So, way back in February, I announced to some that I was in training for a marathon, and that was true for quite a long time, until all of those pesky holidays came one after another in September and managed to alter my schedule. Then I slacked off a little in October, mostly with the excuse that I was “busy.” As if revising a poetry manuscript and sending it to a million different book contests is time consuming or something.
But I’m back on track! And have decided that the best way to stay on track is to even more publicly announce that I’m training for a marathon, so if I get lazy about it, I subject myself to public humiliation. In addition, this will be a good way to track my progress. I’m going to start out slow and use the time to build up my miles and learn to pace myself. Yesterday I ran two miles in thirty minutes on the treadmill. The treadmill is not my favorite way to exercise, but it is helpful to help my body learn what a fifteen minute mile feels like, what a ten minute mile feels like.
While I do not particularly favor the treadmill, I do enjoy running outside, especially through the woods. The term most people use for my passion for running long distances is insane. As a friend of mine put it, in real sports, running laps is a punishment. For me, with my poor ability to judge depth perception and lack of peripheral vision, running is the only sport, and distance the only option. Anything under a mile isn’t worth running. Plus, running has some of my favorite aspects—competition, working by yourself, and not getting pummeled in the face by a ball you didn’t see coming.
Wish me luck on my renewed goal of training for an as yet unnamed marathon. If I get brave enough, I might even post my weight loss!
In the meantime, another graphic novel for your consideration, Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness, written and illustrated by Reinhard Kleist, translated from the German by Michael Waaler. All the drawings are in black and white, which allows Kleist to do a lot of work with shadows. Rarely is Cash pictured in full-light, so the majority of tonal work is done by shading. The shading, however, must have been quite tricky, as the print uses only one shade of gray. To be clear: the entire comic book is black, white, and a single shade of gray.
Kleist uses the device of an outside character, Shirley, who is serving a sentence in Folsom prison, to tell Cash’s story. Shirley is a convict and a huge admirer of Cash’s, which he demonstrates by sharing the singer’s life story with another inmate. The device seems unnecessary and a bit underused. By the end, it drops out completely, with Cash as the narrator. It’s a difficult method of storytelling, since Cash is a more compelling character than Shirley, and not enough work is done to make Shirley sympathetic or heroic.
After Walk the Line, it’s nearly impossible not to compare any media about Cash to the biopic, especially since the movie was well-made and well-acted. The media of film and graphic novel are quite different, but both pieces follow a similar path through Cash’s life. I See a Darkness, however, does concentrate on one aspect of Cash’s life that the movie, with all its emphasis on Cash’s relationship to June Carter Cash, does not: the music. Kleist discusses Cash’s experimentation with different genre of music and his manipulation of his own persona on stage. While he depicts Cash’s difficulties with Vivian Liberto, he does not delve into the romance between Cash and Carter, which is a major focus of the movie. The tone of I See a Darkness is much darker than that of Walk the Line.
A note on the translation—having done a nominal amount of translation work, myself, I know how difficult it is to convey both meaning and tone, especially when working with idioms from another language. While I have not read the original German, Waaler fully utilizes the illustrations, so that speech and exposition are sparse.
A recommended read, and a purchase for those who are interested in music or biography.
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