Apologues
While I was perplexed and interested in the complexity of the story within Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, I was simultaneously interested in the way Chris Ware chose to represent the novel on its cover. The back is its own comic, a disparagement of the novel and a mocking request for you to donate and save an unloved copy of the book. This I attributed to the eccentric character of Mr. Ware that we first viewed on the cover of McSweeney’s 13. The front, despite its seemingly usual introduction of the title character, was more insightful than I had previously thought. What is an “Official Paperbound Apologue?” An apologue is defined as a moral fable, typically having animals or inanimate objects as main characters. In Wikipedia’s definition of apologue, we learn that “an apologue, with its introduction of animals and plants, to which it lends ideas, language and emotions, is necessarily devoid of real truth, and even of all probability.” Jimmy Corrigan has no main plants and animals, but does have strong emotions and excellently crafted dialogue which make the novel a compelling (if confusing) read. Is it devoid of real truth? The majority of the novel portrays Jimmy’s imaginative constructions of parental disapproval and social mistakes, as well as a three-generation explanation of the family Jimmy comes from, although he would have no idea of this. Perhaps it is a novel devoid of reality and filled with imagination and omniscient views of past and present. We can see Jimmy’s imaginings are highly improbable: his father is not a violent man, and we must think it unlikely that the nurse would risk her professional career to become sexually involved with Jimmy in the patient’s room. However, these imaginings are probable to Jimmy- he would not fear meeting his father so much if he didn’t think his imaginings were improbable, and we wouldn’t have run away in the office if he wasn’t already a little unbalanced before his overreaction to his father calling him a “mistake.” The most interesting part of this quote in connection with the novel is that the novel seems to be lacking in reality while seeming very real, and while we see little probability in Jimmy’s imagination he sees very much.
Another quote from the Wikipedia definition is this: “the apologue seizes on that which man has in common with creatures below him.” Jimmy’s character bugged me throughout the book- was he just socially awkward or is there something else we’re supposed to know about him? Is he autistic? That could explain a lot- his fear of new social situations, his inability to speak with Penny or to understand her lack of interest in him, his desire to not see his mother while also needing her constant support and advice. If so, is this a work meant to show the ways in which autistic people should be seen as people and not as creatures below normal-functioning humans? Jimmy Corrigan may lack a kind of reality but it is so real emotionally and socially. Whether or not a diagnosis is necessary, this novel moves towards a common ground between those of social mobility and those with social incapability.
A very original take, digging into the language, just as Ware would have hoped.
Is it so hard to believe that a father’s abandonment would cripple a man? I find it interesting that this class has had so many people who can’t seem to imagine this. All of the previous classes did not have this reaction. In any case, I don’t think he’s autistic—he is overcome with fear of a world that left him, as his sole source of approval and love, a narcissist of a mother, unable to acknowledge he is separate from her, and when his father invites him finally to join him, he feels he’s finally being rescued by the father he’s imagine after all this time. The man he finds, though, is a monstrosity of bad jokes, obscenity and lust.
It’s then his plan falls apart. As does he–after all this time, all that longing, his hopes are dashed. Worse, he finds out his father was able to be a father to someone else. This is the parental equivalent of discovering the boyfriend or girlfriend who couldn’t commit to you could, to someone else. He experiences his sister as a rejection of a worse kind.
Ware builds his comics around games of meaning—”can you figure out what I mean? Can you?”—he’s the artist as the administrator of an exam. You have to prove yourself to him, in a sense–and this is part of that. The story defies probability in the sense that ‘how could it be this hard?’, but also, ‘how could these people be like this?’, and then what’s more, ‘could it all connect like this?’ Ware’s singular imaginative act was to try to use his imagination to feel empathy for the man he so hated for leaving him, to try to create, to fabricate, reasons all of it had happened this way. The result is a novel that apprehends what he likely never can of his father’s life and his father’s father’s life. That is what he was up to.