Blankets Top Shelf 2003

There is a memorable page in Craig Thompson's "Good-Bye Chunky Rice" in which a character named Solomon leans out the window of his home, mourning the departure of his pet bird, Merle. The scene is shown in what Scott McCloud might call a three-tiered "polyptych," a twelve-panel grid which, at first glance, constitutes a continuous image of a house. However, a closer inspection reveals that Thompson has dis-aligned the images so that the panels don't quite match up. The page is a grid of small, jarring discontinuities, utilizing comics' inherent formal fragmentation to communicate a character's inner disquietude. This particular technique does not recur in the book; the page does not allude to a larger formal structure. The effect is momentary and emotional. If the formal device suggests further possibilities, Thompson does not pursue them, nor does he need to in this case. "Chunky Rice" is a brief, lilting book that aggregates such moments to create a common tone and elicit an empathetic response. Similar devices pepper "Blankets'" 592 pages: the result, instead, is an exhausting account of adolescent romance and guilt, made frustrating by a multitude of discrete formal techniques employed for effect — and often only for effect. The book's many individual forms are dis-aligned, like the panels in that "Chunky Rice" page; this time, however, the effect is distinctly unsatisfactory, making "Blankets" less than the sum of its parts.  continue...