Stuck Rubber Baby

I actually bought this book ahead of time so I didn't have to go rooting around bookstores looking for it today. Yay! I think the only book I don't have yet is Palestine, but we're reading that last, so I should easily be able to get my hands on it by the time we get to it. Hopefully.

I found Stuck Rubber Baby a bit easier to get into than was Portraits from Life. I guess that confirms my pronounced preference for a true "graphic novel"--a long single narrative told in a fashion reminiscent of that which you would expect to find in a novel. I was reading the comments printed on the back of the book, and I noticed that one compared Cruse's work to that of Faulkner. After reading the first eleven chapters, I'm inclined to agree. There are a few parallels with Faulkner's work: the southern setting, the focus on a relatively small and isolated community, and the stream-of-consciousness style of the narration. The chronological skipping around was slightly disorienting at first until the story sort of "settled down" into a more or less ordered narrative. However, it is still jarring when there are scenes of the protagonist "narrating" his story alongside a guy who is ostensibly his partner. I think it's the beard more than anything, really. Every time I see it, it reminds me how long it's been since I shaved and how I really should do that before going out in public again. With all luck, I'll manage to do so before class in the morning.

As far as the art goes, I guess I'd place it somewhere between Collier and Thompson. There is a little more playing around with the panels and scenes than there was in Portraits from Life, but Blankets definitely still trumps it in terms of creative use of the space both within and outside of the panels. That said, I felt the art doing a good deal of work in helping me to get into the story. And I think the illustrations are helpful in reorienting the reader when the narrative jumps around in the timeline. I still like Blankets better, though. That's probably because I felt I could personally relate to a great deal of its story, and the notion that it was sort of a pseudo-autobiography made me want to keep reading to find out what happened to Craig, even if I was kind of surprised and disappointed by the ending. It's odd that the biographical angle worked for me in Blankets, but not in Portraits from Life. I came into Stuck Rubber Baby expecting another true-to-life story, but I have to keep reminding myself that not every graphic novel is the author's autobiography.