http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,71997-0.html
Let me slip into my moldiest Andy Rooney sweater here, because I know how much you guys love it when I whine about the Age of Mediocrity. (We're in the midst of it now, in case you're new to this bimonthly screed.)
Gene Luen Yang is a teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area who also happens to be a fine illustrator. He produced a graphic novel (or "comic book," as we used to call them), American Born Chinese, which has been nominated for a National Book Award in the young people's literature category.
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 not about denigrating the comic book, or graphic novel, or whatever you want to call it. This is not to say that illustrated stories don't constitute an art form or that you can't get tremendous satisfaction from them. 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.
Juvenile literature is a fairly new category (1996) to the NBAs, which have been around since 1950. It's possible that no author wrote a great book aimed at that audience in the past year, but I doubt it. Juvenile literature attracts a lot of first-rate authors. Always has.
Sorry, but no comic book, regardless of how cleverly executed, belongs in that class
Response...http://www.comicbookresources.com/columns/?column=10
Excerpt: It's hard to tell how much of Long's attitude is simply the same cultural snobbery that sent some into a tizzy when Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN got nominated for a World Fantasy Award. (It's one thing to say that a graphic novel can't possibly measure up to the standards of, say, William Gaddis' JR, which I cite mainly because it's the last thing I can remember winning the National Book Award, which shows how much attention I pay to it or most other awards, but there's no doubt that Neil & divers hands' comic was easily the equal or better of most of the flaming crap that passes for fantasy novels these days.) Long's argument is obviously based on an easily explodable bias that comics material - which he seems to suggest is inherently juvenile in nature, a longstanding proposition among cultural and social elites who have largely done what they could to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy - can not possibly, ever, be the equal of a prose novel. Which is at least partly true. Because both use words, there's a constant confusion and desire to parallel the two, a tendency the term "graphic novel" exacerbates. But comics and novels work in different ways, so any strict attempt to parallel the two is doomed by a logical flaw. Novels can do things comics can't, certainly, and we can argue all day about whether those things represent something inherently more sophisticated and superior. But comics can also do things novels can't, and simply that many comics haven't done those things is no argument that they can't. In some ways, we're currently in the great era of experimenting with the form; the breadth and depth of its capabilities have yet to be determined.
Let me slip into my moldiest Andy Rooney sweater here, because I know how much you guys love it when I whine about the Age of Mediocrity. (We're in the midst of it now, in case you're new to this bimonthly screed.)
Gene Luen Yang is a teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area who also happens to be a fine illustrator. He produced a graphic novel (or "comic book," as we used to call them), American Born Chinese, which has been nominated for a National Book Award in the young people's literature category.
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 not about denigrating the comic book, or graphic novel, or whatever you want to call it. This is not to say that illustrated stories don't constitute an art form or that you can't get tremendous satisfaction from them. 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.
Juvenile literature is a fairly new category (1996) to the NBAs, which have been around since 1950. It's possible that no author wrote a great book aimed at that audience in the past year, but I doubt it. Juvenile literature attracts a lot of first-rate authors. Always has.
Sorry, but no comic book, regardless of how cleverly executed, belongs in that class
Response...http://www.comicbookresources.com/columns/?column=10
Excerpt: It's hard to tell how much of Long's attitude is simply the same cultural snobbery that sent some into a tizzy when Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN got nominated for a World Fantasy Award. (It's one thing to say that a graphic novel can't possibly measure up to the standards of, say, William Gaddis' JR, which I cite mainly because it's the last thing I can remember winning the National Book Award, which shows how much attention I pay to it or most other awards, but there's no doubt that Neil & divers hands' comic was easily the equal or better of most of the flaming crap that passes for fantasy novels these days.) Long's argument is obviously based on an easily explodable bias that comics material - which he seems to suggest is inherently juvenile in nature, a longstanding proposition among cultural and social elites who have largely done what they could to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy - can not possibly, ever, be the equal of a prose novel. Which is at least partly true. Because both use words, there's a constant confusion and desire to parallel the two, a tendency the term "graphic novel" exacerbates. But comics and novels work in different ways, so any strict attempt to parallel the two is doomed by a logical flaw. Novels can do things comics can't, certainly, and we can argue all day about whether those things represent something inherently more sophisticated and superior. But comics can also do things novels can't, and simply that many comics haven't done those things is no argument that they can't. In some ways, we're currently in the great era of experimenting with the form; the breadth and depth of its capabilities have yet to be determined.
