Notes to a note on the notes

My story about the notes of cartoonist Chester Brown, which went up at the Toronto Standard website recently (under the title "Text Appeal"), now has its own notes!

It's Chester Brown week at the Comics Journal's wonderfully overstuffed website, where you can read my "Notes to a Note on the Notes of Chester Brown."

(Thanks to TCJ's Tim Hodler for the initial prompt and the subsequent publishing.)

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A side note: The first note happens to quote from Geoff Dyer, who apparently quoted/cited one of my favorite novels, Renata Adler's Speedboat, at a McNally Jackson event the other night. File under: Note to Some Notes to a Note on the Notes of Chester Brown.

A Brown study

Last year I mentioned the voluminous notes that cartoonist Chester Brown has made on his various comics. Today, the new site Toronto Standard has a piece up by me on this topic, entitled "Text Appeal." It begins:

If years ago, when I was in college, someone had dubbed me a tape of The Best of Leonard Cohen, I’m not sure what I would have made of the music. There’s a chance I would have become a fan. But I happened to buy an old copy of the LP, the back cover of which is given over to Cohen’s notes on the songs. None exceeds seven lines in length; the shortest is 12 words long. They masquerade as compositional backstory, but really comprise a sly autobiography in prose poems, perfect compressions of wanderlust and good old-fashioned lust. A persona is being erected even before the record is out of the sleeve. (Indeed, it includes a comment on the jacket portrait: “I rarely ever look this good, or bad, depending on your politics.”) Cohen’s notes didn’t deepen my experience of the music, but rather replaced it. The songs took a back seat to the life lived, a life recorded telegraphically but indelibly on that tan back cover. The pleasure, the point, of The Best of Leonard Cohen was not where I thought it was.

(Thanks to Jason McBride, and to Tim Hodler at The Comics Journal, and to Hillary Chute!)

Book Notes™ With Ed Park

I. Closing out my D&D/RPG "trilogy" of tales (thus far comprising "Welcome to Tyosen™!" and "Cow Vase") is "Dungeon Masters Guide," my contribution to Bound to Last: 30 Writers on Their Most Cherished Book! (Sean Manning put it together.) Pub date is October 26. The interviewer inside my head wants to step in for a moment.

Q: Are all these pieces part of some greater work?

A: I can't answer that right now, I'm sorry!

II. Speaking of "Cow Vase"—it will be included in the forthcoming book Significant Objects (Fantagraphics, 2011)!

III. F.S. Yvonne Woon's YA novel Dead Beautiful is out—what a cool website!

IV. Jenny D on her Kindle experience.

V. Lev G on his Yale experience.

VI. My sister went to Montreal and got me this Ed the Happy Clown comic. Someone should write something about Chester Brown's notes on his old work—the notes are equally fascinating!

VII. I think that's all for now...