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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/630113.Acme_Novelty_Library_18?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Acme Novelty Library #18" border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/412MRG7dIsL._SL160_.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/630113.Acme_Novelty_Library_18?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Acme Novelty Library #18</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5112.Chris_Ware">Chris Ware</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8340234?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 4 of 5 stars Chris Ware has a way of reaching into my brain, pulling out my most recent obsessive thoughts, and presenting them to myself in the form of comic (i.e. graphic, not humorous or comedic) narrative. I stumbled across his early, largely experimental work when I was trying to write a critical paper on space and narrative devices in graphic novels, and his work's disparity between text and image provided the perfect example of an adaptation of the Chinese poetic device xing (兴). The maximalism that I found in his first Acme Novelty Library collection echoed the style I had been reading in Pynchon and that I was hoping to cultivate for myself. The social awkwardness in his longer graphic novels Jimmy Corrigan and Rusty Brown brought back my own murky memories of elementary, middle, and high school, times when I was riddled with the insecurity of adolescence.
 
 In Acme Novelty Library, Number 18, Ware picks up a new narrative, one of a one-legged young woman (never named) who works at a flower shop and spends all her days ruminating on whether her life still has any meaning. In the course of the book, we learn about the humiliating critiques she suffered at art school, the glimpse of a hollow life she gets while acting as a house-sitter and nanny for a rich family, and the failure of the only serious romantic relationship in her life.
 
 Thus, what Ware captures in Number 18 is an intense feeling of intense loneliness, failure, and despair. His painstaking art perfectly supplements the mood. For example, the first four pages wordlessly depict the character's daily routine, all of its minutiae, while her glassily sorrowful facial expression, constantly looking downward, broadcast her thoughts more clearly than any sort of text ever could.
 
 Fans of Chris Ware's previous work may be saddened to discover that Number 18 contains no faux-ads, pull-out sections, or any other old-timey dark humor for which he is so famous. But despite this departure, Ware is still Ware, and I found in these pages the usual mix of geometric layouts, experimentation with form, and sometimes-poetic phrasings. The poetry, while sometimes full of luster and originality (describing a “string of renters” of an apartment as “a fifty year long caterpillar,” which is then complemented visually by circles containing pairs of feet, all connected by a single wavy line), sometimes tries too hard, such as when he describes the delights of looking at the silhouettes framed in an apartment complex's windows, that a glimpse “seems somehow more revealing than any generous greeting or calculated cordiality (say, if the tenants were to be born unto the porch and welcome the voyeur, hands unnervingly outstretched).”
 
 However, with Acme Novelty Library, Number 18, Ware has shown me once more what it means to be a lonely, modern individual; he has shown me once more what it means to be myself.
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/78287?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Tom's review
rating:

bookshelves: graphic-literature
status: Read in January, 2008

Chris Ware has a way of reaching into my brain, pulling out my most recent obsessive thoughts, and presenting them to myself in the form of comic (i.e. graphic, not humorous or comedic) narrative. I stumbled across his early, largely experimental work when I was trying to write a critical paper on space and narrative devices in graphic novels, and his work's disparity between text and image provided the perfect example of an adaptation of the Chinese poetic device xing (兴). The maximalism that I found in his first Acme Novelty Library collection echoed the style I had been reading in Pynchon and that I was hoping to cultivate for myself. The social awkwardness in his longer graphic novels Jimmy Corrigan and Rusty Brown brought back my own murky memories of elementary, middle, and high school, times when I was riddled with the insecurity of adolescence.

In Acme Novelty Library, Number 18, Ware picks up a new narrative, one of a one-legged young wo...more Chris Ware has a way of reaching into my brain, pulling out my most recent obsessive thoughts, and presenting them to myself in the form of comic (i.e. graphic, not humorous or comedic) narrative. I stumbled across his early, largely experimental work when I was trying to write a critical paper on space and narrative devices in graphic novels, and his work's disparity between text and image provided the perfect example of an adaptation of the Chinese poetic device xing (兴). The maximalism that I found in his first Acme Novelty Library collection echoed the style I had been reading in Pynchon and that I was hoping to cultivate for myself. The social awkwardness in his longer graphic novels Jimmy Corrigan and Rusty Brown brought back my own murky memories of elementary, middle, and high school, times when I was riddled with the insecurity of adolescence.

In Acme Novelty Library, Number 18, Ware picks up a new narrative, one of a one-legged young woman (never named) who works at a flower shop and spends all her days ruminating on whether her life still has any meaning. In the course of the book, we learn about the humiliating critiques she suffered at art school, the glimpse of a hollow life she gets while acting as a house-sitter and nanny for a rich family, and the failure of the only serious romantic relationship in her life.

Thus, what Ware captures in Number 18 is an intense feeling of intense loneliness, failure, and despair. His painstaking art perfectly supplements the mood. For example, the first four pages wordlessly depict the character's daily routine, all of its minutiae, while her glassily sorrowful facial expression, constantly looking downward, broadcast her thoughts more clearly than any sort of text ever could.

Fans of Chris Ware's previous work may be saddened to discover that Number 18 contains no faux-ads, pull-out sections, or any other old-timey dark humor for which he is so famous. But despite this departure, Ware is still Ware, and I found in these pages the usual mix of geometric layouts, experimentation with form, and sometimes-poetic phrasings. The poetry, while sometimes full of luster and originality (describing a “string of renters” of an apartment as “a fifty year long caterpillar,” which is then complemented visually by circles containing pairs of feet, all connected by a single wavy line), sometimes tries too hard, such as when he describes the delights of looking at the silhouettes framed in an apartment complex's windows, that a glimpse “seems somehow more revealing than any generous greeting or calculated cordiality (say, if the tenants were to be born unto the porch and welcome the voyeur, hands unnervingly outstretched).”

However, with Acme Novelty Library, Number 18, Ware has shown me once more what it means to be a lonely, modern individual; he has shown me once more what it means to be myself....less

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