Sunday, June 30, 2013

Saturday, June 29, 2013

PAPER KEYS TO BURNING KINGDOMS - art

Three versions of a storyboard rough from my novel of the same name:



finn harvor see circle 2013

Matthew Forsythe -- illustrator, graphic novelist

Matthew Forsythe -- illustrator, graphic novelist

From the drafts:

1. Graphic fiction, we are told, is in; it has arrived. Academics talk about it, literary publishers include it -- sometimes -- on their lists. But how accepted is it really? Is it genuinely accepted by the high-brow, and viewed with true objectivity? Or is some of the praise that it is given merely bumpf? After all, MFA programs specialize in writing, not graphic fiction; English departments rarely if ever pay attention to graphic fiction; major publishers do not publish much of it, and major prizes never include it in short lists, even though it can be a form of novel. What needs to change for graphic fiction to gain more acceptance?

I think more people would need to read comics. Books like Epileptic immediately debunk any perception people might have of the restrictions of the medium.  Having said that, there is something necessarily vulgar and low-brow about comics and we should embrace that. There is something about showing and telling - Like film, I suppose - that can easily make things too direct.  



2. Literary fiction (particularly by new authors) is struggling these days while graphic novels are enjoying steady, healthy sales. Any observations on why that is?

Fiction is actually doing well for some direct-to-Kindle authors. We're seeing print in a slight decline. I think comics are immune for the next year or two because we don't have any hi-resolution reading devices. When a hi-res tablet comes out, I think many people will be content to collect their comics digitally. Until then there's a slight reprieve for our industry. 



3. There are a lot of comics artists who self-publish.  As in the music industry -- with bands with their own labels -- this is considered perfectly acceptable as long as the creative result is good. Yet self-publishing is deeply frowned upon in literary circles. Why do you think that is?

In comics self-publishing is never frowned upon. There's actually a certain esteem to the DIY approach. Silkscreening, low print-run, collectible prints - these are all desirable things. 



4. How did you start out?

I started drawing a comic and posting it on the web. 


5.What kinds of drawing materials do you use?

I use pencils, nib and ink. Increasingly for my illustration work I use a tablet and work digitally. 


6. Cartoonists tend to refer directly in their work to the influence of other cartoonists, while traditional artists get "left out". Any fine art influences on your work? 

Lately Paul Klee has had a huge influence on me. I was a bit obsessed with all the modernists last year. 


7. How about literary influences?

Jordan Crane, Sammy Harkham - these are the literary influences I feel most in comics. I've been reading Waugh, Murakami, Nabokov, Conrad. "Youth" by Conrad especially moved me this year. But I don't know if that translates into my art at all. 



8Canada has produced a large percentage of strong graphic fiction artists, including Julie Doucette, Chester Brown, Dave Collier, Seth, etc. Any newer names you'd like to add to the list?



Well, the obvious one is Michael Deforge who is impressing everyone with his prolific output and unique vision. There are so many good Canadian cartoonists right now. Kate Beaton. Jillian Tamaki is probably the single most influential artist in my generation.  

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Michael Cho - reprise

[note: I'm currently working on a paper for a conference on graphic fiction. I recently contacted Mike Cho again for his thoughts on online publishing. I'll return to that topic later, after I've presented. In the meantime, here's the original of the interview we did in 2011]

Michael Cho of Michael Cho's Sketchbook:
























1. Graphic fiction, we are told, is in; it has arrived. Academics talk about it, literary publishers include it -- sometimes -- on their lists. But how accepted is it really? Is it genuinely accepted by the high-brow, and viewed with true objectivity? Or is some of the praise that it is given merely bumpf? After all, MFA programs specialize in writing, not graphic fiction; English departments rarely if ever pay attention to graphic fiction; major publishers do not publish much of it, and major prizes never include it in short lists, even though it can be a form of novel. What needs to change for graphic fiction to gain more acceptance?


"Graphic fiction" as you call it, or "comics" as I call it, has never been more accepted in the mainstream as it is now.  However, as you point out, it still has a long way to go before it gains real acceptance as a literary art form.  I see graphic novels entering into "10 best books of the year" lists more and more now, but sometimes, I think it's almost tokenism.  And other times, I've seen active discrimination by judges against graphic novels being entered into such lists.  

I think the real breakthrough will come when those who are prejudiced against comics as a literary form finally start to view comics as a medium and not a genre.  Too many people still equate "comics" and "graphic novels" with super heroes, or zombies, or funny animals.  And of course, various publishers in comics feed the confusion by packaging such material under the label of "graphic novel".   I enjoy super hero comics, but I don't believe that's all comics are -- just as I enjoy action movies but don't believe that those are the only kind of stories movies can tell.
  
2. According to some observers of the publishing scene such as critic Alex Good, literary fiction (particularly by new authors) is struggling these days while graphic novels are enjoying steady, healthy sales. Any observations on why that is?


I think our society is just that much more multi-media and visual now.  I see educators who would have rejected comics and graphic novels in their classrooms a generation ago now embracing their potential for reaching reluctant readers.   Ultimately, it's all determined by the quality of the content.  If there's more people reading graphic novels these days, there must be some really good graphic novels out there then.



3. How did you start out?

I was always drawing.  Since I was 3 years old.  I started writing a lot later, when I realized I had stories I wanted to tell.  However, it took me until my 30's before I had the skills to draw my stories with the kind of fidelity that I had in mind.



4. There are a lot of comics artists who self-publish.  As in the music industry -- with bands with their own labels -- this is considered perfectly acceptable as long as the creative result is good. Yet self-publishing is deeply frowned upon in literary circles. Why do you think that is?

I'm no good on this one.  I don't have much knowledge of acceptable practices in literary circles. 


5. You have some nice stand-alone sketches at your blog -- for example, a family portrait with your daughter and wife, and a landscape of a Toronto back alley. How do you produce these works? Life sketcthing? Photo sources? Memory? Or a mix?

It's a mix of all.  I take reference photos for some paintings, while others are done from a mix of memory and imagination.  Pretty much like any other illustrator.

6. Cartoonists tend to refer directly in their work to the influence of other cartoonists, while traditional artists get "left out". Any fine art influences on your work? 

Lots.  I enjoy "high art" as much as I enjoy "low art".  Among the artists that have influenced my work at one point or another:

Michelangelo, Edvard Munch, Egon Schiele, Edward Hopper, Alex Colville, Gerhard Richter, Alex Katz, Richard Diebenkorn...I could go on and on.


7. Westerners are well aware of the manga scene from Japan. Not so many are aware that there's a flourishing manhwa scene in South Korea.  Any Asian comics/artists that have influenced you?

I grew up in South Korea reading manhwa, but didn't know the names of the artists.  Those were the first comics I ever saw.  

As an adult, I have to say one of my favourite manga creators is Yoshihiro Tatsumi.  His work was a revelation and left a great impact on me.  I also have a great respect for Kazuo Koike's artwork.  


8Canada has produced a bounty of strong graphic fiction artists, including Julie Doucette, Chester Brown, DaveCollier, Seth, etc. Any newer names you'd like to add to the list?

Canada has an exceptionally large and diverse pool of talented cartoonists/graphic novelists/whatever you call them.  Among my favourites who are not on your list: John Martz, Joe Ollman, Matt Forsythe, Zach Worton and Scott Chantler.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Noteworthy

Poetry in Transit -- poems on subways and buses -- returns to the CanLit scene. The transit authority in Seoul does this as well. It's a good idea.

John Harris on Hartley Coleridge.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Paper Keys to Burning Kingdoms

Here are some storyboard roughs from my screenplay-novel PAPER KEYS TO BURNING KINGDOMS. The novel exists in more than one version: as a text-only narrative or as a hybrid graphic novel. The manuscript can also be read as a discrete work or as linked to the mega-novel PLASTIC MILLENNIUM (from which it borrows a character, who, in the latter ms., makes a kind of cameo). The work is both "screenplay novel" and "module". In the scene here, Bak Dae-woo, the protagonist, is making himself a cup of hot 'n' less-than-delicious instant coffee after receiving a panicky long distance call from his sister. Dae-woo lives in Seoul. His sister, Kyoung-ja, lives in Toronto. But it's Dae-woo -- the one who was shipped overseas as a young teen -- who is the most "Canadian" of the siblings. He is also -- and this becomes important later in the narrative -- the more politically inclined of the two. Things haven't worked out very well for Dae-woo, however: his original dream was to break into journalism -- these days he works as a security guard.

I didn't plan to make this video; I was simply scanning drawings for later use. The video was the result of a happy accident when scanning with Windows Live Photo Gallery -- the slideshow popped up, I liked it, and I fumbled my way toward successful posting at YouTube.

More to follow....


Monday, June 24, 2013

Noteworthy

Steven Beattie asks: "Has Canada ever experienced a period of literary modernism? We have our postmodern writers, clearly: Ondaatje, Coupland, Kroetsch, Heti, Lent. But has Canadian writing ever truly engaged with modernism?"

Brenda Schmidt reviews "The Memory of Water" by poet-environmentalist Allen Smutylo. 


Dan Wagstaff Superblogs.


Alex Good on -- holy geopolitics! -- Andrew Preston's SWORD OF THE SPIRIT, SHIELD OF FAITH.

Via Michael Cho, Sai Comics in Korea.


Conrat Speaks

drawing: finn harvor, from the PLASTIC MILLENNIUM module "What is the Source of Insane Ideas?", see circle 1991

As the news cycle works its way through the maw of 21st Century Event Horror and we find ourselves confronted not only with nuclear powers that are secretly continuing their smitten crush on the Bomb and a globalized industrial output that is pushing carbon levels right up to dinosaur-age levels, we also find  -- well, we also find that intelligence agencies married to surveillance technologies are not a harmless mix (that is, of course, unless you're Terry Glavin).

What has happened -- what is happening -- is current events seem to be unfolding, unspooling, unraveling at such tremendous speed that it is understandable why both certain kinds of people and fields of cultural endeavour (say, in this case, literary publishing) would prefer to just wish the whole mess away. But it won't be wished away. Like a slowly mutating virus, techno-modernity only spreads when it is not paid bright attention to.

The drawing above is from a graphic fiction (we called them comics back then) entitled "What is the Source of Insane Ideas?" In this panel, socially pro-active financier Conrat Lindt has just learned from one of the scientists at his privately funded research institute that a form of society-managing artificial intelligence is secretly being constructed. The comic was completed in 1991, and is part of PLASTIC MILLENNIUM, a mega-novel I've been working of for some time now. Of course, 1991 is more than twenty years ago. So the entire story line is out of date.

Plus ca surveille..... 

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Dentist-Assisted Suicide - two






illustrations: finn harvor see circle 1997, 2013

A few images from "Dentist-Assisted Suicide", the short story I've transformed into a screenplay-fiction (below).

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

The standards of literature, the uneven success of the contemporary short story, and the hurricanes of tech change

Several recent posts at other litblog sites have focused either on the question of what standards in literature are (and whether these standards can be upheld by a self-perceived elite) or on the importance of short fiction. The two types of posts have been largely unrelated; however, it seems to me there is something of a linkage in the sense that the enthusiasm some bloggers (such as Steven Beattie, Chad Pelley and Dan Wickett) express about the form of the short story is itself a backhanded declaration of faith in the ability of print publications -- in this case, publishing houses that put out collections of short fiction by individual authors -- to serve as accurate arbiters of what is best.

Whether this faith is justified is a question I don't know the answer to. But I do find that it is almost impossible to enter into this discourse with anything resembling a knowledgeable attitude for the simple reason that almost none of these collections are available to me (I live in South Korea), and, even if they were, I simply wouldn't have the money to buy them. They are -- and this will be a topic for a later post -- overpriced. And, given my past experience with the print short fiction form, I have felt burned enough times already by mediocre collections that I do not really want to repeat the experience in order to "be sure" I'm not missing out on a great piece of work.

Print short story collections have always been a staple of small press literary publishing; but they have rarely been big sellers. This lack of commercial success tends to create a vicious circle in which the collections are published, receive very little notice, and then languish in a twilight zone that isn't quite obscurity but is not very far removed from it. Critics such as those mentioned above try to combat the cycle by paying more attention to short story collections. And maybe these recent campaigns will ultimately pay off. However, for the time being, story collections have very small audiences. And one result of all this is that it is very difficult to have interesting discussions about particular short stories (not collections) by contemporary writers because the short stories are essentially isolated from an audience big enough to establish the kind of critical mass that's necessary for this kind of dialogue to arise organically.

A major part of the problem, it seems to me, is that technology has passed the short story by. Philip Marchand once accurately remarked that "TV killed the short story". As a concise explanation for what happened to short fiction and its place within the larger culture, this pretty sums up the idea that technological change did not kill the short story so much as marginalized it.

As far as I can tell, the short story as a print collection is a form that, for a variety of material reasons, will continue to have small audiences with its readership being disconnected. Experimenting with some of my own work, I've tried to re-think the short story and the way in which it can be published not only in print but also online as a type of narrative that is suited to the internet's technological strengths. Part one of such an experiment is below:


Wednesday, June 12, 2013

THIS POST ABOUT SPYING WILL BE SPIED ON


From Truth Marathon, a Plastic Millennium project:

"Do you realize computers spy on you?"

"No they don't."






"Yes they do. You told me."
illustrations: finn harvor 2013
"That's just if you're hooked up to the internet. And that's maybe."

"Hmph. 'Maybe'. Sounds kind of maybe-certain to me."



Sunday, June 09, 2013

They've got mail

illustration: finn harvor see circle '13


Support Eric Snowden:

The source of the intelligence leaks that revealed the National Security Agency's massive domestic surveillance program last week was identified on Sunday by the Guardian and Washington Post as Edward Snowden, a soft-spoken 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of NSA defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton.
Snowden, a Hawaii resident who was interviewed by the U.K. newspaper in his hotel room in Hong Kong where he is hiding, said he has no regrets about going public—even if he never sees his family again.
"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things," Snowden said. "I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under ... I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."

Thursday, June 06, 2013

Coach House

This is one of the two presses at Coach House, which I've visited a couple of times (most recently, during our sad trip to Canada last winter). CH is one of the few publishing houses in English Canada that prints in-house, the others being Gaspereau and Porcupine's Quill. I'd be interested in finding out more about presses elsewhere that do the same.

More to follow.