The Yearbook
In thinking about our discussions and blog posts on high school popularity, I recalled the importance of the yearbook throughout Black Hole. The most obvious examples are the drawings on the inside front and back covers, and the transformation the faces take from cover to cover, representing a readers own transition through the novel. But the yearbook frequently appears as a prop for the plot as well. We are first introduced to our antagonist Rick ‘The Dick’ Holstrom through the yearbook Keith’s friends find in the woods. Later, Chris pleads with her friend Marci to cut out Rob’s picture from the yearbook, for Chris is desperately craving some contact with him. The picture is later buried as a gesture that Chris is beginning a new part of her life.
Think about what yearbooks mean in the real world. Seeing the images on the inside covers reminds me of looking at my mother’s old yearbooks. Awkward smiles, goofy hair styles, these teenagers all uncomfortably pose, their naivety frozen in time, creating the unfortunate proof that one once looked like that. Yearbooks exist to preserve memories, but what they’ve become is a way for us to laugh at what we once were. Nevertheless, they give off a certain honesty. It was a favorite game of mine to guess in my mother’s yearbooks who was popular and who wasn’t. And sadly, its extremely easy to judge a book by its cover. Its this same visual honesty that I found in the art of Burns’s work. The smiles of those faces in the front cover so easily define these anonymous characters. Although they only exist within these covers, a whole story could be created in each of these yearbook pictures, just like in real ones. This visual honesty extends within the context of the novel. His characters are realistic caricatures. The depictions of the outcasts reminded me so much of real-life representations. The chess-playing geeks, their acne-faced girlfriends, the pug noses of Rick and one of Keith’s buddy’s, even Keith’s distinct unibrow, are all symbols of the outcast. These images easily came to life in my mind, for because of their awkward features I could see them as real human beings.
On the other hand, the ‘popular’ and ‘beautiful’ characters are interestingly the most nondescript, and I had the hardest time visualizing them as real people. Perhaps this symbolizes how we view popularity. Think of the classic story where the hot shot from high school becomes a nothing in the real world, while the nerds are famous billionaire geniuses. The ‘popular’ characters in Black Hole fade out when they are exiled from high school as well. Rob, for one, can’t exist outside of high school, and he ends up dead. Chris is a mess – she drinks excessively, she doesn’t shower, she eats poorly – but I’m not saying she deserves it, as we often are made to feel from the destruction of popularity cliche. But ‘popularity’ as it is represented in high school is not a permanent state of being, but a state that only exists during high school, and is only preserved in those posed yearbook smiles.
