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A review by trin
Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip by Nevin Martell
3.0
A good way to illuminate the problems with this biography of [a:Bill Watterson|13778|Bill Watterson|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1208461390p2/13778.jpg] and the (wonderful! glorious!) Calvin and Hobbes comics is to compare it to another literary biography I read this year, [a:Laura Miller|183852|Laura Miller|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1252031376p2/183852.jpg]'s [b:The Magician's Book|11127|The Chronicles of Narnia (Books 1-7)|C.S. Lewis|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166457868s/11127.jpg|781271]. Miller makes it clear up front that her book is going to be partly a story of [a:C.S. Lewis|1069006|C.S. Lewis|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1211981595p2/1069006.jpg]' life and partly the story of her evolving relationship with the Narnia books. The two elements are balanced seamlessly, and both are illuminating. Martell, on the other hand, doesn’t really commit to making his book partially about his own experiences with Watterson’s work, so when he does reference his own feelings, they seem out of place. Worse, he sets up this whole fake drama about how he might just get to conduct an actual interview with Bill Watterson!!!!...which is of course B.S., because he won’t, and the reader knows he won’t: Bill Watterson doesn’t give interviews. In many ways Miller had more access to C.S. Lewis in the writing of her book, and Lewis is dead.
Which is not to say that a book about Watterson shouldn’t be written: though limited, the information Martell was able to dig up about him is interesting, and the enigma that he presents is potentially fascinating. So I really wish Martell could have come up with a different approach to this material. One that involved accepting that no interview would be forthcoming, and so instead chose to approach Watterson from another angle. Some real literary analysis, maybe? All of the best discussion of the actual Calvin and Hobbes strips (which are totally worthy of an in-depth academic look) comes from Watterson himself, with Martell simply quoting from the artist’s mini essays in [b:The Calvin and Hobbes 10th Anniversary Book|24813|The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book|Bill Watterson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167544241s/24813.jpg|692719]; I felt like I was experiencing severe déjà vu while reading certain sections. If only Martell could have presented what little background information about Watterson is known, and then used that as a jumping off point for the story of his own relationship with the comics and some real analysis about what the strip means—to him, and in a larger sense. That is a potentially fascinating book.
It’s just not this book, alas.
Which is not to say that a book about Watterson shouldn’t be written: though limited, the information Martell was able to dig up about him is interesting, and the enigma that he presents is potentially fascinating. So I really wish Martell could have come up with a different approach to this material. One that involved accepting that no interview would be forthcoming, and so instead chose to approach Watterson from another angle. Some real literary analysis, maybe? All of the best discussion of the actual Calvin and Hobbes strips (which are totally worthy of an in-depth academic look) comes from Watterson himself, with Martell simply quoting from the artist’s mini essays in [b:The Calvin and Hobbes 10th Anniversary Book|24813|The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book|Bill Watterson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167544241s/24813.jpg|692719]; I felt like I was experiencing severe déjà vu while reading certain sections. If only Martell could have presented what little background information about Watterson is known, and then used that as a jumping off point for the story of his own relationship with the comics and some real analysis about what the strip means—to him, and in a larger sense. That is a potentially fascinating book.
It’s just not this book, alas.