Book-It 'o14! Book #1
The Fifty Books Challenge, year five! ( 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013) This was a secondhand find.
Title: Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me: A Graphic Memoir by Ellen Forney
Details: Copyright 2012, Gotham Books
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): " Shortly before her thirtieth birthday, Forney was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Flagrantly manic and terrified that medications would cause her to lose creativity, she began a years-long struggle to find mental stability without losing herself or her passion.
Searching to make sense of the popular concept of the "crazy artist," she finds inspiration from the lives and work of other artists and writers who suffered from mood disorders, including Vincent van Gogh, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Sylvia Plath.
With dazzling storytelling, bold illustrations, and razor-sharp wit, Marbles offers a wholly unique and visceral glimpse in to the effects of a mood disorder on an artist's work and seeks to answer: Is mental illness a curse, or is it actually a gift?"
Why I Wanted to Read It: Graphic novel memoirs are an almost instant-read for me.
How I Liked It: Despite the wishy-washy back cover (including a final line which boasts a particular cluelessness that borders on dangerous) which I didn't bother to read, the book is engaging and no doubt helpful to those that have bipolar disorder.
However, and this is a big however, the book (and by turn, the author) boast a distinctly outdated mindset when it comes to mental illness. While somewhat understandable in the era in which the book begins (the late '90s), the inner battle the author faces when it comes to the fear that her creativity comes from her illness is thankfully something that's largely debunked in today's easier information age. Illness is illness and while certainly there have been eccentrics throughout history whose eccentricity was incorrectly labeled as mental illness, that does not invalidate that mental illness is a very real entity. Creative people can get sick, too, and as discussed by several artists and writers recently, treatment of mental illness actually helps artists create art, as like any illness, it can be hard to function when you're sick.
The author unfortunately apparently doesn't have access to this type of dialog, as she battles the "treat it or don't" question that frames the disease as being attached to her artistic ability/creativity (which is is of course, just not the way she thinks). What's the ultimate downfall of this book is that that question is still framed as being a question. Mental illness is NOT "a gift."
That makes it all the more frustrating that the book is, as I said, engaging, entertaining, and informative. Her illustrative style falls on the cartoonier of the graphic novel scale, but expressions and emotions are no less clear nor subtle as the occasional calls for (I was occasionally reminded of Art Spiegelman's style).
The book still stands, despite its central flaw, as a strong memoir about mental health, about artists and how we cope with society, and how the two can intersect.
Notable: The author includes bookended "single image stereograms" (think of the Magic Eye books) of a jumble of cartoon font that jumps to read "YOU ARE CRAZY". She explains in the back of the book that she created it to appear at the point in the novel when she's overwhelmed by the information about bipolar disorder and feels like it's forming a single message to her. As the author explains, she felt a "Magic Eye" drawing would stall the story, so she tweaked it to have the letters printed instead amidst a cloud of text. It's a neat kind of economy to save and use the original as front and back facing titles (even if you are like me and tried to figure the picture out for yourself before reading the description wherein she tells you what it actually says).
Title: Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me: A Graphic Memoir by Ellen Forney
Details: Copyright 2012, Gotham Books
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): " Shortly before her thirtieth birthday, Forney was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Flagrantly manic and terrified that medications would cause her to lose creativity, she began a years-long struggle to find mental stability without losing herself or her passion.
Searching to make sense of the popular concept of the "crazy artist," she finds inspiration from the lives and work of other artists and writers who suffered from mood disorders, including Vincent van Gogh, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Sylvia Plath.
With dazzling storytelling, bold illustrations, and razor-sharp wit, Marbles offers a wholly unique and visceral glimpse in to the effects of a mood disorder on an artist's work and seeks to answer: Is mental illness a curse, or is it actually a gift?"
Why I Wanted to Read It: Graphic novel memoirs are an almost instant-read for me.
How I Liked It: Despite the wishy-washy back cover (including a final line which boasts a particular cluelessness that borders on dangerous) which I didn't bother to read, the book is engaging and no doubt helpful to those that have bipolar disorder.
However, and this is a big however, the book (and by turn, the author) boast a distinctly outdated mindset when it comes to mental illness. While somewhat understandable in the era in which the book begins (the late '90s), the inner battle the author faces when it comes to the fear that her creativity comes from her illness is thankfully something that's largely debunked in today's easier information age. Illness is illness and while certainly there have been eccentrics throughout history whose eccentricity was incorrectly labeled as mental illness, that does not invalidate that mental illness is a very real entity. Creative people can get sick, too, and as discussed by several artists and writers recently, treatment of mental illness actually helps artists create art, as like any illness, it can be hard to function when you're sick.
The author unfortunately apparently doesn't have access to this type of dialog, as she battles the "treat it or don't" question that frames the disease as being attached to her artistic ability/creativity (which is is of course, just not the way she thinks). What's the ultimate downfall of this book is that that question is still framed as being a question. Mental illness is NOT "a gift."
That makes it all the more frustrating that the book is, as I said, engaging, entertaining, and informative. Her illustrative style falls on the cartoonier of the graphic novel scale, but expressions and emotions are no less clear nor subtle as the occasional calls for (I was occasionally reminded of Art Spiegelman's style).
The book still stands, despite its central flaw, as a strong memoir about mental health, about artists and how we cope with society, and how the two can intersect.
Notable: The author includes bookended "single image stereograms" (think of the Magic Eye books) of a jumble of cartoon font that jumps to read "YOU ARE CRAZY". She explains in the back of the book that she created it to appear at the point in the novel when she's overwhelmed by the information about bipolar disorder and feels like it's forming a single message to her. As the author explains, she felt a "Magic Eye" drawing would stall the story, so she tweaked it to have the letters printed instead amidst a cloud of text. It's a neat kind of economy to save and use the original as front and back facing titles (even if you are like me and tried to figure the picture out for yourself before reading the description wherein she tells you what it actually says).