Bibliophile 6/9/08: Little Things: A Memoir in Slices

[The following was written by Synthesis Weekly columnist Emilie Clark. She can be reached at emilie@synthesis.net.]

Little Things: A Memoir in Slices
By Jeffrey Brown
Touchstone

So I’ll just come right out and say it: This is not a great book. People who are coming to Jeffrey Brown’s work for the first time should avoid this book entirely (try Clumsy and I Am Going to Be Small instead). But any book by Brown is better than a book by many other people, so let’s not disregard it entirely.
Brown started his career in comics tentatively, forced to publish his first books on his own. But now he’s become a household name — at least if you live in the kind of house where you discuss indie comics. He is famous for his realistic, heartbreaking dissections of the intimacies and distances in relationships. Little Things is his longest book to date, and, rather than being one autobiographical narrative he presents the events of two years of his life in smaller, unstructured narratives. As you might imagine the stories focus on the little, and often more mundane moments in life. Brown’s large-headed, stubble-heavy caricature of himself spends a lot of time having boring conversations with his friends, gets a cat, and goes on a lot of trips to visit friends. Even the more exciting parts of the narrative — including two hospitalizations and a car accident — are reduced to the smaller, quieter moments.

…more after the jump…

In the first comic of the book we see Brown talking with a friend about the purpose of the comic. He explains that the book is “about how things interconnect in life, you know, how different things mean something to us? Like, the way certain songs become associated with specific events or people and, um, how everyday stuff is what we, um. . . how we find meaning in our lives. . .” And this expressed goal works in some places. The first real story of the book, “These Things, These Things” shows Brown going about his daily life with interspersed flashbacks, all while buying a succession of Andrew Bird albums. You can see how each album does come to represent different things for him and remind him of earlier times in his life. But most of the stories don’t coalesce as well. His signature style is intentionally sketchy and loose, which often plays to his advantage. But without the order of a conventional narrative this can make many of the comics hard to understand or relate to. This was especially apparent in the last few stories of the book, which had the potential to be great but got lost somewhere along the way.
But even if Brown didn’t exactly achieve his intended goal, that doesn’t mean the book is unpleasant to read. One of the marks of a great storyteller is the ability to make the reader feel as if they have lived inside the book. Books like these, which move slow and steady, always make me feel calm and peaceful. One example is Brown’s multitude of visits to a local coffee shop named “Earwax.” Looking at panel after panel of Brown drawing and chatting with the staff made me feel like I was lounging and working at the coffee shop, which happens to be one of my favorite things to do. The same goes for the longer story about a backpacking trip he takes, which evoked the feeling I get while hiking, without having a specific discussion about what one feels while backpacking.
And it helps that Brown has not lost his innate sense of how relationships work. His conversations with friends and family are so close to reality that it makes you wonder if he records everything. A particular favorite moment of mine is when a friend tries to make him friends with someone she met, who happens to be a bit boring. He feels awkward in his forced friendship, but when he tries to bring it up with her he hurts her feelings. It’s a completely believable situation and one of those small moments that says a lot about the nature of friendship. This honesty is what has made Brown a household name and what shines through even in his weaker work. Do yourself a favor and check out something of his, although perhaps not this one.

Tags: autobiographical narrative, car accident, caricature, conversations, different things, dissections, distances, first books, flashback, household name, indie comics, intimacies, jeffrey brown, memoir, moments in life, mundane moments, narratives, touchstone, weekly columnist