I came to this marvelous gay curmudgeon throught the fanstasy novels of Tolkien and through the mystery novels of Ross MacDonald (Kenneth Millar). I'm one of those people who upon finding an author I enjoy reading becomes obessessed with them. I read not only everything they have writen, but often every major book written about them. In the case of W.H. Auden, I had just finished the LOTR for the second time and began looking for commentary about Tolkien and his work. I discovered that Auden was instrumental in getting the word out about how great Tolkien's work was. He wrote major reviews for each volume of the trilogy for the New York Times. He felt it was a masterpiece and explained why. I ate everyword up as if it were manna because even though I did not have an Oxford education, I felt the same way. I loved Tolkiens work as a young boy; Auden loved it as an educated man. He put me on the path to both loving and understanding Tolkien's work that has existed to the present day. I read the LOTR ever year starting in October. And I also frequently re-read Auden's essays on Tolkien as well.

The Ross MacDonald connection is a little more direct; I discovered Auden after devouring all of Ross MacDonald's novels I could find and then finding Auden's essay on the mystery in an anthology. Intrigued, I followed the essay and discovered that Auden was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan where Kenneth Millar (R.M.'s real name) was a graduate student. They hit it off well and since Auden was a huge fan of mysteries, he got Kenneth interested in the form because Auden felt the mystery was worthy of serious artistic expression. Kenneth went on to publish mysteries that were so good they caused usually dismissive critics to take notice. His novel "The Underground Man" was the first mystery novel to be reviewed on the front page of the New York Times by Eudora Welty. It was a great review, but I've always wished it could have been Auden who reviewed it there.

W.H. Auden is an unusual passion of mine because he's never had that patina of "greatness" for me that other artists like Robert Lowell or Robert Graves have. I've always thought of him as my very, very smart "best friend" because, like Auden, I never really acknowledged a distinction between "high" and "low" art. Krazy Kat was as "artistic" to me as "Crime and Punishment"; I am equally fascinated with "Popeye" as I am with "Princess Mononoke". Auden was a great consumer of popular culture, much like that other wonderful queen, Walt Whitman.
In Auden's brilliant collection of essays, "The Dyer's Hand" (1962) he makes the point that:

"The critical judgment "This book is good or bad" implies good or bad at all times, but in relation to the readers future a book is good now if it's future effect is good, and, since the future is unknown, no judgment can be made. The safest guide therefore is the naive uncritical principle of personal liking. A person at least knows one thing about his future, that however different it may be from his present, it will be his. However he may have changed he will still be himself, not somebody else. What he likes now, therefore, whether an impersonal judgment approve or disapprove, has the best chance of becoming useful to him later"

That quote was from his essay (included in "Dyer's Hand") "Making, Doing and Knowing". You can imagine how impressive this was to a 17 year old student with a love of classic literature and a secret love of heroic fantasy. In school, these subjects were never allowed to meet. With Auden, they were encouraged to meet, go out to dinner and then have wonderful sex.
No wonder Auden has been a constant in my life for over three decades.

Auden wrote in just about every field. He is probably equally regarded for his fine poetry (I love his poems about complex machines and wild woodland hills) and his criticism. If you haven't read Musee des Beaux Arts, stop reading this and go out and buy any collection of Auden's with this poem included (try the "Collected Poems"). He also wrote avant-garde plays, translations of opera, documentary film scripts and never found a crossword puzzle he didn't like. The definitive biography (for me) is the one written by Humphrey Carpenter titled "W.H. Auden: A Biography. While not a writer with high critical marks, I have admired every biography he has written (including his Tolkien biography which I've read at least 10 times). Humphrey set's Auiden's work and life in perfect contrast/unison. His homosexuality was always a part of his work, but never defined him in the way that writers like John Rechy or Jean Genet. He was gay and to hell with you if you didn't like it, he was too busy reading, smoking cigarettes, doing crosswords, drinking cheap wine, daydreaming, finding the third volume in the Maigret detective series and staring at young men. Hmnn...he does sound like John Rechy there. Perhaps I'd better re-consider my idea.

Almost every year I come back to "The Dyer's Hand". And each time I find something new to admire and think about. Listen to this from his essay "Reading":

"Good Taste is much more a matter of discrimination than of exclusion, and when good taste feels compelled to exclude, it is with regret, not with pleasure"

and this, from "Writing":

"Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about. There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test those around him with tiresome behavior; what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act. Does this not explain a good deal of avant-garde art?"

Auden chooses, for the most part, to write in the epigrammatic style of short sentences or short paragraphs. This allows him free range to address a variety of topics within a single subject, unlike the traditional essay form with it's relentless forward motion. There are a few traditional essays in the book. "The Guilty Vicarage" is a wonderful explication and love poem for the mystery novel; "Genius & Apostle" introduced Ibsen to me as a vital and modern artist with much to say about life and happiness; "The I Without a Self" gave insight into the mind/world of Kafka that goes beyond simply reading Kafka. Listen to what he says about Kafka's readers:

"Kafka may be one of those writers who are doomed to be read by the wrong public. Those on whom their effect would be most beneficial are repelled and on those whom they most fascinate their effect may be dangerous, even harmful"

What's fascinating about this quote is that initially one is inclined to disagree, but upon reflection (especially after reading works like "Penal Colony") one see's the real truth in Auden's words.

There are other essays on the "Master-Servant" relationship in Literature (some consider this the showpiece of the book), Shakespeare, Byron's Don Juan, Marianne Moore, Robert Frost (a wonderful essay with a funny/serious ending), D.H. Lawrence. But what finally most interests me in the "Dyer's Hand" is Auden's fascination with religion and God. I am by no means a Christian, nor do I believe in God or some "supernatural" realm of existence beyond this one. But when I read Auden I become a believer for the time I am reading his essays on relegion. Somehow, the "best friend" relationship with him surfaces and I am caught up in his storytelling. I like this. It allows me to secretly "try out" spiritual thinking while I'm in his company, but then maintain my own beliefs when I'm myself again. I supose this is the storyteller's "spell" that the ancients say Homer had in spades. I guess this makes Auden my "Homer", something I have never considered until now. I like that thought.

On Critics:

"What is the function of the critic? So far as I am concerned, he can do me one or more of the following services:

1) Introduce me to authors or works of art of which I was hitherto unaware
2)Convince me that I have undervalued an author or a work because I had not read them carefully enough.
3)Show me relations between works of different ages and cultures which I could never have seen for myself because I do not know enough and never shall.
4)Give a "reading" of a work which increases my understanding of it.
5)Throw light upon the process of artistic "Making"
6) Throw light upon the relation of art to life, to science, economics, ethics, relegion, etc."

Comic books were an enormous influence on me as a young boy. I was a Marvel Comic's kid and right at the time I needed to understand how to deal with the world around me Peter Parker and Ben Grimm were dealing with the same issues. Since my narcissitic parents paid little attention to their responsibilites of raising a child, I was left to find my answers in the pages of Fantastic Four, Dr. Strange and Spider Man (to name a few). My feelings of guilt, anger and confusion were what Marvel comics characters were dealing with as well. They were my daily companions and advisors. Plus, they got to save the world, which was a wonderful fantasy for me. Even Stan Lee's "nuff said" gruff style became my personal tick that probably annoyed the hell out of my schoolmates. Comic characters were my friends in ways that real people couldn't be. The entrance of Galactus in the Fantastic Four made me worry for the safety of the Silver Surfer for days. It was like my own father intruding on the pages of my private world. This was my first inkling of something called the "Epic" style. And like the great poet and essayist, W.H. Auden, who had no distinction between "high" and "low" art, I am still influenced today by those brilliant images and stories. Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby are as much a part of my imagination as Dore and Edward Hopper.

All of this is by way of introducing what has taken the place of comics for me now that I am fifty: graphic novels. As I grew older, college and theater became my obsessions and I was content to pick up the occasional comic, but I just couldn't find them as interesting now that I was an adult. Chekov and Kafka had edged out Thor and the Dread Dormammu. All of that changed when I read an excerpt from "Maus" in Raw Magazine. I was so impresseed that I went right out and bought this new "graphic novel" and spent the rest of the day immersed in this strange and beautiful world. I didn't know it at the time, but "Maus" was the first masterpiece of a form I have come to love in the same way as I did comics: the graphic novel. And I have been reading them with hunger for the last 10 years. We are in a renaissance of sorts for the graphic novel. I'd like to review two recent examples of the form that I think are wonderful.



Yoshihiro Tatsumi is the grandfather of Japanese underground comics. He started writing and drawing more adult themed stores as far back as the 1950's when most of the manga art of the time was garish and overblown. According to the excellent introduction by Adrian Tomine (himself a great graphic novelist), Mr. Tatsumi is a prolific artist who currently runs a bookstore and continues to create short illustrated stories that reflect his ambivalence about people and modern life. Amazingly, "The Push Man and Other Stories" is the first official English language collection to appear in the States. The 16 stories that make up this brilliant collection were all composed around 1969, but you wouldn't know it from this simplicity of his writing. Instead of aliens and monsters fighting high school kids, we have everyday people trying to make sense of their dead-end jobs and their philandering lovers. The "Push Man" of the title story is a young man who "pushes" the crowd into a packed subway car. His sexual fantasies of "pushing" young women are realized by a woman who, after getting drunk and having sex with the young man, invites her girlfriends over to "push back". In the end the young man is pushed into his own subway car and can't get out. The slightly cartoonish characters set against a highly realistic background are mesmerizing. Each panel is a small work of art that pulls you in to a world of hope and despair; boredom and violence.

Reading "Projectionist" is stomach-turning, but not because of anything that is shown on the page, but for what the story suggests is being seen. The projectionist of the story charges high class businessmen and their call-girls for an evening of "special" pornography that both disgust and arouse the viewers, but leave the projectionist unmoved. His loneliness and despair are depicted in the brilliant panels of him walking through cities in the cold wind with his briefcase full of hellsex in hand. The careful detail in creating the man's facial expressions lend pathos to the suprise and ironic ending. In fact, in reading the stories I'm struck over and over again with the variety and beauty of Mr. Tatsumi's characters. They behave in suprising and shocking ways; sudden violence or cruelty coming from repressed rage and desire; quiet desperation and an endless desire for some sort of connection to another human being. Sex is a major element in all of his stories. But it doesn't seem to appease the deeper longing inside of his characters. These are urban horror stories are told with the simplicity of Raymond Carver, but with the twist of a writer like David Lynch or Jonathan Carroll. The art of the graphic novel has never been more obvious than with this collection of stories by Yoshihiro Tatsumi, a writer I hope you will read. Fortunately, Mr. Toumine is hoping to bring out a whole series of this writer's works beginning with he present volume. Drawn & Quarterly, a Canadian publisher distributed in the U.S. by Farrar, Strauss, is to be contragulated for publishing this wonderful book and for desiging and edition that the author would be proud of. Let's hope this book is successful enough to continue the series.



Thomas Ott is another amazing cartoonist that has caught my eye recently. "Cinema Panopticum" is a completely wordless collection of stories all organized around a young girl who visits the Carnival, but doesn't have enough money to enjoy the rides or any of the booths. She is very sad as she starts to leave the park, but tucked away in the corner is a small tent with the words "Panopticum" on a sign over the entrance. She enters and finds 5 old-fashioned movie viewers with titles like "The Experiment" and "The Hotel" written above them. To her delight, she finds that she has just enough money to use all of the "panopticum viewers". Each movie she views is told as a seperate story in Ott's book. The little girls view becomes ours.

While Thomas Ott is not as subtle an artist as Tatsumi, his visual style and attention to detail is superb. Using a high contrast Black & White palette, carefully scratches each sliver of his characters so exactly that it is a marvel to behold. And this almost overly detailed style matches pefectly with the strange, supernatural themes of his stories. The detail makes the gruesome morbidness of his world seem real and believable. His characters are unusual and, at times, grotesque. Much like the garish world of the Carnival itself. In one panopticum story, "The Champion", a mexican wrestler has to wrestle with death himself when there is a prophecy of death in his family. Of course, there is a twist ending which the young girl in the Panopticum tent finds astonishing (and so do we). Antother story features a homeless man who discovers that the "end is near" and attempts to tell everyone. But no one listens and the world is destroyed. My favorite story is the last one called "The Little Girl". You can imagine how our young girl responds to it. The last panel of this wonderful graphic novel is of the young girls leg disappearing as she runs in terror fromt he tent.

There is certainly a good deal of horror fiction in Thomas Ott's writing, along with Twilight Zone and Stephen King, but Ott's style is so uniquely his own that he gives new life to old themes. Mr. Ott is Swiss and is the lead singer in the band called "The Playboys". Fantagraphics is publishing his work in America in beautiful hardcover editions with illustrated boards. This publisher seems to be at the fore-front of the graphic novel movement. A quick look at their website and you'll see many outstanding artists represented. I've begun to collect Thomas Ott. He's a remarkable artist who, in addition to his graphic novels and stories, also does political cartoons and cartoons for several newspapers.

If you have never read a graphic novel, now is the time to go out and buy one. We are in a highly creative era of this art form. Along with the two artists I have reviewed here, let me suggest a few others for you to consider.

The Black Hole by Charles Burns (The single best graphic novel I have ever read!)
The Watchmen by Alan Miller
Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron by Daniel Clowes
Maus by Art Spiegelman
Berlin: City of Stones by Jason Lutes
Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: The Beauty Supply District by Ben Katchor (and you thought "Death of a Salesman" was a good story? This graphic novel kicks it's ass)