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Exploded View: Essays on Fatherhood, with Diagrams
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In Exploded View "graphic" essays play with the conventions of telling a life story and with how illustration and text work together in print. As with a graphic novel, the story is not only in the text but also in how that text interacts with the images that accompany it.
Diagrams were an important part of Dustin Parsons's childhood. Parsons's father was an oilfield mechani ...more
Diagrams were an important part of Dustin Parsons's childhood. Parsons's father was an oilfield mechani ...more
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There is so much love in this collection of lyric essays, each section so tenderly rendered.
The back of the book states, “This memoir distinguishes itself from others in its ‘graphic’ elements—the appropriated diagrams, instructions, and ‘exploded view’ inventory images –that Parsons has used. They help guide the reader’s understanding of the piece, giving the reader a visual anchor for the story, and add a technical aspect to the lyric essays that they hold. This mixture of the machine-like and ...more
The back of the book states, “This memoir distinguishes itself from others in its ‘graphic’ elements—the appropriated diagrams, instructions, and ‘exploded view’ inventory images –that Parsons has used. They help guide the reader’s understanding of the piece, giving the reader a visual anchor for the story, and add a technical aspect to the lyric essays that they hold. This mixture of the machine-like and ...more
Exploded View: Essays on Fatherhood, with Diagrams by Dustin Parsons is a collection of intertwined essays that explore a variety of landscapes: the landscapes of a working-class life; the landscape of fatherhood; and the landscape of the natural world (ranging from the Kansas prairies to the Snow Belt of Western New York). Often accompanied by diagrams and pictures, as both were important parts of Parsons' life, the lyrical essays examine the ordinary, such as building a birdhouse, to the not s
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In his acknowledgements, Dustin Parsons calls his collection “a weird little project.” And it is. But more than weird, this book is delightful, and unlike anything I’ve ever read. These essays are honest, heartfelt, and thought-provoking. This is not a book to rush through. It’s one to linger with, share, and treasure.
These essays thoughtfully detail coming-of-age and parenting. Paired with diagrams of machines, animals, etc, the essay invite you to analyze the small in order to understand perspective on the whole.
Finely calibrated and beautifully rendered
Using diagrams and short, lyric essays, Dustin Parsons offers the reader a fascinating look inside the head of a young father, with all the attendant shadows of his own childhood present as he moves into marriage and parenting. This is not a book that builds a narrative arc, pulling the reader forward by dramatic action or suspense. It's a quiet, thoughtful book full of reflective insight and lovely language. Read it like you would read a collection of poetry, and you will be satisfied.
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I am thankful for the beautiful, poetic collection of essays. Parsons writes about Kansas in the same way that I hope I do, openly and unapologetically. The mixing of text and image is incredible, and though I mentioned the essays about western Kansas, all of the essays in this collection are touching and poignant.
So creative; loved it! Might have to buy the Todd McLellan print on 20x200 as a constant reminder
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