David Boring

[sanpaku_backup]

They let me go to the library to do research today, and I made a detour to get the latest installment of Dan Clowes' "Eightball" (heck, I had 45 unused lunch minutes). I just finished it and now of course am ruined for the evening. I have always wondered how that guy has managed to practically get inside my head and make very apparent all the muddled thoughts I have about the disjointed and alienated feelings that come with existence. The recurrent themes are ones that seem very real to me: finding lost loves, the way time moves in strange ways, the romantic side of the streets at night, the threat of violence and stupidity among men... it makes me regret not having any ability to draw or paint etc. I do think sometimes that his stuff is a perfect marriage of a visual (cinematic) medium with narrative storytelling, because one of the things I find supremely difficult in writing fiction is descriptions and scene-setting, and the reason is that we've seen too much TV and movies to be able to think in non-visual terms for that stuff. I'm constantly thinking of how to describe people when what you really want to capture is a sort of mood or shock of recognition that's entirely visual and even pre-rational or intuitive. That's what he does so incredibly well.