Special Exits: A Graphic Memoir

In this graphic memoir, Joyce Farmer chronicles the gradual decline of her elderly parents’ health and how that decline affects their relationships, their emotional well-being, and their day-to-day existence. Farmer’s parents, Lars and Rachel, face their suffering with a stoicism that borders on insanity, refusing to see doctors or simply just not telling their daughter they are seriously ill because they don’t want to bother her. Lars tells Farmer at one point, “Things get worse in such small increments you can get used to anything.”

Farmer’s parent live in a bad neighborhood in southern Los Angeles. They experience the 1992 L.A. riots as shut-ins, her mother not being able to leave the couch. Farmer’s father can see the show more flames from their front door. Their house is in disrepair, and like most elderly couples, they get to a point where they just can’t keep up with the cooking and cleaning. Farmer regularly visits to clean the house, shop for groceries, and learn about her parents’ lives; but it is too much for one person to do part-time. She hints throughout the years that they need assisted living, but both of her parents refuse until it is no longer an option. In fact, her father makes her promise that he will be able to die in his own house.

Anyone who has cared for a loved one in that last season of life, or witnessed their parents care for their grandparents, will attest to the heartbreaking truth about the human condition Farmer has captured in pen. This book, like Art Spiegelman’s Maus, will likely become a classic in the graphic novel medium for its artistic craftsmanship and emotional power. show less

Joyce Farmer, a revered underground comics cartoonist, has written her first full-length graphic novel and it may be the most powerful publication of the year. Chronicling the last four years of the lives of Lars and Rachel, Special Exits is a humorous, insightful, and ultimately heartbreaking story that’s based on Joyce Farmer’s own experiences with the death of her father and stepmother. It’s a difficult story to read, where old age and fears keep the elderly couple from venturing beyond the doorstep of their South Los Angeles home, but it also creates a profound appreciation in the reader for being able to share in their experiences and lives.

The connection I felt to this book seemed more in spite of it's format than because of it. I felt some sections deeply, having spent many days and nights with my grandparents as they reached the end of their days, but this book, perhaps out of some admirable impulse to stay evenhanded and "realistic" gives no more weight in the layout or art to any moment over another, rendering it all in eight panels a page, whether it is depicting feeding a cat or the mother's last day. It had an unfortunate chilling effect for me, because beyond the mechanical limitations it is a remarkably perceptive and empathetic look at the challenges and rewards of being with the elderly as their bodies fail and death approaches.

Farmer spent a large chunk of her life as an underground feminist cartoonist. She co-started Tits & Clits Comix. Helped put out Abortion Eve, and contributed to the all-woman comic, Wimmen's Comix. Most of this work was produced in the seventies and early eighties. It did not pay well and she mostly gave it up and became a bail bondsman. I ran across an issue or two of her work but wasn't a huge fan. Likely too young when I saw it.

Instead of completely giving up her cartooning, she started sketching her care and involvement in her father's and stepmother's last years. The balance between contributing and taking over are wonderfully shown here. She sent the panels to R. Crumb and he encouraged her to keep drawing them until the end. show more They eventually were published as Special Exits. It went on to win the National Cartoonists Society's Graphic Novel Award for 2011. show less

If you have aging parents, read this along with Roz Chast's _Can We Talk About Something More Pleasant_ as case studies, and also for reflections of your own experiences. You are/were not alone.

This honest, sad and very important graphic biography chronicles the final years of Lars and Rachel, the author’s own parents. She draws and tells about the relationship they have with one another and with her, as well as the experiences of their last years in hospice and dying. It is not like any other depiction of aging and needs to be read.

Well, this is not a story to be reading during any kind of existential crisis or while pondering mortality on any level. The artwork is gorgeous though. In fact, I got distracted numerous times while reading just looking at all the lovely line work in the drawings.