Once I started reading In the Shadow of No Towers my only goal was to finish it as quickly as possible. Which meant I did have to go back and reread parts of it to get a better understanding of what was going on. Still, after I better understood what Spiegelman was trying to say, I didn't like it anymore than I had before. I just wasn't interested in the story at all. Whether or not this was caused by my reluctancy to read it is something I have yet to determine. Though I'm certain it played a part.
I will say though that were a few things that I liked about Spiegelman's work. As it was a graphic novel, I liked that Spiegelman often made the reader analyze his drawings more than his text to gain an understanding of the story he was trying to tell. I also liked that he included some of the comics that he drew inspiration from at the end of the book. I enjoyed looking through them and then flipping back and forth between them and Spiegelman's own work and drawing comparisons.
Other than that, there isn't much more I could say for it. I just wasn't that into it. On the flip side though, I never would have picked up and read a graphic novel on my own time.
1 comment:
I have to agree with you that this wasn't one of the books I was looking forward to reading. My reluctance came from a long stint of avoiding my sister’s and brother’s suggestions that I read the comics they were reading. Although I don’t really care for the comics that my siblings read this was different. I’d never really read through a long political comic like this before and I agree that he did a very good job at making the images the focus of analysis more so than the words. I kind of feel guilty now for judging book by the form of its content because I actually kind of liked how the message was being sent.
Even so I didn’t care for his message so much, it just sounded too pushy, and a little bit exaggerated in the sense that there were ten pages essentially saying the same thing. But I agree that the end comics were cool to look at and how they fit in with his own art work was neat.
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