![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
30: The Greatest of Marlys by Lynda Barry
Jul. 3rd, 2010 11:14 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
puritybrown.livejournal.com30. The Greatest of Marlys, Lynda Barry
I used to say that I didn't like slice-of-life comics, that they were boring and self-indulgent and awful; and I didn't understand why so many cartoonists did them when they were so difficult to make interesting. Well, now that I've read The Greatest of Marlys, I think I can see why: because when Lynda Barry does it, it's awesome, which gives you something to aim for.
The strips in this collection were originally published in Barry's Ernie Pook's Comeek over a number of years; they're about an eight-year-old girl called Marlys, her brother Freddie, her teenage sister Maybonne, and her cousins Arna and Arnold, who live in the same suburban neighborhood (later, in the same house) at some unspecified period that feels to me like the late 1960s. I have to confess, I didn't much warm to Marlys at first. The first crop of strips in the book are from Arna's POV, and next to Arna's quiet, self-effacing personality, Marlys appears brash and egotistical and spiteful. I gradually grew to like her because Arna obviously liked her (though, in the way of family, they bicker and fight a lot, and in the way of children, Arna once claims she hates Marlys), and after I'd read enough of the strips where Marlys herself takes centre stage, I came to love her. She is brash and egotistical and sometimes spiteful; she's also arrogant and a tattle-tale and a know-it-all, but she's boundlessly creative, full of energy and curiosity and love of life, and very loyal and compassionate to the people she loves.
Barry captures the perceptions and experiences of childhood so beautifully it makes my heart hurt. The simplicity of her drawings belies their sophistication, how they show us how Marlys and the other children see the world; the strips were published over a long enough period that Barry's style changes and develops, her line growing thicker and thinner, the drawings sometimes highly detailed, sometimes deliberately sketchy. The sheer versatility she displays is amazing, even within the highly circumscribed format of the black-and-white four-panel strip she uses for most of the book. And the writing! My God, the writing! Here's a sample from one of my favourites (it's Arna speaking):
Up the street, on the dirt part of the road, was the house of Louis Cheek and his sister Sandra Cheek. None of us ever liked them because they had bad tempers, so "big deal" is all we thought when Louis told us they were moving away... I want to tell you that none of us even knew what moving away was until we all walked over to Louis's house and seen it was totally empty. My brother and Marlys boosted me up through the window so I could go inside and open the door. Mainly I noticed a smell. The smell of Louis and his sister. And seeing stuff on the floor, like a blue curler and some matches. It gave me the shivers. And even though we never liked Louis, we didn't think that it was any fair that we would never, for the rest of our whole entire lives, get to see him again... And even though a bunch of different families lived in that house later on we still called it Louis Cheek's house. That was the real name of it, and since we were there the longest, we made the rules.
There's so much to love about this book. I've barely scraped the surface of it. It's the kind of book to read when you feel a need to fall in love with life again.
(tags: a: barry lynda, i: barry lynda, graphic novel)
I used to say that I didn't like slice-of-life comics, that they were boring and self-indulgent and awful; and I didn't understand why so many cartoonists did them when they were so difficult to make interesting. Well, now that I've read The Greatest of Marlys, I think I can see why: because when Lynda Barry does it, it's awesome, which gives you something to aim for.
The strips in this collection were originally published in Barry's Ernie Pook's Comeek over a number of years; they're about an eight-year-old girl called Marlys, her brother Freddie, her teenage sister Maybonne, and her cousins Arna and Arnold, who live in the same suburban neighborhood (later, in the same house) at some unspecified period that feels to me like the late 1960s. I have to confess, I didn't much warm to Marlys at first. The first crop of strips in the book are from Arna's POV, and next to Arna's quiet, self-effacing personality, Marlys appears brash and egotistical and spiteful. I gradually grew to like her because Arna obviously liked her (though, in the way of family, they bicker and fight a lot, and in the way of children, Arna once claims she hates Marlys), and after I'd read enough of the strips where Marlys herself takes centre stage, I came to love her. She is brash and egotistical and sometimes spiteful; she's also arrogant and a tattle-tale and a know-it-all, but she's boundlessly creative, full of energy and curiosity and love of life, and very loyal and compassionate to the people she loves.
Barry captures the perceptions and experiences of childhood so beautifully it makes my heart hurt. The simplicity of her drawings belies their sophistication, how they show us how Marlys and the other children see the world; the strips were published over a long enough period that Barry's style changes and develops, her line growing thicker and thinner, the drawings sometimes highly detailed, sometimes deliberately sketchy. The sheer versatility she displays is amazing, even within the highly circumscribed format of the black-and-white four-panel strip she uses for most of the book. And the writing! My God, the writing! Here's a sample from one of my favourites (it's Arna speaking):
Up the street, on the dirt part of the road, was the house of Louis Cheek and his sister Sandra Cheek. None of us ever liked them because they had bad tempers, so "big deal" is all we thought when Louis told us they were moving away... I want to tell you that none of us even knew what moving away was until we all walked over to Louis's house and seen it was totally empty. My brother and Marlys boosted me up through the window so I could go inside and open the door. Mainly I noticed a smell. The smell of Louis and his sister. And seeing stuff on the floor, like a blue curler and some matches. It gave me the shivers. And even though we never liked Louis, we didn't think that it was any fair that we would never, for the rest of our whole entire lives, get to see him again... And even though a bunch of different families lived in that house later on we still called it Louis Cheek's house. That was the real name of it, and since we were there the longest, we made the rules.
There's so much to love about this book. I've barely scraped the surface of it. It's the kind of book to read when you feel a need to fall in love with life again.
(tags: a: barry lynda, i: barry lynda, graphic novel)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}