the death of its creator in the second novel by the winner of Barnes and Noble's 1997 Discover Great New Writers Award (The Light of Falling Stars). This touching, acutely drawn portrait of family angst is seen against the interestingly detailed background of the funnies industry. Carl Mix's Family Funnies transformed him from "rotten father," according to his son Tim, into the "preeminent architect of Good Clean Fun," and made him and his family?who resent being characters in the strip?rich. With his death, the job of carrying on the syndicated strip falls to failing artist Tim, if he can learn, in three months' time, to draw it to the satisfaction of the Burns Syndicate. Tim soon stops resisting the task, abandoning both pretensions to art and his girlfriend, Amanda, and moving back to the family home, which has been left to Tim's brother Pierce, the only family member not to appear in the strip. Pierce's major problem is paranoia, which keeps him, at the age of 28, locked in his bedroom. Tim's deeper insight into his father's cartooning genius is paralleled by his profound understanding of his family. Tim vacillates between growing confidence in his skill, as he is tutored in the finer points of drawing and gags by his Dad's former collaborator, and worrying that the syndicate will replace him with another cartoonist. Easily grafting elements of the family novel onto the subtext of the funnies culture, he incorporates elements of the comic-book business, from the names for the little marks that indicate movement (e.g., hites and agritrons), to the rivalries among cartoonists. Though some plot twists are predictable (early on, the reader suspects that Amanda's place in Tim's heart will be filled by his new editor, Susan), Lennon has his finger on the pulse of domestic behavior. One family's emotional sprawl, with all its maddening idiosyncrasies and emotional baggage, becomes somehow more real as it is filtered through Tim's apprenticeship in cartooning. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 301 pages
• Publisher: Granta Books (March 16, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1862073163
• ISBN-13: 978-1862073166
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,130,225 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Deceptively simple, March 8, 2000

By 

Ronald St. John - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Funnies (Hardcover)

Engaging first-person fiction told by a thirtyish unsuccessful artist whose father's onerous will pushes him into a reluctant attempt to take over authorship of a nationally syndicated comic. The comic strip, a fictional image of Family Circle called Family Funnies, is, to the real life family of its creator but a mockery of the reality of their dysfunctional household. As the narrator goes through a private tutelage tantamount to a comic-strip boot camp, he also comes to grips with his family relationships, love life, self-image, and artistic ambitions.

The author's thoroughly engaging style is deceptively simple. The observations about life and family in the 90's are presented in a realistic, subtle way. Reviewers who longed for a more vivid portrayal of the abusive father are missing the point. For the father to be an ambiguous, and mostly mysterious, character, who was an uptight heavy drinker with some skeletons in the closet, is entirely realistic. You can complain about not understanding why the siblings are not closer, but real life presents situations even more inexplicable.

This book is an easy, fun read, that is also thought-provoking, memorable, realistic, and heart-warming.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars No Humor, but a Well-Written Story, June 29, 2008

By 

Graceann Macleod "Books Fuel My Life" (London, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Funnies: A Novel (Paperback)

This was billed as an hilarious novel by J. Robert Lennon, and since it is based on the hokey comic strip "Family Circus" and takes as its premise one character's attempt to take over the lame enterprise, I was very interested to read it.

I was genuinely surprised to find that there isn't a laugh in this book, which is not to say that I didn't like it. The family dynamics are complex and interesting, and the dialog is intelligent. Tim Mix is left nothing by his father, except the expectation that he take over the family comic strip, the embarrassing "Family Funnies." What ensues is Tim's attempt to become a cartoonist, and his interactions with difficult family members who all have their burdens from a very difficult past. Anyone who has parents or siblings will understand the deeper meanings here.

However, hilarity did not ensue for me. I found the story challenging and a bit sad in places, and there were complexities that one wouldn't expect to find in what is billed as a comedic novel. Other people find it very funny, so perhaps what is missing is my gene for dark humor. In any event, I recommend The Funnies simply because it is a good story well told. Your mileage may vary with regard to any laughs.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Funny and Quite Well-Written, April 16, 2002

By 

Deacon Brodie (Livonia, MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Funnies: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

In this second novel by J. Robert Lennon, we meet Tim Mix, whose father has just passed away and left his middle son nothing --- except the chance to humiliate himself, and possibly find out something in the process.

His father is the longtime cartoonist and creator of "The Family Funnies", which is uncannily like "The Family Circus" of the real funny papers. The hitch is the fact that the Mix family is not the sweet and sugar-coated family with the "aw-shucks" sense of humor as for many years portrayed in the patriarch's creation. Instead, they are a good old fashioned American family of the twenty-first century---- that's right, disfunctional! And it just so happens that the fact that Carl Mix (the creator) has frozen his children in time and has portrayed them as they perhaps never were. In fact, he has alienated and angered each of the Mixes with his different portrayals of each in his skewed comic strip, even going so far as to skip one of his children altogether, never including him within its pages.

As if that doesn't make things bad enough, Tim Mix, the middle of the five children and failed artist, now just past the thirty mark, is left with the strip to continue in his father's absence. He immediately becomes angry and says no. But, of course, he changes his mind, or else there wouldn't be a book.

There are many problems along the way, like the fact that he isn't a definite choice. He needs to prove himself in the alotted ninetydays, lest the strip be given to a more able (and willing) artist. Along the way, we also meet fictional versions of the creators of such strips as "Cathy," "Garfield," and "The Simpsons" (sort of). A Fictional Charles Schultz is portrayed as an avuncular patriarch of all of cartoondom.

The book is very well-written and, throughout most every page, very funny, in a self-deprecatory way. Tim Mix is a bit of a black sheep, along with his mentally unstable brother Pierce. Each of the Mixes is different, and Lennon does a fantastic job in his characterization of each, as well as his dialogue exchanges between them.

For those of you who have read "The Light of Falling Stars," Lennon has improved upon his narrative skills here, giving this reader at least a real reason to care about the characters. It's no instant classic, but it's a very pleasurable read with a message embedded within about the blame that is appointed to one's family.