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And for your daily morning outrage...
Today we have for you the finely-tuned rhetoric of Tony Long, the copy chief at Wired, and his editorial on mp3s and comics. The mp3 part is, well, forgettable, but the comic part is where he really gets going. He's referring to Gene Luen Yang's graphic novel American Born Chinese, which has been nominated for an National Book Award in the young people's literature category:
I'd rather like to see him (a) actually read the thing before deciding that it can't possibly be as good as a real novel, and (b) try to write one himself before assuming that writing one is harder. There's a lot of crap comics out there. There's a lot of crap novels out there. Excellence is excellence, no matter what format it's in.
I had absolutely no desire to read American Born Chinese before reading this, admittedly because I'd only vaguely ehard about it in passing and had no idea what it was about, but I've just added it to my Amazon wish list to remind myself to buy it when I get back.
I have not read this particular "novel" but I'm familiar with the genre so I'm going to go out on a limb here. First, I'll bet for what it is, it's pretty good. Probably damned good. But it's a comic book. And comic books should not be nominated for National Book Awards, in any category. That should be reserved for books that are, well, all words.
[...]
This is simply to say that, as literature, the comic book does not deserve equal status with real novels, or short stories. It's apples and oranges.
If you've ever tried writing a real novel, you'll know where I'm coming from. To do it, and especially to do it well enough to be nominated for this award, the American equivalent of France's Prix Goncourt or Britain's Booker Prize, is exceedingly difficult.
I'd rather like to see him (a) actually read the thing before deciding that it can't possibly be as good as a real novel, and (b) try to write one himself before assuming that writing one is harder. There's a lot of crap comics out there. There's a lot of crap novels out there. Excellence is excellence, no matter what format it's in.
I had absolutely no desire to read American Born Chinese before reading this, admittedly because I'd only vaguely ehard about it in passing and had no idea what it was about, but I've just added it to my Amazon wish list to remind myself to buy it when I get back.
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It goes without saying that this guy has never tried to do one or he woudn't have made such a stupid statement. (Has he ever written a novel, either?)
On the other hand, I am afraid that I am in favor of prose fiction books being given one set of awards, poetry another, and comics another. Apples, oranges and honeydew melons... none of them are better, or more worthy than the others, but they are all *different*, and I'd rather have them judged on the merits of their own mediums than on some kind of fuzzy gestalt thingummy.
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My husband and I read it yesterday after I brought it home, and we both really liked it (my husband is a bit pickier than me). The art is very good and clean, and the story is funny, a little painful at times, and much better at portraying its message than a prose book would.
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Is it wrong to completely hate someone you don't know??
Maybe HE should do some research in college cirriculums, see how many classes have Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman as learning material.
And wasn't most of the "educated folk" feeling the same way about short stories not all that long ago? That they were useless and contributed nothing to literature? Damn, some people... *muttermutter*....
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Wow. I'll second that. Just when I think it's safe to go back to reading Wired...
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Ahh, I love hypocrites.
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