In the Shadow of No Towers

I have to say that while I have dreaded the day that I was going to be forced to read what, at first glance, looks like a large, tag-board picture book, I am pleasantly surprised with In the Shadow of No Towers. When I walked into my house after the four hour drive home for Thanksgiving break, the last thing I wanted to do was read a graphic novel. However, my view suddenly changed when my oldest brother (who was visiting with his wife) ran over to me and started gushing about Art Spiegelman and how he loves Maus and that he absolutely had to have this graphic novel after my class was over. Deeply respecting my brother's taste in literature, I knew there had to be something in this, so I took to reading more wholeheartedly.

It is very clear to me that Spiegelman is a brilliant graphic novelist. However, while I thoroughly enjoyed the individual components, I did find that it was a little overwhelming at times, and that the placing of particular pieces on the pages was not always organized in a way that would have allowed for the reader to follow the point a little more closely. I particularly enjoyed the strip that showed the building on fire, spread across all ten pages. After I finished reading, I went back and just read that section together, and seemed to get a lot more out of it. I also loved the strip at the top of page 2 in which the boxes gradually turned sideways to represent the towers. This specific element completely encapsulated the depth that the visual aspect of a graphic novel adds to the story. I definitely believe that the piece was so enjoyable because of the incorporation of images and dialogue.

I'm not quite sure I would consider In the Shadow of No Towers long enough to be a novel on its own, but part of the story suggested that it was merely an episode of something larger. If that is the case, I would be very interested in reading the rest. I think that Spiegelman did a lot with the material and the physical size of the novel helped encompass all of his vision. I am surprised to say that I am really looking forward to reading another graphic novel, and will no longer complain about how I have to carry a really big, hard-cover comic book to class for an entire week, because this is much more than just some hard-cover comic book. Great literature truly comes in all shapes and sizes.

Don't Judge a Book By Its Pulitzer...

To be completely honest, it was a struggle for me to make it to the end of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Not because I was frustrated that things were lost in translation. Not because I couldn't stand the mother. Not because deep down I was able to associate with the loneliness of Oscar. It is simply because I did not like it.

Don't ask me why. Frankly, I'm not sure.

From the start, I prepared myself for something amazing. I mean, Pulitzer's aren't dropped down stairwells at high schools like invites to a big party. They're a big deal. So I guess when I heard that this novel had won a Pulitzer, I was expecting something above and beyond many of the novels I had read in the past. That is probably where my problem started. Once I became confused that the material wasn't remarkably more intellectual or sophisticated than what I had read in the past, I had a difficult time appreciating it at all. I understood the story and appreciated the difficulties the characters went through, I just didn't appreciate the style of writing, and I thought that the footnotes were often overwhelming and in a sense took away from the story itself.

There must have been something spectacular in his novel that I just didn't find that amazing in order for him to receive a Pulitzer. All in all, I am not overly impressed with Junot Díaz. Lucky for him, I'm not an accredited critic.