Lemarit Ainrotten Tomatoes

clear all started with a wrong number ... KP

"The idea was to make an adaptation of a very, very true but was also a graphic novel and a comic book that was worth doing and worth reading. The reader who reads both the novel , is the comic strip, which will be more fun ... "

Paul Karasik

cover of the sketchbook of City of Glass

And I am even more amused because, in addition to the novel and the City of Glass comic , I also read the original script complete with graphic layout of the same Paul Karasik. It was a long time that I intended to practice this way: at home I had the comic and the sketchbook containing the screenplay of the same, the latter a gift from my friend Andrea , which contributed directly to achieving the combination Vastagamma of Pordenone (in part) and Thesis. All within the context of the exhibition of cartoons City of Glass, which contained original drawings of the comic, and that was always drawn by Vastagamma in March 2009 within Dedication , Pordenone festival focuses each year on a personalities from the world culture but that year saw starring Paul Auster.
So a few days ago I bought New York Trilogy, of which City of Glass is the first novel, and I started reading. As the pages of the book progressed I wondered how the couple Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli they could create a comic book from a novel like that. The theme of the book in fact is the identity, or rather the impossibility to define a precise, its emptiness, its loss, and language, how language can define its identity. The protagonist, the mystery writer Daniel Quinn, who becomes detective in a very casual, does a physical journey through the streets of New York alongside his inner journey, which will lead to the loss of oneself, one's own identity.

It 's a novel full of abstract ideas, are difficult to reproduce in a visual way, I told myself while I read it. Apart from the streets of the Big Apple, he traveled far and wide by the protagonist and his father Peter Stillman, there are few elements to make it in a comic book. And here I make a big mistake ... I gave little confidence to the medium that so fascinates me, the ability to create the script Karasik and Mazzucchelli to make those drawings, from a story so cerebral. In fact, the realization
This graphic novel was a challenge, commissioned by Art Spiegelman in 1992 just to show how the comics did not have boundaries of expression. The author of Maus was to create a new series of comic books, in which novelists of the "serious" and yes, please provide the original screenplays for experienced designers. Contacted, among others, Paul Auster, who, instead of writing a new history, suggested to adapt comic book City of Glass. So David Mazzucchelli was commissioned to take care of the graphics, but at the difficulties encountered by the designer in making the parties more abstract, he came to the rescue Paul Karasik. The case played an important role, as well as succede nel libro al protagonista Daniel Quinn. Karasik aveva letto il romanzo anni prima e, di sua iniziativa, aveva scritto una sceneggiatura della storia con un layout grafico già ben preciso, una griglia di 3x3 vignette a pagina. Quando venne chiamato da Spiegelman, Karasik tirò fuori dal cassetto quel vecchio bloc notes di appunti e lo fece vedere a Mazzucchelli. Il risultato è il fumetto Città di vetro, che presenta infatti l'intelaiatura grafica della griglia a 9 vignette per pagina, che ovviamente Mazzucchelli si prese la libertà di rielaborare in certi suoi punti, soprattutto quelli in cui sono rappresentate le scene urbane.

Design by David Mazzucchelli

A major challenge has been overcome to make drawings in the famous monologue of wild-eyed son Peter Stillman. Karasik the realization in an original and effective, which makes the reader feel the psychic abyss where the young Peter has been lost. What Paul Auster makes only a word and returns for images Karasik: nothing is missing. This, then looking on the sketchbook, it was the first scripted by Karasik sequence which leaves the front pages of the novel is presented in which the protagonist and his engagement as a detective. In the comic, Quinn's description of these pages are rendered graphically showing the writer while reaches the phone across the room, the details tell us much about him, without adding words to the library with its yellow lines in front of the building that turns into a maze and then impression of a fingertip on the same glass from which you can see the building (which becomes the metaphor for the city's maze of their own identity, even after recovery in history), the halo of a painting on the wall that no longer exists but that the passage of Quinn, reappears showing the family photo that contained (a family that no longer exists, since his wife and son were killed, an identity pass).

In general, the balloon is not forget any part of the novel: each is represented by evoking the same emotions and at the same time, enriching the reader than others, given by the see the images reflect so well the text of Auster. Read the comic is an experience both similar and distinct from that of reading the book that you still have the same emotions and thoughts the same, but the language used makes you appreciate and result in a different way.

Lastly, compare to the comic storyboard is another interesting and fun experience, because we understand the work of artist and writer from first draft: see where the end result has remained faithful to the original writing and where it was decided to enhance it or change it, see where the grid has been met and where Mazzucchelli has expanded by including in the cartoons larger structure.
I have to thank my friend Andrea, because without that gift, I would not have been able to enjoy a myriad of ways this masterpiece of literature and comics called City of Glass.

Design by David Mazzucchelli