These two novels-without-words feature evocative woodcuts that encourage the reader's own imagination to create the story line. Created in the 1920s by the acclaimed wood-engraver Frans Masereel, this unique book contains two picture-novels in one. Flip The Idea upside down, and you can look through Story Without Words. The images in The Idea depict the progress of an idea, in the mysterious form of a woman spirit, as it moves through the world. Story Without Words is a haunting love story rich with symbolism.
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"All good stories conjure up images in our minds' eyes. But what happens when a story is told only with pictures? For the Belgian-born graphic artist Frans Masereel, the answer was simple: it is not words but ideas that open our minds' endless collection of thoughts and images.... Masereel who died in France in the early 1970s, instilled in these quirky and often bizarre stories a passionate sense of both the value and the inherent miseries of human existence. Evoking broad philosophical questions, they go far beyond the task of telling a good story. And that, above all, is their strength."—Dan Tranberg, The Plain Dealer
"So compelling, so deeply felt, so rich in ideas, that one never tires of looking at them." —Thomas Mann
"So compelling, so deeply felt, so rich in ideas, that one never tires of looking at them." —Thomas Mann
About the Author
Frans Masereel (1889-1972) was a Belgian painter and wood engraver who illustrated books by Oscar Wilde, Emile Zola, and Leo Tolstoy. He was most widely known for his novels-without-words and for his antiwar woodcuts that appeared in magazines and newspapers in Europe in the early twentieth century.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Two beautiful books in one,
By wiredweird "wiredweird" (Earth, or somewhere nearby) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 500 REVIEWER)
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This review is from: The Idea and Story Without Words (Hardcover)
They're very similar in many ways. Both stories are told entirely in images, black and white with no middle tones, one per page. They're angular and expressive, conveying conveying many shades of feeling despite and because of the blunt imagery. And they both cover the range from elation to despair.
"The Idea" will speak loudly to anyone who makes their living with their creativity. The idea, personified as a foot-tall, elegant female figure, is born from the creator's brow, after a bolt of lightning. The rest of the story follows her career through a harsh, crass, manipulative world. She ends up happily, even if her father does not. "Story without words" is similar. A persistent suitor rings all the changes on his entreaty and eventually succeeds - or does he? Both stories seem more like a series of snapshots than a straight, linear narrative, but convey the jolting emotional ups and downs very effectively. It's hard to believe that the stories are over eighty years old. The issues and the hard-edged graphics are as fresh and startling now as ever. So I wonder, does that say more about how advanced Masereel's vision was, or how regressive ours has been since then? //wiredweird
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