New Engineering by Yuichi Yokoyama

New Engineering by Yuichi Yokoyama - 232 pages

Whereas the two books by Yuichi Yokoyama I've previously posted here (Garden and Travel) were each complete graphic novels, New Engineering is a collection of shorter works.  Most of these shorter scenes focus on the creation of some odd and imaginative work of engineering: Workers create a mountain out of rocks, astro-turf, and fake trees and paint rivers down the sides.  A man photo copies another man's clothes and creates his own outfit by taping together the copies.  In the title story, workers create a glass room at the bottom of a a lake, and then celebrate their achievement.

A large minority of shorts in the collection focus on highly kinetic and acrobatic fight scenes and gymnastic feats featuring a similar cast of characters to Garden.  New Engineering adds to the "myth" of  Garden (if you could get away with using a word like "myth" to describe such avant garde compositions) by showing how some of the highly geometric and decorative masks and costumes  from the latter were "engineered."  It's almost as if the "stories" are a fun "how-to" on creating sculptural and architectural forms that have no real purpose other than their beauty and the rewards of the process of creation.

Like with the other books, I am again blown away by the way Yokoyama distills actions and movement into brisk procedural bursts.  One highly mechanic one page short is merely the requisite actions and exchanges of a man buying a drink from a vendor.  "Characters" in his works are merely anonymous role players who are either building something, breaking something, or admiring such works.  Who knows and who cares why they do it.  The process of creation and the beautiful architectural forms are their own reward.  As three of his anonymous characters put it after completing their underwater room, "The planned action has been competed.  The view is beautiful.  The project is a success."

The Facades by Eric Lundgren

The Facades, Eric Lundgren, 215 Pages

If you're reading this blog, I probably needn't tell you how I found out about this book --It's the brainchild of Central Library's own Eric Lundgren.  I didn't read one book so much as three.  Alternating between the proof copy he graciously gave my department, the copy I bought from him myself, and the bestseller copy at Central, I was able to read it at a fairly brisk pace(for me anyhow - I am a notoriously slow reader).

The Facades is a book about the outward and inward investigations of the forlorn Sven Norberg as he searches the alleys and auditoriums of the city Trude (a pointed analogue for our own fair city) for his missing wife, the revered and adored opera singer Molly Norberg. 

Sven's hapless quest introduces the reader to the strange characters and institutions of this improbable yet familiar city.  For me, this improbability is exactly what makes Facades such a joy to read and gives it its existential bite.   Operatic and imaginative flourishes such a shopping mall built like a labyrinth, a public library protected from bulldozers by renegade armed librarians, and a rest home run like a competitive graduate school program for writing memoirs set the tone of the novel, which is the sort of sardonic voice you'd find in the films of Terry Gilliam or Jean-Pierre Jeunet.  Trude and its inhabitants are just "larger-than-life" enough to cut through the mire of realism long enough to poke at the fleshy guts beneath.

But, this surreal scaffolding is just the beginning.  Trude is peopled with all the gory details of an immersive living-breathing metropolis, much like Sven's son's hyper-violent video game "Bad Cops, No Badges."  While you're there  you'll want to take a stroll down "Dead Mayor Blvd.", wander the aisles of the teen-clothing mall-store "Sparkles, Cuz!", or stealthily procure a copy of the library themed smut film "Indecent Reference."

 In Trude, the enigmatic architect Bernhard designs his buildings in defiance of the city.  Like the "Ringstrasse", that shopping mall built like a labyrinth, his works entice and frustrate at the same time, they are bitter love letters from a reluctant citizen.   Lundgren keeps the pages turning doling out clues to aid Sven's lonely quest, which often gives the book the feel and momentum of a mystery novel.  But, beware reader, The Facades is a Bernhard original.

When I'm Old and Other Stories

When I'm Old and Other Stories by Gabrielle Bell, 127 pages

I first read Gabrielle Bell in the pages of Kramer's Ergot, an anthology now in its 8th volume which I consider the holy grail of experimental comics.  The short excerpt was part of the graphic novel Cecil and Jordan in New York.  This story, which reads like autobiography, takes an amazing turn when the main character, feeling both objectified and paralyzed actually turns into chair!

Later I was amazed to find that filmmaker Michel Gondry adapted this story for his addition to the film tryptic Tokyo!, (which for my money wins hands down over the New York tryptic New York Stories.)  I also enjoyed Bell's addition to the Drawn & Quarterly Showcase.  So, when this book turned up as a possible withdrawal item, I made sure it made it back to the shelf where it belongs (if only to have a chance to read it myself.)

When I'm Old collects Bell's early work which focuses on the trials of youth trying to find its place in the world through jobs, relationships, traveling, art etc.  Graphically and thematically, it's all over the place. You get a sense Bell is playing around with different styles and genres(fairy tale, gothic, slice-of-life) in an attempt to find her voice.  While most of the stories have a rough, zine-like feel, Bell's storytelling abilities, as well as her sharp social observations, are as keen as ever.  And, like any good zine, there's plenty of angsty commiseration that will make you nod your head in recognition.

Garden by Yuichi Yokoyama

Garden by Yuichi Yokoyama, 319 pages.

Having read Yuichi Yokoyama's Travel(see previous post), I was eager to read more.  Garden is very much in the same vein as Travel with its lack of narrative and focus on movement and landscape.

A group of explorers with varied physiological make-up (many have strange objects for heads and geometric shapes for hands) traverse bizarre manufactured landscapes, confronting physically and mentally demanding challenges and discovering exciting new landscapes, machines, rooms, and roads.  All the while, its growing hoard of explorers discuss the purpose of what they've found and the best route forward.

The feel of the book is somewhere between playing a highly abstract video game and being pulled forward though a strange and vivid dreamscape.  Garden's world is one of unlimited discovery, a kind of child's playground for its strange characters to crawl, climb, and glide over.  There's a camera that projects your face on a mountain, jets that fly over taking aerial photographs that rain to the ground like puzzle pieces that form a map, and a town where hills, houses, and trees are all on castors and can be moved around at will.  There is a staggering amount of architectural/spatial imagination packed into its 319 briskly read pages.

I enjoyed Garden even more than Travel.  For me, Yokoyama's work is an exciting new direction in comics that I hope to see much more of.

Travel by Yuichi Yokoyama

Travel by Yuichi Yokoyama, 202 pages.

We're trying to beef up the graphic novels section at Central.  I consulted a friend, who is a far more avid reader of manga than I, on what titles we should have in the collection.  He was adamant about the works of Yuichi Yokoyama, a growing contemporary Japanese figure in the world of art comics.  I added them to the list and eventually a couple arrived on the shelf.

Travel's spare title and even more spare presentation caught my eye immediately.   At first glance the book seems defiantly formalistic and reading through confirms these impressions.  The book isn't so much a narrative as a guided tour through the particular feeling of traveling by train.  However this train is far from ordinary.

On the one hand the book succeeds in recreating a feeling of constant movement.  As it follows three unnamed characters though increasingly bizarre train cars, the panels move from detail to detail and the pages from car to car.  The book builds a kind of physical momentum that is rare in comics.

On the other hand it is a reverie to Yokoyama's imaginative manufactured landscapes and spaces.  The book is as much about these surreal architectural forms as anything else, and seems to be telling the reader that travel itself, with all its exhilarating movement and strange vistas, is perhaps more interesting than destination.

I loved it.  And lucky for me, we have another of his books: Garden(my next post), and more on the way.