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Title: The Three Paradoxes
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Manufacturer: Fantagraphics
List Price: $14.95
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| The Three Paradoxes by Fantagraphics Perfectly constructed, yet still unsatisfying | Paul Hornschemeier, The Three Paradoxes (Fantagraphics, 2007)
So, the underlying question of Hornschemeier's graphic novel asks us: was Zeno, in fact, right? Even when we reach our destination, have we really reached our destination? We are here given five linked (some more firmly than others) stories: the main story details a visit from our protagonist (Paul, natch) to his parents. The one most firmly linked is a memory Paul has while walking through town with his father of a childhood memory; a second involves a comic the adult Paul is trying to draw that focuses on what we must surmise is an idealized form of his childhood self- radically different from the child we get to see; a third involves a car accident, which may or may not have happened to Paul (I couldn't tell, and no other review of the book I've read trying to figure it out touches on this); the fourth is a comic-book retelling of Zeno presenting his paradoxes (and being rebuffed by Socrates).
I didn't have nearly as much of a problem with the caesura motif as a lot of reviewers seem to have; it picks up on the paradox of the arrow in flight, and the traversing of each half-distance, never reaching the target. Every time Paul wants to say something, it has to travel half the distance from brain to mouth, then half that distance, then etc., which usually ends up with him blurting out something that bears little, if any, resemblance to what he's actually thinking. I can buy that. But then, on the same level, the thing I did have the most problem with here works in exactly the same way, and it still bugged me (the conclusion to the main storyline is absent-- because, of course, if Zeno was right, we can never reach our destination, see?). A paradox in itself, I guess. What we do get, on the other hand, is very well done, and deeply felt; I just wanted more of it. That, however, would have derailed the entire novel. What's the answer? There isn't one. Another paradox! ***
| | The Three Paradoxes by Fantagraphics Good Trip | Ok, so everyone's favorite game these days is to bash Hornshemeier for being a Ware ripoff. Honestly, people either aren't looking close enough or completely miss the point.
I found his latest collection of work to be profoundly gripping and fluid in a way that I don't think I've ever read Ware. Ware's a master of detail, complexity and meta/self-reference. Hornshemeier has those at times, as Ware can also maintain a quicker pace, but it's rare that I don't get caught up in ware's details and miniature geometry. And here is where Hornshemeier really shines. While his space is usually limited to flat color, his writing and character development sometimes really float you through. The flashbacks in Three Paradoxes are like that for me in this book, and quite a nice countermeasure to the other elements of the book that read a bit slower.
And he's just a beautiful illustrator in general. His faces, and the times he does take liberties with abstraction are always successful. | | The Three Paradoxes by Fantagraphics One to ponder... | | An interesting rumination on the concept of change and how it relates to the act of creation. Hornschemeier, on a walk with his father, mixes his observations of his old neighborhood with his struggles to finish a comic strip about youth, all the while indulging in memory and whimsy. Encounters with other people, stray bits of conversation, everything inspires some kind of mental tangent, what could be new fictional ideas, false memories, or something truly remembered. In one panel, Paul's young self passes on the street behind his current self, suggesting we are here now and we are here then, and we are always the same, like the three Zeno paradoxes of the title pulled through Vonnegut. (In another sequence of panels, do we break point of view and go into the head of Paul's father? If we do, for shame--but it could also be more mental meandering by Paul.) All the while, THE THREE PARADOXES is expertly drawn, shifting from a precise Tomine-esque style to parodies of old comic books for the backstory, as well as sublime little glimpses at the blue-pencilled pages Paul is working on. Still, by the end, even with all the heaviness of design, the book is a tad slight. Again, maybe by intention? Because it certainly does linger, like one of its narrator's memories, playing on the brain even as the book is reshelved | | The Three Paradoxes by Fantagraphics Product Description | An intricate and complex autobiographical comic by one of the most talented and innovative young cartoonists today.
The story begins with a story inside the story: the cartoon character Paul Hornschemeier is trying to finish a story called "Paul and the Magic Pencil." Paul has been granted a magical implement, a pencil, and is trying to figure out what exactly it can do. He isn't coming up with much, but then we zoom out of this story to the creator, Paul, whose father is about to go on a walk to turn off the lights in his law office in the center of the small town. Abandoning the comic strip temporarily, Paul leaves with his camera, in order to fulfill a promise to his girlfriend that he would take pictures of the places that affected him as a child.
As the walk with his father begins, and Paul starts to record the places of his childhood, the story leaps forward and backward through time, revolving around the events leading (and subsequent) to a beating near a funeral home in fifth grade. Amid these temporal bounces, we are taken from the law office to a convenience store to a debilitating car accident to the time of Zeno and the pre-Socratic philosophers, where we abruptly dissect Zeno and Parmenides' relationship and their refutation of the existence of change. Really. And with each step, Paul is trying to figure out how he will end his story, which he will finish when they return to the house of his youth.
Each "chapter" of the story is drawn in a completely different style, with strikingly unique production and color themes, and yet, somehow, despite (or perhaps because of) this non-linear progression, it all comes together as one story: a story questioning change, progress, and worth within the author's life. |
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