The NYT magazine Lauds Comics

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/11/magazine/11GRAPHIC.html?ei=5062&en=78000acde124f2b4&ex=1090123200&partner=GOOGLE&pagewanted=all&position=

This article from the NYT postulates that comic books are the new novels... now what did Saint do with all that grant money...

Lots of references to Comics we've discussed like Maus, and a shout out to Ghostworld.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

pish posh. Comics are not replacing novels.  What's more, Maus could never be a novel, because a novel is fiction, and Maus is a biography/auto-biography. It's kind of frustrating that anyone thinks they can write an article about comics and it'll be "legitimate" if they refer to the work of Spiegelman.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

The term ''graphic novel'' is actually a misnomer. Satrapi's ''Persepolis'' books (another installment is due this summer) are nonfiction, and so, for that matter, is ''Maus,'' once you accept the conceit that human beings are played, so to speak, by cats, dogs, mice and frogs

they actually point that out Eric... Its a pretty well researched story really, you should read it.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

they're wrong then. None of those doing scholarly work refer to Maus as a "graphic novel" and they shouldn't try to popularize the term using it so wrongly.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Scholars may classify it one way, but a quick glance in Barnes and Noble and Borders will fly in the face of that classification. Maus and non-fiction books like it are almost always found in the comics or graphic novel section and not with history, or biography, except on the rare occasion that a specific topic (say the holocaust) is spotlighted.
In the last game trade magazine I read I saw a new hardcover Release of Maus I and Maus II described as "one of the most powerful graphic novels of our time"
So the term is out, and in general use, and its preferable to "funny book" or "comic" even if scholars hate it.

[stacer]

Quite a few people in the children's lit arena call it a graphic novel, with the caveat that it's not a novel, but don't know what else to call it.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

How about "Graphic Biography?"
is this so hard?

I submit that it's ONLY in the "graphic novel" section, because there aren't enough to make a whole section of it. If you had a thousand biographies in that format, it would have a "graphic biography" section.

I have no problem calling it "comics" because Eisner's term "Sequential Art" and McCloud's term "Sequential Storytelling" too loaded and appears to exclude certain comics (like the Far Side, which was rarely "sequential")
But novel seems entirely too loaded.

Besides, my REAL contention is that they are not replacing the novel. That's a ridiculous concept. Sure the number of comics published as books instead of monthly serials is climbing, but that hardly means that the art of the prose novel is dying off or being reduced in importance. This is not a trend that is real. And that, to me, throws into question anything else the article says if it is, as you say, about graphic novels replacing prose novels.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

so you havent even read it?

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I read nothing on NYT. They make me register and that means they need cookies.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

If you haven't read it, how can you criticize it?l I linked to it because I thought it was an article you'd like to read... they make some interesting parallels between the downfall of poetry and the rise of the novel and trends developing with manga and graphic novels. Maybe you could check it out at work.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

calm down.

I criticized the ideas I heard generated by your discussion. Whatever the article says, I doubt it will change my opinions of assertions I find patently absurd.

No, i won't go check it out. Because, as I said, I do not read the NYT web site. For the exact same reason that I no longer visit the Washington Post's web site and won't visit CNN's if they start the same practice.