Special Exits...

Joyce Farmer has offered us a work that is profoundly human, and humanizing - with all of its complexity. She introduces us to characters who demonstrate the way in which we live all complicatedly rich lives that are steeped in flaw and contradiction - both in the space of the home and much more broadly. I would argue that with this work she gives us evidence that it is in those spaces of incongruence that our deepest selves are revealed. 

But I want to focus on how she did what she did, because it with delicate brilliance that she framed this story... Death is not an easy thing to write about without falling into the trap of sentimentality. Here are *some* of the things I noticed her doing:

1) Placing us in present tense. We experience events as they happen in this retelling. There is no omniscient narrator interpreting (and over interpreting) the events on our behalf to drive the "story" home. This allows space for the reader to do that interpretative work on their own, demonstrating trust that the story itself is conveying the complex emotional weight without explicating what each of the meanings we should be drawing from the narrative are. One of the benefits of this craft choice is that this form of storytelling leaves a kind of space open wherein the way in which our reader's own intersect with this story can be more easily activated from a place of emotional encounter. We have to wade through less individualized meaning making which in this case allows the universality to sit quietly present. (I think that this challenges what we explored during our examination of Are You My Mother when we spoke about the power of writing very specific stories through a very personal frame to reveal the universal application... I think both can work).

Further, this memoir works on a collective experience (even if that experience ultimately runs through the lense of Farmer's memory) rather than rooting itself in the singular body, mind, spirit, heart of the protagonist who is engaging in meaning-making as an act of personal repair (even if as was mentioned in the articles I read, that it was ultimately an act of catharsis for Farmer). I think this work provides an interesting model for those wanting to write collectively owned stories - stories of families and, more broadly communities, and provides an important counter-approach to some of the other graphic memoirs we have read in this class.

I think what made this possible is the way in which place and the body takes on such a central roles in this text. Farmer keeps our gaze centered in the claustrophobic home, with all of the rich detail, paralleling Laura's clean-up/take apart process, as Lars and Rachel's bodies fall apart; and in placing the home in continual intentional juxtaposition to the outside world - through the invocation of world events and the very precise moments rendered where Lars and/or Rachel are actually outside of the house. (I know there is a lot to say about the specific events that she chose - I want to focus on craft not content but I'm excited to talk about these elements in class because I think they are incredibly important issues with(in) the text).

As well the body becomes the story, and in a sense main character. Because the body is simultaneously so specific and yet so nonspecific and universal, what happens in the bodies of Lars and Rachel, and Laura, allows a certain collectivization to the specific stories of their passing.

2) The story lives primarily in the space simple of dialogue. Through this we organically come to know each of the characters as they are/were (albeit through the memory and rendering of the writer, but still). The effect is that the story does not feel controlled in the same way that which narrator/protagonist centered stories tend to feel. It is in the in-between space, the great unspoken, that the emotional weight of the story plays itself out - we are not drawn into the psychodramatic exploration of an individual living through these stories. When Farmer does deliver us with specific meanings it is again through moments of powerful dialogue that in their honesty, sparsity, and simplicity reveal the whole world of emotion and action that lives beneath words. Some examples that rocked me:

"I always kept mother too high on a pedestal. I couldn't allow myself to love you." (72)
"Yes, well - things get worse in such small increments that you can get used to anything." (85)
"I suppose this is the suit I'll be buried in." (118)
"It's hard to come home after being out for any reason. We really have no contacts outside the family anymore." (129)
"(Lars) It took fifty-five years to make the turn around. (Laura) What turn around? (Lars) Since I diapered you!" (165)
"The whole experience would have been interesting if it had happened to someone else. The ambulance ride home was the best part." (173)
"(Lars) Here's the modern obol, a Greek two-drachma. Was it up for me will you? Nice and clean. (Laura) Ok. But why? (Lars) I want to keep it near me to pay Charon when the time comes."(184)

3) In Paul Karasiks review of Special Exits on The Comic Journal (http://www.tcj.com/reviews/special-exits/) he identifies the strategic impact of using frames that are almost precisely the same size throughout the whole piece. "Farmer’s way is to lull the reader through regimented panel layout and brief dialogue into thinking that not much is going on. At first glance, her decision to stick to a fairly rigid grid appears monotonous. But it is, in fact, a brilliant move that allows every small sidestep off of that grid to take on a deliberate meaning. More importantly, the grid serves like a metronome for these lives tick, tick, ticking away. The power of similar sized panels forces the reader to ingest material at a specific rate and rhythm. As in real life, parched lips tasting a cool Dr. Pepper is as big (or as small) a moment as feeling the rumble of a California earthquake." This lends a deeply organic, intimate, and honest cadence to the work

Farmer introduces some very important questions regarding the kind of isolation the elderly face within our society face, our general reliance on a health-care system that is dehumanizing and focused not on prevention but managing of symptoms and is void of a spiritual understanding of health (this is not explicit but when we examine how the entourage to death plays out within institutions like care facilities and hospitals as is depicted in this piece I would argue that the commentary is there), poverty, caregiving in the context of capitalist nuclear family formations, as well as issues of identity. I won't discuss these here but look forward to doing so in class...

As usual so much more I would love to explore here also in terms of content, but again I'm trying to keep my comments focused on craft.

Light,
mia