Jar of Fools

Jason Lutes has a real patience in allowing his story to build up.  I admired his willingness to allow a plot to come together slowly, and to allow large portions of his book to take place without giving us all the information.  I wouldn’t say that ‘Jar of Fools’ is a ‘mystery’.  But I felt that I was reading one.  The mystery of his brother’s death does eventually take a large place in the story—there is that stretch in part two where Ernie even strolls around looking for evidence and trying to find the diving suit.  That detective work made me suspect that Ernie would eventually follow the evidence to some sort of answer or explanation…But he doesn’t, exactly.  The answer he reaches for himself comes through his conversation with Esther, not the diving suit.  The mystery, I suppose, comes from the fact that all five characters (and Ernie’s brother) are very obviously mysterious—not only does Lutes make conscious choices to make this the case (like allowing us glimpses into the strange background of Ernie and Esther’s relationship), but he simply does not include much in the way of exposition. That’s not a particularly thorough way of communicating what I mean, but I don’t know much there is to say about that other than the fact that the book is “mysterious”.

The drawings are terrific.  They rely on simple outlines for most of the characters—which reminded me to a certain extent of Tintin, which is given a pretty funny homage on page 77.  But Lutes gives his environments a detailed grittiness that is in contrast to his people, who are drawn simply and are mostly very pretty in their own ways.  (Pretty, or handsome, in the most c0nventional sense—not that this is a negative.)  I love the way Al was drawn, and conceived.  On page 59, in particular, his frazzled look after pulling a remarkable escape—”Whattya think I *huff* am—seventeen?”—hits the note perfectly.   There are certain things Lutes seems to love drawing in his characters—like bushy eyebrows and unshaven bristles.

For what it is, I would have liked for ‘Jar of Fools’ to have filled out a bit more by its conclusion.  There is so much left unresolved, and to an extent I felt as if Lutes was ending the novel just as he had begun to pull back some of the shadows over his characters.  I do not necessarily think that there was a resolution to Ernie’s agony over his brother’s death, either, but it would be rather banal to offer a resolution in any case.  ‘Jar of Fools’ may be 142 pages, but it is extremely short in its way.  It has the feeling of a short story, and a brief glimpse into the lives of some very interesting characters which is intentionally cut short, just as the relationship between the five is cut short by the arrival of the police and the leaving of Esther and Claire.  Lutes obviously intended it that way, but I felt as if, had he chose to do so, he could have spun a far longer story and sustained my interest.  I plan on checking out ‘Berlin’ over break.