I've never read a volume of Cerebus, if only because I have no way of reading those multi-volume epics unless there's a local library that stocks them.
I browsed those letters, Sim has a really fascinating theological outlook. I'd like to learn more.
okay so crap I remember reading at least one of your letters in the lettercols, and it stuck in my memory because of Sim's particularly inept response.
(it was the one with the line "I. Am. So. Tired. Of. Explaining." I filed it carefully in my mind because, had Sim been in the room with me, I would have turned to him at that point and asked "...you mean you already started?" or I would have kicked him in the crotch. I find these hypotheticals difficult.)
do you feel as though his answers to you-- the published ones as well as the unpublished-- have been responses as opposed to ongoing installments of Sim's internal monologue? I always wondered that when I read repeat letters in Cerebus, because I inevitably felt, well why did you continue writing to Sim when he'd made it clear that he would never consider incoming letters as anything more than excuses to say things he wanted to write anyway, but was too self-conscious to just blurt out. okay, that was phrased horribly, but do you feel as though he engaged with you
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You have it pretty much exactly right here. He does tend to talk past you, which is something I brought up in later letters (and he brushed aside casually). I did eventually stop writing to him, essentially for this very reason. He can be friendly and thoughtful, but after a while I began to realize that his selfless campaign to answer every possible question at great length was mainly a function of his desire to fill Collected Letters 2004 with more thorough explications of things he's already said. There didn't seem to be a great deal of 'give and take' going on. As I wrote to him after his first long response to me, he's already made his decisions and is completely disinterested in continuing to examine his positions for possible areas where they could be refined
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I think Sim's decision to publish just his own half of his correspondence is awfully telling, here. the very idea that his letters can be taken completely out of context and still be interesting/intelligible/coherent speaks volumes about the value he placed on his correspondents in the first place, ja?
but it was always a shame to me that Sim wouldn't engage. occasionally someone (usually a well-spoken liberal/feminist/whatever) would write a fascinating letter, which Sim would print in its entirety, and which he would then reduce to five or six numbered points to which he would respond in a sentence or three each, and which were as often as not stylistic issues or vocabulary choices rather than the meat of the letter. and it was hella frustrating, because anyone who's been reading Cerebus knows what Dave thinks by now-- the interesting question, I think, is why (or maybe how) he thinks these things, and watching him defend his points would go a long way towards illuminating this question
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If he was doing this for sales, it was a dismal failure, as Cerebus struggled to maintain a circulation of 6,000 in the last several years of its publication. Sim acknowledges that #186 made him persona non grata in the comics community -- he seems to enjoy the distinction. He's deadly serious about the ideas he puts forward in his essays.
I thought he spent most of the Moore dialogue back-pedaling. In one of my letters I accuse him of using #289/290 to 'answer' Moore. I think his theology (as outlined through Cerebus' Torah commentaries in the 'Latter Days' book, which Dave says dovetails with his own beliefs) took many of the turns it did partly as a method of countering many of the ideas Moore posited in the dialogue. In the Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman tribute book, which reprinted that whole piece, Dave contributed an introduction in which he suggests that Moore is possessed by a demon, and takes a number of cheap shots at him (as he also does in much of his newer writing when things turn towards 'Moore-like'
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I browsed those letters, Sim has a really fascinating theological outlook. I'd like to learn more.
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A lot of his prose writing is available through http://www.cerebusfangirl.com.
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(it was the one with the line "I. Am. So. Tired. Of. Explaining." I filed it carefully in my mind because, had Sim been in the room with me, I would have turned to him at that point and asked "...you mean you already started?" or I would have kicked him in the crotch. I find these hypotheticals difficult.)
do you feel as though his answers to you-- the published ones as well as the unpublished-- have been responses as opposed to ongoing installments of Sim's internal monologue? I always wondered that when I read repeat letters in Cerebus, because I inevitably felt, well why did you continue writing to Sim when he'd made it clear that he would never consider incoming letters as anything more than excuses to say things he wanted to write anyway, but was too self-conscious to just blurt out. okay, that was phrased horribly, but do you feel as though he engaged with you ( ... )
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but it was always a shame to me that Sim wouldn't engage. occasionally someone (usually a well-spoken liberal/feminist/whatever) would write a fascinating letter, which Sim would print in its entirety, and which he would then reduce to five or six numbered points to which he would respond in a sentence or three each, and which were as often as not stylistic issues or vocabulary choices rather than the meat of the letter. and it was hella frustrating, because anyone who's been reading Cerebus knows what Dave thinks by now-- the interesting question, I think, is why (or maybe how) he thinks these things, and watching him defend his points would go a long way towards illuminating this question ( ... )
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I thought he spent most of the Moore dialogue back-pedaling. In one of my letters I accuse him of using #289/290 to 'answer' Moore. I think his theology (as outlined through Cerebus' Torah commentaries in the 'Latter Days' book, which Dave says dovetails with his own beliefs) took many of the turns it did partly as a method of countering many of the ideas Moore posited in the dialogue. In the Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman tribute book, which reprinted that whole piece, Dave contributed an introduction in which he suggests that Moore is possessed by a demon, and takes a number of cheap shots at him (as he also does in much of his newer writing when things turn towards 'Moore-like' ( ... )
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Sim
And see he is from Hamilton. A grim, dirty place. That in itself could explain many things.
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