Even though it’s a graphic novel, Asterios Polyp is certainly not kid's stuff.
By now, no one should think of comic books as only children’s books. It would be pretty hard to make that claim anymore, even beyond the dens of comic book shops and the annual geek gathering, ComicCon. The success of Dark Knight and the buzz surrounding Watchmen has pushed this style of literature into the public eye like never before. Time awarded Watchmen a spot on its 100 best novels of the 20th century list (and deservedly so). A Pulitzer-prize-winning novel (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay) detailed the so-called “Golden Age” of comic books, and breathed new insight and passion into a genre too often dismissed by the reading public as “kid’s stuff.”
Asterios Polyp isn’t kid’s stuff.
Yes, it’s a graphic novel, so the characters are all drawn and speak in speech bubbles. But it’s also about—among other things—the dualistic nature of humanity (and whether or not that dualism is even a valid construct), the seeming randomness of fate, faith, marriage, self-esteem and whether or not the world as we view it is simply an extension of the self.
Whew.
The main character, the titular Asterios Polyp, is a miserable, 50-year-old failed architect coming off of a painful divorce and trying to escape a New York that has swallowed him (and his pride). His apartment burns down and sends him on an odyssey of sorts—straight into the arms of a kind gas station attendant and his strange shaman of a wife. The overarching story is a story of love won, lost and pined after again and again. It’s a redemptive, non-linear story told in present tenses and flashbacks expertly woven together by artist and writer David Mazzucchelli.
Polyp often reads like an illustrated primer of Philosophy 101. It throws in new schools of thought in each chapter, and then immediately challenges those ideas on the same page. One chapter succinctly lays out a theory of Aristophanes (the idea that men and women were once a single form that were split by Zeus and have spent the rest of time trying to put themselves back together again) and uses it as a lens through which the rest of the book might be framed. Another chapter looks at the faith of Polyp’s mother and holds it up as the reason that his mother cares for his aging and decrepit father. Explaining herself to her unbelieving son, Mrs. Polyp says, “Just because we don’t hear the Lord, it doesn’t mean He’s stopped talking to us.”
The art style is, quite simply, breathtaking. Using a yellow palette to illustrate the present and a blue/red/purple motif to show the past, Mazzucchelli flits in and out of different artistic styles with ease, giving each character a life of their own. Each person in the book becomes more than just scribbles on paper; their speech bubbles, the style of writing for their dialogue and even the way they’re drawn all vary drastically from one another. Since Polyp is an architect, his character is drawn with geometric figures and right angles; his speech boxes are rectangular. His wife, Hana, is a sculptor and is drawn using scribbles and her speech is shown by flowing, circular text. The way Mazzucchelli manages to weave a narrative using just the pictures lends the book a feeling and tone that couldn’t be captured in words alone.
Polyp speeds by, pushed on by its unique and strangely empathetic characters. Even when Polyp himself seems like a complete curmudgeon, it’s immediately juxtaposed with a broken man who just seeks to find some meaning in a random world. The people he meets along the way aid him or act as foils to his desires—some of them even echo his own pomposity and force him to eventually come to grips with his own behavior. The universe of Polyp seems to be a very moral one—in spite of its main character’s doubt about anything good happening.
Overall, Asterios Polyp is certainly worth a read. It’s deep, engaging and visually stunning. It’s a quick read, but not in the way that “beach lit” is. It’s quick because it’s told in pictures, but as soon as you’re finished, you’ll reach for it again to figure out what visual cues were put in the beginning and to continue chewing on the thoughtful ideas presented. It stands among the year’s best novels—much more than kid’s stuff.
