The Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

I just finished experiencing The Watchmen and I’m thinking about how to talk about it, how to write about it, where to dive in, about the words and images and ideas, the silences and layers of meaning. And all I really want to say is that if you haven’t read it, you should. It’s expansive, gripping, provocative, and smart. If for some reason you think graphic novels are just pop art, not worth your time, well… Let me just say I devoured the book in two sittings, broken only on those frequent occasions when I stood up and walked around my living room shaking my head and trying to come to grips with the madness, intensity, brilliance, and guts of what I’d just read.


And that’s why I’m writing this review – partly to come to a better understanding of the novel’s intentions and partly to come to a better understanding of how it works so damn well. And I'm going to try to do this without giving anything away.

Alan Moore’s writing in The Watchmen is superlative in vision and in execution of that vision, and his writing is equally matched by Dave Gibbons’ illustration, creating a symbiotic work of art that grows increasingly deeper and more intelligent with every midnight flip of the page. The Watchmen develops a complex and self-contained world so remote and yet so similar to our own that it can only be described as genius.

I don’t throw around words like genius lightly. Saying genius means I couldn’t find a better way to say smart, well-crafted, and tightly-written, where each word and image counts and contributes to the whole, where nothing is out of place, except maybe the reader, who follows the story with hawk-like attention: every detail matters, every nuance is laden with meaning, every line and every letter, hung in text blocks or on a city wall, propels the narrative momentum forward, advancing multiple plots and lives and building the story into a dénouement that almost literally explodes from the page. The Watchmen is an emotional, psychological, and sociological tour de force.

It’s the mid-eighties, and someone is killing superheroes. Through Rorschach, a superhero working outside the law, we’re introduced to a brutal world similar to our own. Superheroes helped win the Vietnam War, constitutional amendments allow Nixon to serve additional terms, and nuclear Armageddon is stalemated by the quantum abilities of Dr. Manhattan, a superhero on the government’s payroll. Rorschach’s New York is a city filled with crime, with individual decay, with currents of fear, with social unrest and distrust of people who look or act different – homosexuals, black people, gangs – and against this background Rorschach sets out to find the superhero’s killer.

In this setting, The Watchmen becomes both a story about superheroes in society and culture, and a scathing social commentary critiquing the prevailing mood of the time through the lens of fiction. In both style and subject, The Watchmen is still remarkably relevant, and this explains why the novel is still so popular, and why it’s being adapted into a movie.

As I said previously, Moore’s writing and Gibbons’ art combine symbiotically. It’s impossible to read and understand the novel from only one of these perspectives. Throughout the novel, for example, an older newspaper vendor carries on a monologue while a young black man sits near the newspaper stand and reads comic books about pirates. The pirate comic describes how a shipwrecked sailor fashions a way off an island. Panes from the pirate comic nest between panes featuring the newspaper vendor, and in the telling of the pirate story the vendor’s monologues take on additional layers of meaning. In other panels, perspective lets the reader see the young comic reader from behind, and in his hands, scenes from the comic he’s holding. These scenes, along with the newspaper headlines and the lives of the news-stand’s patrons, add life and weight to the story. They allow development of even the most minor characters, characters that come alive under Moore’s pen and Gibbons’ stroke.

These aren’t action scenes, filled with superheroes beating up the bad guys. They are, rather, the real meat of the book, the scenes that give strength to the overall plot. Like the marooned mariner, there is much that happens beneath the story, much that is as important, or perhaps, even more important, to understanding the many themes explored within The Watchmen.

Like any novel, The Watchmen isn’t easily summarized. But as social commentary, it feels familiar. When The Watchmen was first published, the threat of nuclear Armageddon was ever-present, the war in Vietnam was only a decade past, the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, and society was perceived to be in decline, reeling from drug use and eroded social morals. Today, the threat of nuclear war looms with Iran’s saber-rattling, our country is at war in Afghanistan and Iraq; the economy is in shambles, and society is still perceived as declining. Technology, what technology represents, and what affect it has on people – in terms of access, knowledge, understanding, and power – are contentious issues in both the novel and in the life of the contemporary reader. The Watchmen portrays and exposes these timeless uncertainties and fears through the motivations and actions of the main characters, who struggle to lead meaningful lives in a mad and seemingly meaningless culture, and through details and nuances embedded in dialogue and background illustrations. Half the fun of reading the novel is drawing out these connections, the moments of surprise and discovery, the sudden insights and flashes of wonder.

And so The Watchmen is all at once a highly developed detective novel with astoundingly complex characters; an acute cultural critique; a literary play on meaning and craft; a triumphant collage of style and technique, of invention, imagination, and bravado. I said it was genius. You’ll have to read it to understand. Read and savor it slowly, because The Watchmen means far more than it says, and it will stick with you long after you’ve finished reading it. Just remember the last thing Dr. Manhattan says, remember his very last words…

Lookout Mountain and the Snap of the Twig

Lookout Mountain scares me and I’ll probably never go back there alone. It is a hike straight from the fogs of myth and though I laugh about it now, it’s the winner as far as hikes spent freaking out go.

I’d read great things about Lookout Mountain, a 6,500ft high-point towering above a valley on the east side of Mt. Hood. There's a short, easy option, but I wanted something more intense, and went for the longer trail coming from the east. Nice tough climb, not too long, excellent views of the mountain and into the eastern deserts, with open meadows filled with flowers, and an old lookout tower foundation at the summit.

It’s scary, man.

Last August, I parked at the trailhead, stretched, and made it less than a quarter mile before I stopped to catch my breath on the steep beginning section of the hike. The truck was out of sight, and as I stood there getting my breathing under control, I heard a loud crashing noise below me – as in, below me between me and the truck.

This actually freaked me out enough that I considered turning back and driving home. I can’t explain how bad it was. It was just weird. But some sort of logic won out and I continued up the hill, glancing behind me numerous times. Eventually the trail leveled out a bit, following a stream through a gorgeous section of forest filled with dappled sunlight and an understory resplendent with little white flowers.

Except I felt someone was watching me.

I thought that at any moment, some previously benign shape would turn from a stump or rock or shadow into a bear or a Bigfoot or something even stranger and definitely more dangerous. And I made tracks, I mean I hoofed it; I practically jogged to the next section of trail that climbed up the side of a ridge and left the creek behind.

Sometime later I reached a small lake, and stopped to eat a snack and rest. The heat was pretty tough, in the upper eighties, I’d guess, and under the trees there was no air movement. The lake was pretty, though, and I ate part of a turkey wrap and some cashews. Then I heard something behind me. The trail ran above me as it passed the lake, and I assumed I’d turn around to see other hikers. But no one was there.

Nothing was there at all.

I packed up and hurriedly left, climbed the big slope to the top of the ridge and came out of the forest into a path leading through clumps of trees interspersed with flowering meadows. The heat and the grade were tough, but a wind chilled the sweat and the landscape was beautiful. My breathing took on a regular rhythm, my heartbeat steadied itself, and even the wind in my ears grew pleasant, at least until...

all those deer bounded away and the sound of their hoofs and the crashing of branches made my senses explode into a hemorrhaging fountain of fear!

Okay, that’s a bit sensationalistic, but damn, I never even saw the things and they scared the crap out of me. You should warn a hiker, deer! Come on!

So, startled out of his reverie, the intrepid hiker-wilderness-guide summits the fearsome mountain and on his final ascent, spies two other hikers at the top who have clearly come up from the shorter, half-as-difficult trail on the other side. They’re gone when he summits, sets down his pack, opens a beer and looks for a place to sit and enjoy the magnificent view of Mt. Hood rising over the ridges and valleys and forests and stands of sun-bleached whitebark pine and the growing sense that he’s not alone.

Maybe I was just tired out from the climb and the heat. Maybe I was just weirded out. But I had the sense, almost from the moment I got to the summit area, that I wasn’t alone. I stayed there for maybe twenty minutes, but I never sat down. I wanted to be able to turn around easily. The hikers I’d spotted earlier were nowhere to be seen. There was no sound of movement. It was silent except for the wind. And down-slope, in the trees, I sensed something foreign and alien to my understanding and I didn’t like it, and soon I left.

There’s a spring down in that direction that I’d wanted to explore, but I took off down the trail instead. Somehow the entire time I thought I’d run into something I didn’t want to see. Back down on the forested slope above the lake, I started to relax, and just then Mother Nature pulled a fast one on me as a huge shadow obliterated the sun and swept terror down in my heart like the falling of night in a poorly written horror movie.

Well, maybe not that bad. The shadow belonged to a medium sized bird that perched benevolently in the tree above me. Strange how some small creature can appear at first glance monstrous and huge, the very emblem of death’s forced march.

I swear by this time the mountain should’ve scared the metaphors right out of me, along with the contents of my bowels and the rapidly deteriorating webs of my sanity. But I wasn’t going out like that, and I trotted down the trail, through the oxalis blooming along the creek, until I got back to the steep section where I’d heard that first crashing sound. I anticipated hearing it again, only this time hearing it as well as finally encountering whatever it was that made that noise.

Of course I didn’t hear it. I bolted down the hill and suddenly came out on the gravel road and my truck, still parked alone at the trailhead. It didn’t take much time before I was on my way down the road and then I came around a corner and it was there.

I saw it cross the road and disappear into the trees.

I pulled up and stopped and it was nowhere in sight. The forest was quiet. The afternoon sun cast short shadows on the forest floor. Nothing moved. Everything was brown and gray or dark green. And the coyote was gone.

Trickster, hero of native myth, coyote. That son of a… Now I know what stalked me up and down that trail. Coyote was waiting at every bend. Every snap of twig or rustle of leaves, every quickened heartbeat or rush of blood, every hair standing on end, every shudder of panic or fear – the trickster was there. Every time I doubted, every time I stopped for breath, every time I turned an eye to the wilderness around me, Coyote was there, testing me.

In myth Coyote is clever and ambiguous, the creator and the destroyer, the manifestation of primitive nature and passion and desire, the creature who outwits and fools all the other creatures but who in the end only outwits and fools himself. And laughter, Coyote is known for his ability to laugh at himself, and at others. And as I drove down that forest road, with my music turned up and the trail behind me, as I headed home after miles of tense and nervous hiking, I laughed and wondered just how much Coyote had been following me that day, and just how much I’d been following Coyote.

2666, by Roberto Bolano

"For an 800-page, translated novel in five sections, 2666 is an unbelievable pleasure to read. Tightly written, filled with insight and wonder, and with liquid prose as beautiful and terrifying as a dream, 2666 kept me occupied for many a sleepless night. Bolaño fictionalizes the real-life disappearances of hundreds of young women in a Mexican border town, populating his novel with a range of finely nuanced, deeply imagined characters, and capturing the totality of human experience in all its hideousness and beauty, intricacies and truth. In style, range of thought, and execution, 2666 is utterly visionary, and completely unforgettable."

I was given 100 words for that review, which didn't allow me to add that 2666 is one of those rare novels, like War and Peace, like Zorba the Greek, that works because it is so huge, so sprawling, so ambitious, and so risky that it captures the reader's imagination and enthralls with singularity of vision. If artists didn't attempt novels like this - and it has its flaws - all of literature would suffer, and readers would be left with poor imitations, or else nothing at all. Bolano has received more than his fair share of praise - he's currently literature's darling - but he deserves to be read precisely because his work is as messy as life, and when you read 2666, the two become interchangeable. Simply brilliant.

Books I've Been Reading

To Siberia
Per Petterson

Petterson's Danish seascape is gorgeous, the lives of his characters are meticulously rendered, and his tracing of their lives is perfect. Guaranteed to take your breath away, To Siberia quietly tells the story of a lovely and innocent childhood opening like a flower in a storm.

And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

Jack Kerouac & William Burroughs

The legendary "lost book" of the Beats, this early collaborative novel reveals two of the Beat's finest writers at the beginning of their careers. Some of these chapters are brilliant short stories in and of themselves. An illuminating and enjoyable read.

The English Major

Jim Harrison

You don't have to be young to start over, hip to seize life, or daring to have adventure. You don't need to be moneyed (or utterly destitute) to meet the right people; a simple life is fuel enough for insight and meaning; and change is often good. Jim Harrison's writing is marvelous, and in his new novel - "On the Road" for the common man - he takes the reader on a trip with a teacher-turned-farmer when he hits the highways after personal catastrophe.

Bretz's Flood

John Soennichsen

The massive Missoula floods carved the dramatic scablands of eastern Washington and flooded the Columbia and Willamette valleys to depths of 400 feet as far south as Eugene. This is the bracing story of the geologist who, like Galileo and Darwin before him, challenged prevailing thought and put forth a theory that incited academic controversy for years.

The City of Light, Part I

On the balcony, Paris, day of arrival. Our room is excellent – fifth floor overlooking a Latin quarter street lined with cafes. A steeple rises to the east, and on all sides French rooftops, windows, balconies with iron railings and pots of trailing plants and flowers, clay chimneys, the bustling street coursing with pedestrians, shoppers, buskers, tourists, shopkeepers, waiters, delivery men, and the people who live here – men in suits, women in dresses, immigrants from within Europe and from without (the Turkish candy shop at the corner!), the rich and the poor, the average and the unique. Notre Dame and the Ile de la Cité two blocks away, the Louvre just downstream on the opposite bank. The sun shining through thin clouds. Gardens and statues and bells. Music and leaves and restaurant awnings flutter in the breeze.

How is it that Paris carries with it so much romance, loveliness, loneliness, and sorrow? It’s not a cliché, it’s truth. Our hotel – St. Severin – sever – I feel severed. Severed from home, from my friends, even from my family. I don’t really know my brother. I’m years away from my parents, though they’re just down the hall, and I’m learning to understand them more. I wonder how they’re beginning to understand me.

I wonder how I’m beginning to understand me.

The hours are falling into darkness and the sun will set on the city of lights in a few short hours. Now the wind is warm, but it will blow cold across the Seine tonight. A late rain is expected. I need more tobacco. I need more wonder.

As I write this an old man across the street and two floors below me is on his balcony, watering his plants. Above the building’s entrance is carved the date 1860. Just around the corner, in a small park, is a tree planted over 400 years ago, and tended all that time.

People grow complacent and comfortable at home and it’s important to shake them from their complacency and comfort once in a while. It’s vital to self and to one’s own values to confront the “other” in order to compare, contrast, understand. Sometimes I feel an intense desire for the familiar – not just while traveling, but at home, too – and sometimes I feel a great boredom and sense of anomie. Traveling has a way of making me want to adjust my life to fit my needs and wants better – not in major ways, through there are some – but particularly in minor ways, in the day-to-day. I want to reduce routine and discover more. My material needs are simple and largely met. Now to work on self – as always.

One more cigarette and if no one stirs I’m hitting the walk-about for half an hour. The bells are ringing a quarter past. Paris beckons.

Copenhagen and Amsterdam were rainy and it felt like fall. I want to buy a sweater here. And I want to see this city, this city especially, under snow. What happens in winter is as true and as revealing as what happens under the skies of summer – but frost and snow make for a deeper hue wherever color is splashed.

I think of two paintings in the Rijksmuseum – van Everdingen’s “Woman Warming Hands over a Brazier” (the woman represents winter), and Lepère’s “Montmartre in the Snow” (actually, in the Van Gogh Museum). Then there’s that Monet and the Caillebotte in the Orsay, no more than a fifteen-minute walk away…

I made a comment to Dad earlier today about the democracy of trains – especially true here in Europe, where trains are such a central aspect of life, a bridge between cities as well as a common denominator between cultures. Time to walk that culture.