The Day the Music Died (Wired)
Comments(2) Gene Luen Yang is a teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area who also happens to be a fine illustrator. He produced a graphic novel (or “comic book,” as we used to call them), American Born Chinese, which has been nominated for a National Book Award in the young people’s literature category.
I have not read this particular “novel” but I’m familiar with the genre so I’m going to go out on a limb here. First, I’ll bet for what it is, it’s pretty good. Probably damned good. But it’s a comic book. And comic books should not be nominated for National Book Awards, in any category. That should be reserved for books that are, well, all words.
This is not about denigrating the comic book, or graphic novel, or whatever you want to call it. This is not to say that illustrated stories don’t constitute an art form or that you can’t get tremendous satisfaction from them. This is simply to say that, as literature, the comic book does not deserve equal status with real novels, or short stories. It’s apples and oranges. -Tony Long
[From Ted. BK]
category: Comics, Literacy, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics
When I read this article, I got irritated. Why? Because the guy was not impartial, he was making a completely illogical judgement about a field he knows little about. Amusing enough, I’ve seen things like that happen in my field. Biochemistry has not always been widely respected (only when we started developing some of the treatments and cures to diseases). Even in the department where I work now, its only been in the last 5 years that biochemistry has been accepted. Even the ACS (American Chemical Society) panned biochem for a time. I guess what I’m trying to say Bob, is that your time is coming. You’re studying at a very dynamic time, and I’m jealous.
Ted, I appreciate knowing when others view popular culture as a fruitful pursuit of study, rather than dismiss it altogether or fail seeing any potential as a colleague of mine did today.
However, I believe that same acknowledgement needs to be given to Biochemistry. I know from our previous discussions that Biochemistry is relatively new compared with other established fields within sciences, but at least it has a foot in the door, which is where popular culture and comic scholarship started as well: marginalized. Now Biochemistry needs crusaders like you to make things happen and a PhD is one way we do that regardless of discipline.
Once again, I will point out that I always believe science is much more well received than liberal arts. Saving lives or curing diseases may not seem like a significant contribution, but it benefits everybody whereas research within humanities (with all due respect since I love English and especially rhetoric) seems sometimes selfish.