Asterios Polyp

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This brazenly original and complex work is easily one of the year's best novels, graphic or otherwise…Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.”— San Jose Mercury News Noah: you may find it unsuccessful, but I think you’re being a little obtuse when you’re suggesting that the things left out are merely plot holes. Read the book again — it’s clearly all extremely well considered. That you could think otherwise suggests to me that you haven’t been paying attention. Reality, perception, and memory play a huge role in Mazzucchelli's work here even as they do in everything I've yet read by Ishiguro. The journey of this full-of-himself man, Asterios, is begun through an event beyond his control, an act of god. He ends up doing some self-exploration, and we go along with him as he, or the narrator (his dead/unborn twin brother), shows us what kind of man he is/was. He's actually a well-meaning, albeit full-of-himself sort, the kind of which most of us have met. He's smug and happy to stay in his comfort zone so, as such, he is unable to even see where he goes wrong. He's not a bad guy; just no one had ever pointed out his flaws to him. The narrator is a haunting figure who helps Asterios realize he DOES have control over some aspects of his life -- not all of them, but some. The title character, Asterios Polyp, is a professor and architect of Greek and Italian descent who teaches at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. After a lightning strike burns up his apartment, he leaves the city on a Greyhound bus and takes up employment as an auto mechanic in the town of Apogee (somewhere in America, likely Arizona), the farthest point his money will take him. The novel is interspersed with scenes from his past (ostensibly narrated by his stillborn twin brother, Ignazio), including his childhood and troubled marriage, as well as dreams and allegorical sequences. Finally, Asterios must not only confront his own flawed nature, but the implacable and amoral whims of the gods themselves.

Thanks Matthias: I think we’ve mostly cleared up the confusion. Hurrah! I did think you were situating Asterios Polyp as an actual example of this “delayed Modernism.” I think there’s still some worthwhile grappling over this idea of delayed Modernism — your Beaty essay starts that — but I’m ok with that happening in a different context. You’ll be in awe of how perfect it is and certainly envious of it if you are a writer. What a beautiful, staggeringly brilliant piece of literature.”— Contra Costa Times Critics have decried the modern graphic novel’s focus on form at the expense of content. With “Asterios Polyp,” Mazzucchelli has put paid to that charge: It’s funny, it’s warm and it’s beautiful. Go read it.”—Newsday.comA dazzling expertly constructed entertainment...that is a satirical comedy of remarriage, a treatise on aesthetics and design and ontology, late life Künstlerroman, a Novel of Ideas with two capital letters..." — The New York Times Book Review Noah: I don’t understand how you can maintain that the things I’m talking about are not in the comic — look at the divorce letters, for example, and what about the scene where Hana breaks down? To claim that those things just appeared in the comic without Mazzucchelli wanting them there for a specific reason goes against the whole tenor of the work. He has clearly thought long and hard about the choices he made.

This award winning graphic novel is an exploration of duality. It unfolds between the past and present. Slowly introducing us to the complex, conflicting yet fascinating charter that is Asterios.

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Mazzucchelli manages to combine breathless formal experimentation and read feeling into a story where every line, color choice, and panel arrangement builds toward a cohesive whole, lending an air of epic proportions to what would otherwise be a simple tale.”— Library Journal Asterios Polyp is the work of a veteran artist firing on all cylinders, who, despite having worked his way through the sequential art ringer for a few decades now, has managed to craft something remarkably fresh.”— Daily Cross Hatch The more you study Polyp, the more there is to discover. This is a book that stands with works by Updike, Roth, and other giants of American literature. It is undoubtedly one of the best novels of the year.”— The Stranger