Customer Reviews

In the Shadow of No Towers

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Art Spiegelman (of Maus and Raw fame) explores his feelings during and after 9/11. He discusses the way flyover America has taken the destruction of the WTC to heart, often ignoring the feelings of bona fide New Yorkers, and the way the event has been hijacked by a super patriot propaganda machine. He despairs of the way the iraq war has failed to target Al Qaeda and feels a strong rage against the Bush administration.

There's some pretty good stuff here. It's after all, Spiegelman. He plays around with the various conventions of the comic strip, mixing Maus with Little Nemo, redrawing himself into various classic comics ("Bringing Up Father" becomes "Marital Blitz" and describes Spiegelman's household spats) the pages are printed on thick card (it feels like the pages of a pre-school book) and it's all in gorgeous colour.

NOW... the problem is that the book is pretty short, really. Spiegelman accepts this fact and is rather apologetic. He explains that comics take a long time to draw and that expected to die in a future terrorist attack so he didn't get a lot done. His anti bush tone and his questioning of the choreographed patriotism that followed 9/11 meant that his market was very much restricted and so he did not think to draw very much at all. He attempts to finish the book on an upbeat "the way we were" note and reprinting comic pages from the 1900s.

Nothing wrong with that, of course. And his reasoning about the shortness of the book makes perfect sense.

But if I feel like reading Little Nemo or Bringing Up Father, I can buy the appropriate book and don't really need Spiegelman for this. I feel vaguely ripped off. Not because the book is not good, but simply because there's so little of it. Four stars only.

I was deeply moved by Art Spiegelman's "In The Shadow Of No Towers" before I even opened the book. As a Manhattanite, the World Trade Center's twin towers used to be my New York City lodestone. With my lousy sense of direction, I always knew where I was by marking my location in relation to the two buildings, soaring skyward, so visible above everything else. Even now, three years after 9/11, I sometimes forget and look towards the southwest, expecting to see the buildings' lights. For days, weeks, months after September 11, I saw, in my minds eye, almost exactly the same image portrayed on the cover of "In The Shadow Of No Towers" - darkest black shadows of the two landmarks against a night sky - emptiness during the daylight. There is no more eloquent description to mark absence, to recall violence and infamy, than the cover picture of these two shadows.

Mr. Spiegelman is best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Maus," where he used the medium of comic strips to portray the Holocaust, his parents' experience as survivors of Auschwitz, and his own experience as a child of Holocaust victims. Ironically, his parents taught him at an early age to "always keep my bags packed." He writes in the book's Introduction, an extraordinary essay, "I tend to be easily unhinged. Minor mishaps - a clogged drain, running late for an appointment - send me into a sky-is-falling tizzy. It's a trait that leaves one ill-equipped for coping when the sky actually falls." And the sky literally fell on the author and his family that day. They lived in the towers' shadow, in TriBeca, and their daughter was in school that morning - a school located at Ground Zero - a tizzy producing experience if there ever was one!!

This unusual hybrid book, 42 oversized pages printed on heavy card stock, is a combination of comic book illustrations and prose. It is an extremely personal memoir of the attacks on the WTC, which Spiegelman and his family witnessed at close range. It is a raving rant about the after effects of the violence and its repercussions throughout the world at large, and the smaller interior world of the author's psyche. It is the intimate story of one family trying to cope. It is an editorial about the political exploitation of this terrible event. The book is designed to be read vertically, just like the old comic strip broadsheets that appeared in newspapers. Each strip is a story, ten of them, followed by a comic supplement.

An image, seemingly burned into Spiegelman's eyelids, is the last sight he had of the North Tower just before it fell. He saw the building's skeleton, its very bones, lit up and glowing right before it vaporized. This image reoccurs throughout the book.

The country, the world, has seemingly become inured to the unthinkable, just three years later. The further away one lives from Ground Zero, the more removed the event. Art Spiegelman has given us a strange gift with his book - an honest memory of a devastating tragedy - a memory that depicts humor as well as horror, confusion, terror and heartbreak. All of us must move on, move forward. Oddly enough, Spiegelman's book helps us to do so by chronicling 09/11/01 and its aftermath, allowing us to let its vividness go. "Still time keeps flying and even the New normal gets old." "...though three years later I am still ready to lose it all at the mere drop of a hat or a dirty bomb. I still believe the world is ending, but I concede that it seems to be ending more slowly than I once thought...so I figured I'd write this book."

A beautiful book worth reading, worth keeping.
JANA

It was hard not to be effected by 9/11. I tried my best to maintain a stiff upper lip, but found myself watching a re-watching an Astaire-Rodgers dance routine from "Top Hat" and the "dancing in the dark" routine with Astaire and Cyd Charisse from "the Band Wagon" (set perhaps not coincidentally in Central Park). Looking back I guess I was looking for innocence and grace, produced in the depth of the Great Depression (the movie "Top Hat") or the height of the Cold War ("the Band Wagon"). In any case I serves as a reminder that NYC is a place of the imagination for billions who have never and will never visit it.

This came through with many comic book artists, who for decades made NYC the site of countless apocalyptic show-downs between superhero good and arch-villianous evil. So much so that 9/11 seemed like an eeire realization of generations of cartoonists nightmares. Many responded by working in themes related to 9/11 into their story lines. Special issues abounded celebrating the first responders as "true heroes." No one can doubt the sincerity of these efforts of so many who lived and worked in NYC and dreamt of "Gotham" or "Metropolis."

Art Spiegelman responded in another way. Going beyound the Silver or Golden ages of comic books to the pre-comic book "platinum age" of the original comic strips founded by the warmongering "yellow journalists" Josef Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst (the Rupert Murdochs or their day) "just two blocks away from where the towers stood." Embracing something quintessentially american, yet also incorrigibly subversive, he realizes his loyalty to his adopted home of NYC.

In 10 "strips" an introductory essay and a "Comic supplement" sampling some of the classic strips and an essay explaining their influence on him, Speigelman tries as best he can to sort through his trauma of that day. By turns hysterical, paranoid, narcissistic and self-conscious he brings forth reflections as honest and they are hard won. At first he obsesses compulsively about government complicity until he hears arabs reflexively spin anti-semitic conspriracies. He labors to find a medium to capture the image burned into his eyes, uncaught by any camera of the "bones of the tower" glowing immediately before it goes down. He wears an "peace symbol" upside-down, like a flag signaling distress, suggesting that "pure and simple" pacifism and anti-militarism are insufficient to meet the current crisis.

Yeah it carries an ant-Bush theme that will delight anyone who liked "Fahrenheit 9/11" but it's more than that. This is an intensely personal work for Speigelman who lived just a few blocks away from the towers, in away that Moore's film can't be. It does not have a straightforward narrative like his masterpiece MAUS. The narrative comes in memoirs or dairy entries in a confessional style reminiscent of some of R. Crumb's
recent stuff. But the elements are the images and devices borrowed from those early comic strips. Speigelman as "Happy Hooligan", Speigelman as a mouse-like "Little Nemo" falling out of bed, Spiegelman as Jiggs from "Bringing Up Father." His mastery of these styles, and their disturbing effect, compares with Chris Ware.

Speaking crassly, this book is an "art book" while it's listed as "hardcover" that is misleading. the Cover as well as the "pages" are printed on card-stock. The Strips fold out like one of those double albums which allows for unobstructed viewing. Speigelman has not skimped on anything in terms of printing or color or dimensions. The spine has a tendency to crack and the card stock leaves the book susceptable to warping, Bibliophiles take note! But at $19.95 (not to mention generous discounts at Amazon and chain bookstores because of it's "bestseller" status the book is a steal.

Thanks Art. And congratulations, you just may finally have become an artist "in sync" with the times instead of "seconds ahead of it."

Here's hoping anyway.

Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers came out yesterday. I've been waiting for this release for over a year, and made it a point to head up to our local Barnes and Noble to buy it straightaway.

Got home with it and put it aside, I had my own strip to pencil, but once I got the pencilling done, I picked up Spiegelman's book and began reading. These pages were originally published in broadsheet format, and that format has been preserved on heavy cardstock. In many ways, for Spiegelman, this work is therapy art, it is his process for dealing with 9/11 and its aftermath. Reading it was, for me, very therapeutic as well. His work encompasses the experience of watching the towers fall, clear through the decision by the GOP to hold its convention in New York. He talks and illustrates at length the degree to which he feels violated and betrayed by the co-option of 9/11 for the current administrations political ends. But this is not Ted Rall's detached political polemicism, but something different, something deeply personal, felt close to the heart and deep in the bones.

The artwork itself showcases Spiegelman's versatility, with him working not only within the traditions of his own Milieu (R. Crumb & Co.) but also consciously including tributes to sources as diverse as Herriman's "Krazy Kat" and McCay's "Little Nemo's Adventures in Slumberland." His own character from Maus appears as both Ignatz and Little Nemo. Indeed, after his work is done, he presents pages from the Hearst strips that affected him, just so you'll be able to appreciate those influences in the work itself. The things he does with Eagles is amazing. In most scenes in which they appear they represent the abuses to which patriotism has been subjected.

This is a work that is, above all, heartfelt. Regardless of what one may think of the politics he advances, or of the theories he espouses, the fact that this is the honest expression of feeling of someone who bore witness to the events is indisputable, and makes the work all the more affecting. This is a work that I will be reading again and again, so richly is it woven.

With IN THE SHADOW OF NO TOWERS, Art Speigelman has once again turned the world of comics to a unique and creative end, offering a personal account of 9/11 and its aftermath as well as a harsh criticism of the Bush Administration's actions following that tragedy. It is difficult to know what Mr. Speigelman's objectives are: personal catharsis, exposing the reader to what it was like being so close to the events of that day, or castigating the President for taking blatant advantage of a national failure to initiate legislation and a war that would never have been tolerated without Osama Bin Laden's timely assistance. The former topics, dealt with at length, would have been fascinating and deeply moving, offering perspective that most readers could never have gained and were luckily spared. The latter topic has been done many times already, and often far better (see for example, the online "Get Your War On" comic series).

IN THE SHADOW OF NO TOWERS has moments of literary and creative genius, but there are regretably so few of them, they could have easily been published in one edition of the New Yorker magazine where the author's wife works and where he has done cover art. The material Mr. Speigelman has compiled does not warrant a $20 book - it lacks the necessary coherence and depth for such a momentous event. A quick perusal at the book store will enable you to experience the best of what the author has to offer; skip the history lesson on comic books.

It is interesting to note as an aside that the nine reviews already posted on this book run six with three stars or less and three with four or five stars, and that the corresponding tallies of helpful ratings on them runs far, far higher on the four and five star reviews than on the lower ones. Seems to provide support for the notion that reviews with honest negative opinions are not treated as seriously, even when well-reasoned and well-written. Are people just looking for justifications to buy the book?

I can't complain about the quality of the content of this book, only that there's not enough of it!

The artwork is incredibly crafted, and the large-format reproduction is spectacular. It's not as much a direct narrative as an overlapping, fractured, paranoid, angst-ridden blend of narrative slices, observations, and Spiegelman's thoughts and feelings on 9/11 and its aftermath. His visual story-telling skills, aided by references to comic book history, are as powerful and clever as ever -- the "Cuddly Tower Twins" sub-panel, featuring the Katzenjammer kids and their crazy uncle, says more in a few frames than most insta-pundits can get across in 10 minutes of cable news rants or in long-winded op-eds.

But then, halfway through the book, you've read all of Spiegelman's new work. I was expecting more, but he makes clear in the foreward that it's painstakingly slow for him to produce. I'm guessing a rush to publish is a factor in how thin this collection is. I certainly hope he keeps working in this format -- for stuff this good, I can wait.

The rest of the book is still rewarding -- a monograph on the old comic strips that influenced his work is followed by brilliant color reproductions of that old work. (Speigelman is upstaged in his own book by a stunning "Little Nemo in Slumberland" strip that's worth the price of admission alone.) By providing this window into his world of references, Speigelman makes his own work a little richer.

WARNING: Not recommended for robots, tragedy fetishists, Bush lovers, or Britney Spears. But if you're even reading this you probably know that already.

A couple days ago I had the pleasure of seeing Art Spiegelman at a lecture/signing. Despite the fact that I was exhausted from a long day at work, I was pleased to find that Mr. Spiegelman is a highly entertaining speaker. During the hour he spoke on his new book, In the Shadow of No Towers, I was completely absorbed.

Needless to say, the book itself is excellent. It's oversize format mirrors the size of a newspaper as the book unfolds. The first half is a sequence of 10 full-page, multi-panel cartoons that illustrate Mr. Spiegelman's experience in the aftermath of 9/11. Living as he does on Canal Street in NYC with a daughter in a school only blocks from ground zero, Mr. Spiegelman is an eyewitness of incredible feeling--an entire spectrum of feelings he does not hesitate sharing with his readers.

The second half of the book are reprints of ancient newspaper cartoon panels from the dawn of comics. Mr. Spiegelman used these old strips as a comfort in the days after 9/11 and as an inspiration for his current work. As someone who has little knowledge of these early days of comics, I found this section to be as interesting as the first half was moving.

Mr. Spiegelman is an artist of uncommon skill. His unique style made him a standout among the artists at The New Yorker in the past dozen years. However, he is also a storyteller of uncommon skill. Unfortunately, he has kept this skill under wraps since the achievements of Maus. I am glad he has found his narrative voice again. I just hope that it doesn't take another tragedy on the scale of the Holocaust or 9/11 to make him exercise that skill again.

For anyone frustrated by our nation's response to 9/11, this book is a fresh and welcome perspective. Spiegelman captures the confusion and disbelief felt that day by anyone who witnessed the terrible tragedy of the destruction of the World Trade Center. He also includes a history lesson about how comics relate to journalism. From the author of Maus, and Maus II, here is another graphic masterpiece.

In a small series of comic strips originally designed to be printed as large, two-page newspaper spreads, Spiegelman illustrates his personal experiences of the attack on the World Trade Center. He focuses mainly upon four themes: his concern over the safety of his daughter who was attending a school right near the towers, his growing paranoia over the government, the funny but disturbing display of blind patriotism that arose amongst the US population and media following the tragedy, and, lastly, how slow he is at producing comic strips.

Given the emotions still surrounding 9/11, it would take extraordinarily bad writing to fail to get any reaction from a reader, and perhaps that is why Spiegelman is so lazy and sloppy here. I'm sure he felt emotions while he was writing this, and he DOES do a good job of making the reader feel some of his anxiety over his daughter's safety, and some of his anecdotes are interesting (his never-used TV interview about how "American" 9/11 made him feel -- it didn't -- is quite humourous). But overall the writing lacks direction, is amateurish and hackneyed, and surprisingly ineffective at eliciting a strong emotional reaction from the reader given the subject matter. It usually wasn't so much Spiegelman's writing that made me feel emotions, but the memories it drew from inside of me (like the images of people falling from the towers). Without those memories, it was just history.

The problem may in part be due to the format of his stories. In each spread we tend to get a glimpse of a storyline, then we get to the next strip and we see basically the same glimpse of a storyline with much repetition and little progression, rendering his storytelling completely choppy. It reminded me of newscasts where they keep repeating the same "coming up" message over and over again, and when they finally get to the story itself, it winds up being even shorter and less informative than any of the multiple previews you sat through. And sometimes he doesn't even go that far. To illustrate, Spiegelman repeatedly tells you how paranoid he felt. But he does not get his feeling of paranoia across. He doesn't make the reader feel any of his paranoia or really show its effects on his life (other than some lost sleep). And it comes across as completely matter-of-fact. He might as well be telling us that he ate a salami sandwich for lunch yesterday without even describing its taste, his hunger, etc.

Some of his artwork is interesting as he draws upon classic strips from the early 20th century for inspiration, but this technique rarely adds any depth to the story's content. It is interesting style, but that's all it is -- style. It makes for pretty pictures, but fails to redeem the text.

Overall, Spiegelman has nothing new to say on the subject of 9/11. It has all been done far more competently and compellingly elsewhere by numbers too great to count. Ultimately lightweight, Shadow is printed on nice, thick boards to create the illusion that it is far more substantial than it is. It includes reprints of several interesting vintage comic strips which are included both to allow the reader less versed in comics to see where Spiegelman drew stylistic inspiration, and to pad out the books extremely small page count.

Art Spiegelman's graphic novel, In The Shadow Of No Towers can be summed up in one word: blunt. Spiegelman uses vibrant colored panels and short concise sentences to get across what his experience was the day of and the days after September 11, 2001, just a few blocks away from the WTC. Politics aside, which do dominate book completely, Spiegelman succeeds in producing deep emotions in readers. From soft-toned details to loud and harshly colored panels, the reader experiences a new sensation with the turn of each cardboard page. Although subject to controversy, this novel deserves to be a part of everyday American literature. It documents an important event in the lives of Americans today. The medium through which it conveys the story is different from what most of us are used to, but the outcome is the same. Spiegelman allows readers to experience a novel that could potentially change the way we view this national tragedy.