Why I didn’t want to like Jimmy Corrigan
When I first picked up Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth I was both visually drawn to it and repelled by the cleverness on the opening pages. I am well over half way through now and I’ve been drawn into the story, but it took awhile. I want to explore why I was so hesitant, and I guess this has more to do with me than it has to do with Ware or his book.
The font, the colors, the design of the cover all seemed familiar to me because of Ware’s work with This American Life and McSweeney’s. I never subscribed to McSweeney’s (my wife did from the beginning) or read any of Eggers books (I should), but I somewhat cringingly have to put myself in that kinda quirky, younger NPR listener, too-cool-for-school demographic. And Ware’s style is somehow a part of this and I am drawn to it. That said, as much as I love Ira Glass and have learned to respect Egger’s ethos, I have always been turned off by the cleverness that often oozes from their work. On the opening pages of Jimmy Corrigan we find insulting reviews of the work and incredibly complex pictorial charts(?) that I puzzled over briefly then threw up my hands feeling vaguely stupid, but still not caring enough to spend more time. Flip through a few pages and there are cut outs that only die hard indie hipster arts and crafters will bother with. Of course Ware did work with a literary magazine that sent one issue in the form of junk mail and another included a comb and deck of cards. Uggggh.
But Eggers and McSweeney’s have done amazing work encouraging young writers. As smug as Ira Glass is at times, his show presents some of the most compelling stories you will hear on the radio. And after I got through the first few chapters of Jimmy Corrigan, I have to admit that there is something heartbreaking about his pitiful characters.
But
