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Fanboys and the creations they love to be seen loving: reading the Prologue to 'Looking for Calvin & Hobbes'
Nevin Martell is a rock and roll writer. You can check out his list of past books in the link. He’s covered The Dave Matthews Band and Beck and other bands, and now he released the prologue of his new book. I just read it.
Martell set out to write the biography of the strip as much as he’s trying to write the biography of its creator, Bill Watterson, an artist who has famously hidden himself from public view after creating one of the most memorable single creative works in living memory. The question he’s setting up in the Prologue that you can read if you decide to download the PDF (above) is this: did he ever manage to meet Bill Watterson?
Well did he?
The question of his initial forays — most importantly, the letter he decided to write Watterson — is the subject of the prologue. The question it raised for me is the place of the fanboy in chronicling the history of pop-art-that-manages-to-be-great. Because Martell is a fanboy. If you can’t tell that in these first 15 pages, you’re simply giving the writer more consideration than I can justify. The Prologue alone is littered with references that only nerd-illuminati can get in entirety. For God’s sake, the man mentions in Groo at the outset of what’s meant to be a serious work. If that isn’t a shout-out to my brothers and sisters of the geek class, I don’t know what is.
In his letter to Watterson, he explicitly describes himself as a non-fanboy. Or, perhaps, anyway, he’s trying to say that whether or not he IS a fanboy, that he’s not going to treat the subject like a fanboy would, but by the end of his Prologue, as far as I’m concerned, he already has.
Is that a problem? His Prologue is well-written and intelligent. It reads easily and it successfully gets to two steps that I think a writer of a work like this needs to cover: it creates a certain tension around a central question that’s going to make you want to read the book and it convinces you that he didn’t begin his project until he’d given it enough forethought to do a good job.
The culture hates fanboys. Fanboys have always been good at hating themselves, too, so it’s not like we were ever going to defend ourselves (you see, I’m a fanboy myself — I won’t pretend I’m not), but I can’t help but think that the people who are most obsessed with the subject are the ones who should get the conversation rolling about it. That is, I like the idea of a fanboys book about Calvin and Hobbes. No question, the conversation needs to move to the next level as it concerns Calvin & Hobbes. Say what you will about the funny pages, but it’s one of the most important literary works of the 20th Century and it merits discussion.
In some ways, it’s hard to have much of a first hand account of artwork beyond that of the artist himself or herself, but a close second is the account of the person who watched it closely as it came out. That’s something you can do as a fanboy. Someone who picked up a copy of the The Lazy Sunday Book today is going to think it’s great, have a good time, see some things, but it’s still going to be a different experience from those of us who who read the comics every morning as they appeared on newsprint. Like someone who went to Woodstock rather than playing the CD after: we were there, man. I’m not going to say that the fanboy will necessarily write a better book than a more objective writer, but it is necessary for the fanboy’s book to get written. Look, if I were to undertake the writing of the story of the first volume of the 1990s comic book classic, The New Warriors, in the Fabian Nicieza era, I’m not going to claim that I would write an essentially better book than someone who didn’t read it until after Nicieza left, but I will say I’d write a different book. I’ll remember where I was when I first read certain issues. I’ll be able to say something about how the idea of the Mad Thinker as a sort of benefactor to this superhero team caught my imagination, and that’s why I also think that maybe a rock-and-roll writer who used to paste the newspaper strips into a composition book for posterity might have something worth saying about Calvin and Hobbest that the art historian would never come up with.
No shame in being a fanboy, especially not if you’re of the thinking, critical variety, rather than the rigid, socially-abhorrent variety.
Of course, I’m biased: I like firsthand accounts of great stories. Just this afternoon I had a conversation with a fellow who’s family was there, firsthand, at some of the key moments of the last century of French history. I was pressing him about good books that told the story firsthand of the French Resistance. He told me a couple, but really recommended a book by an American (Robert Paxton’s Vichy France). Firsthand accounts, he said, are filled with lies. True, I thought to myself, but if you know enough about the subject, even the lies can illuminate inexpressible truths about the thinking of those who made it happen. Secondary sources can only make their best guesses at them, but I like trying to discern them myself.
And I’d like to discern some about Mr. Calvin. I’ve obsessed over Calvin and Hobbes for years. I remember once on a long drive from Kansas back to Wisconsin I got to picturing a movie in my head. The movie would be about a grown, neurotic and lonely Calvin, an outcast that is still talking to an imaginary tiger. I wanted it to be more of what Watterson created, only without the pterodactyls or the timemachines. Mor of the sledding, snowman building, wandering through the woods at the edges of suburbia variety of his work: a guy walking about in beautiful landscapes talking to a non-existent giant walking tiger and skewering a world he can’t get on with. I only mention this to say that the reimagining of Calvin needs to come. That it’s overdue.
Watterson has managed to intimidate all those who might seriously spelunk his work into an affable silence. If anyone does say anything about it, it’s strictly laudatory, but that’s all the further they go. It’s time to start reading between the lines of this enormous and essential creation. Of course, it will be a lot better if someone can talk to Watterson before he kicks off. And that’s why I’ll be reading Looking for Calvin and Hobbes in its entirety when it comes out, because even if Martell never manages to talk to the man behind it, you can get pretty close talking to the people who knew him when he was doing the drawing.
So, I look forward to seeing what Martell comes up with. Whether or not he’s the thoughtful and critical fanboy rather than the rigid sort remains to be seen, but I’m convinced that he started the effort in the right place, and, anyway, Calvin and Hobbest is so important that it’s worth seeing what a fellow came up with when he really tries. Here’s the questions I’ll be looking for answers to when I read the book:
Are the names of the two main characters meant to say anything about their respective personalities? As in, John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes.
Has Watterson been making anything since quitting the strip? I once heard that he’s been painting landscapes, but I don’t think anyone has seen them.
I always believed Calvin was the perfect boy, but that he was doomed to a sad life. What did Watterson see in the boy’s future, if Calvin were really to have one?
I guess we’ll see in whatever Martell came up with.