Reviewed by Ben Wolinsky
“Machines,” I said to myself, the first time I saw Chris
Ware’s cartoons. They looked so mechanical I didn’t believe they were hand-drawn.
That was why I could tell right away that Building
Stories all about ennui (constant loneliness and solitude, if you haven’t
got a dictionary.)
When Building Stories
came out in the NY Times, I couldn’t
tell much about the woman in his cartoons, because she was always sitting at
the window looking out. With this deluxe edition, I can see that she’s missing
half a leg, overweight, lonely no matter where she is. This is the kind of
loneliness that gives you cabin fever, and the only reason she doesn’t have
cabin fever is that she isn’t really alone. She lives on the third floor of a
Chicago tenement, but doesn’t interact with the people around her at all.
The ironic thing about her story is that she feels left out,
but the people around her are no better off. Her neighbors are in a bad
relationship, the plumber is lonely and overweight, the previous tenant died
alone in her apartment. Perhaps when you live in a city you don’t really get to
know your neighbors? Then again, she doesn’t seem to know anybody in the suburb
where she moves with her husband, whom she doesn’t like that much either. She
marries the first guy she can, and he’s just as unattractive as she is and not
much fun. He’s off on business all the time, and she’s stuck at home with their
daughter. I wonder if the husband has Asperger’s Syndrome or OCD? Perhaps that
explains why he feels more at home in his job than with his wife and kid. As
for the kid, she’s very independent, which is a relief for the reader. If the
main character is depressed and missing a leg, how would she deal with someone
who’s emotionally needy? But the more independent the child becomes, the
lonelier her mother feels.
Ware’s mechanical black lines are perfect for this cartoon.
The human characters fit perfectly with the geometric backgrounds; it’s like
they’re all cogs in a machine, and it’s all their own doing. Most of the
characters in the story feel unfulfilled, but they don’t do anything to get out
of it. By the time I’d read all the books in the package, I had zero sympathy
for the characters.
For those of you wondering why the book comes in a heavy
box, let me say this; it’s not a book, but several books plus a newspaper, a
game board, a book, a magazine, a strip, and a ribbon. I thought it was like
opening up a Milton Bradley board game, and by the time I reached the bottom of
the box and found the fold-out board, I knew I was right. The series Building Stories is essentially a board
game; the drawings are like game illustrations, and the story jumps from past
to present and back the way you move your game piece when you lose a point.
I can relate to Building
Stories. I live in a big pre-war apartment building in a city. I don’t know
my neighbors, and they don’t know theirs. It can feel isolating sometimes. I
see the same faces at the community board meetings, but I’ve never been friends
with any of them. City people can be rather solitary. You can live in a city
like this without ever interacting with the people around you. Everyone to
their own devices, they say.
No comments:
Post a Comment