Customer Reviews

The Sun: A Novel Told in 63 Woodcuts

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If a novel told entirely in woodcuts seems somehow simple, Franz Masreel's work will set you on the right track. Each cut holds endless stories while still allowing a single story to be told.

One must see Masreel's work to appreciate it but consider this: if, as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, then this is a 63,000 word novel - and you can read in 15 minutes! After which you can read it again and get a slightly different story. And again.

This book (and The Idea set) is a great gift for that literate, hard-to-surprise someone.

As with Masereel's other graphic novels, this relies on energetic imagery more than strict sequential narrative to carry its story. A few sequences of three or four pages have unambiguous order, but the overall effect comes across more like a collage and less like a movie.

"The Sun" makes an interesting contrast to Masereel's "The Idea," but that similarity never wholly shows itself until the end of the story - which I leave you to discover for yourself. Until that point, however, the main character's quixotic quest engages the reader in its blind and impossible dedication.

Although "The Sun" came out in 1919, nearly 90 years ago as of this writing, the story and its telling work well for a modern reader. In fact, when I tried to find markers that anchored "The Sun" to one era, I found almost all of its woodcut images floating timelessly free. I'd like to add one technical fact that might help a reader's enjoyment of this book: the cover image, like others in this story, depicts the tools of the wood engraver at work - presumably, Masereel himself. I leave it to nigglers fussier than myself to resolve the mismatch between the woodcut lines of the imagery and the wood-engraving tools shown. The story itself is a gem, and a valued addition to the heritage of today's graphic novels.

-- wiredweird

Frans Masereel's book "The Sun" is subtitled "A Novel Told in 63 Woodcuts." It's a a dreamlike tale (or a tale-like dream?) that is told entirely in visual images. The story concerns a man who is literally in pursuit of the sun. His quest takes him across urban landscapes and through the worlds of book-learning, religion, sex, nature, and industry.

The intriguing woodcuts of "The Sun" have a strangely iconic feel to them, almost like the illustrations from a set of tarot cards (I could imagine an entrepeneur creating a similar tool from Masereel's work). The artistic style reminds me somewhat of Art Spiegelman's "Maus" books.

In the end, what does "The Sun" mean? I'll leave it to each reader to answer that. But the book is certainly a distinctive work of art.