Bloodshot Eyes & the Beats
The first entry on a list of non-fiction comics was The Beats: A Graphic History by Harvey Pekar and Ed Piskor. I was hooked.
Ever since I read Ginsburg’s Howl two years ago, I’ve been enamored with the Beats, hoping their writing can influence my own career. For some reason, I haven’t studied them other than reading works online and picking up on the general feeling of the generation. The Beats, therefore, seemed a perfect foray into understanding these wacky writers and non-fiction comics.
The novel is a dense examination of the history of three major Beats: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, and William S. Burroughs. There close examinations are followed by small chapters which cover nearly twenty other writers and a few of the perspectives and genres conceived by the Beats.
I should point out that Pekar isn’t the only writer on the text; he has five accomplices.
Piskor’s art is accompanied by ten more illustrators. These writers and artists mainly contribute to the small chapters at the end of the book.
While reading the novel, this created an interesting visual blend: as the graphic history progresses, the art style, panel design, and narrative structure shift. Not only does this reflect the tastes of different creators, but I believe it did justice to the complex artistic expression of the Beats. More than that, it elicits a loss of consistency towards the end of the book — this might be too meta — as if the story as fallen into the alcohol, sex, and drugs inspired haze that characterized many artists of the Beat Generation.
Aside from the neat art and stories, the graphic history feels truthful, reliable, and in many ways academic. Huge consideration is taken in discussing writing processes, what inspired some of the work, and the struggle to publish exceptional work. As a writer, this all felt informative of the life that I can look forward to.
Another component that set The Beats apart from fictional comics was the ratio of exposition word balloons to dialogue balloons. Overwhelmingly, every panel had a plain square filled with dates, locations, and context. The little bits of dialogue on each page were supplementary and allowed the character to curse, cry, or drink.
This expositional text didn’t go so far as to include footnotes, but it had quotations from publishers and writers, plus concrete dates and places. All of this added credibility to the story, but it wasn’t all good.
The large, text-heavy boxes weighed down the reading. The simple, high-contrast art of Piskor in the first chapters created a weird misrecognition of certain characters — for a time I confused young Ginsburg and Kerouac, getting totally lost in the narrative.
My largest complaint — granted, I enjoyed the book immensely and the history I learned was valuable for my own studies — was the disconnect of time. Covering the life of a Beat in forty-five or less pages meant that panels right next to each other spanned years and bridged the American continents. It was difficult to connect with any situation very long because of the density of information is such a small space.
I cite this as a complaint, but it may also contribute to the reality of history. No moment felt specifically narrativized or embellished like a film might. The closure possible in the comic structure allowed the creators of The Beats: A Graphic History to tell a long and complication history in a beautiful, if sometimes long, way. Not unlike the Beats themselves.
