Martin Rowson

A tortuous and sometimes torturous read - but would we expect anything less?

There's a problem with authors like Laurence Sterne or Rabelais, for example. A lot of people haven't read them, but claim they have; these people are bothersome. Some people have read them; these people are almost uniformly exhausting in their smugness about the fact, not to mention zealots about deconstructing a medium which the rest of us enjoy just fine as it is, thankyou very much. And the rest of the world? show more Well, they haven't read them, which makes them barely even conceivable as humans.

Perhaps you can see the problem. If you haven't read Tristram Shandy (if "read" is the correct word for what one does in the presence of such an effervescent, destabilising text), you won't understand this. Rowson is not so much adapting Tristram for the graphic novel medium as he is deconstructing both Sterne's text and the very nature of text. Which is exactly what we should ask for from a graphic novel version of an 18th century novel that simply doesn't fit into literary history without accounting for the invention of time travel.

I'm not sure I like Rowson. There is something rather mean-spirited in his writing, don't you think? I'm unsettled by some of the morals which he draws from Sterne, or perhaps from our love of Sterne (yes, maybe his sentiment reflects literary humans more generally). And most definitely this work is caviar for the general. It's a book-lover's in-joke, primarily.

Still, while my experience was not worth four-stars, such a rating is justified by sheer brilliance, the delicacy, and the piquant grace notes to this work. Sterne's original narrative is augmented by ever-increasing bubbles of text, a sense of humour that swings rapidly from 'wry'to 'menacing', a deliberate recklessness instead of slavishness in the adaptation, and a cast of characters far exceeding the original (including some poor historians and writers just trying to figure out the text or craft a biography of Sterne himself!). If you've got Tristram under your belt, if you and Dr Slop have seen the chimes at midnight, and if you felt like Sterne was playing it far too safe... this may just be for you.

Madness of the highest order. show less

Short essays on complex subjects run the risk of being either too narrow in scope or uselessly shallow, but Rowson has somehow managed to avoid both these faults with this great little essay on the subject of offence. As a satirical cartoonist he is well qualified to comment on the topic; indeed the essay examines offence in relation to satirical caricature, which turns out to be a very effective vantage point. Being so concise, to summarise the text would effectively entail rewriting it, show more which I won't do; instead I will simply remark that Rowson makes some very interesting observations and, although I don't agree with everything he says (his disapproval of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, for example), the essay as a whole is sensible, well-reasoned, and generally well-written. His cartoons aren't too bad either. show less

Truly appalling book. I'm no prude with regards to language, so I thought this might be a mildly amusing cartoon history of the use of the "F" word. But the art is atrocious, the attempts at humor fall flat, and the choices of historical events to highlight is questionable at best. I can't believe a publisher dedicated the finances to publishing this in hardcover. I'm glad I didn't spend a cent on it, but instead read it for free while browsing at my local Barnes & Noble. I can't recommend show more this one at all! Ewww... show less

There's some funny stuff in here, some decent satirical pokes at the Tories, especially Theresa May and Boris Johnson, some well-drafted cartoons and illustrations, too. But...

Overall, it comes off as a little too ernest, a little too preachy, and often a little too holier-than-thou to redeem the parts that hit the mark. It's a shame, because I really wanted to love this comic.