David Boring

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Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 741 EAN: 9780375714528 ISBN: 0375714529 Label: Pantheon Manufacturer: Pantheon Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 136 Publication Date: 2002-09-24 Publisher: Pantheon Release Date: 2002-09-24 Studio: Pantheon
Customer review of: David Boring Customer Rating: Summary: Big on pretension and ambition; not much else Comment: People are right when describing "David Boring" as ambitious. Ambition, however, does not always add up to quality. (Macbeth can tell you that.) Clowes brings up many themes within this piece, but never expands upon them much. All that remains is a depressingly uninteresting and pretentious narrative that is filled with characters that are hard to care about. It's just an endless barrage of verbs happening to nouns. The structure of this work is, also, of fault. By combining the structure of the three-act play and comic book, Clowes denies the strengths of both mediums. One of the points of graphic novels is to use illustrations to supplant the need for description. With Clowes' over-worded script, the reader is taken away from what the art itself is saying. It seems that the author could have saved space on some panels to leave more room for character development. The characters within this story fail to appeal. Part of this is because most of what the information on each of them is given by the "depression is cool"/Freudian mindset of a narrator that fails to engage and thinks that he is somehow better and cooler than you because he doesn't smile as much. Also, the plot devices are used to little effect. The most obvious case of this is the apocalyptical occurrences that may or may not be happening in the story. (If they do or do not happen, it doesn't really matter to the plot.) Each moment that is built up within the story ends up with a resounding bang of anti-climax. I really tried to like this, but was crushed when trying to find a meaningful justification for my purchase. I was left with a sense of wasted time and a need to write a review for this pretentious book that is, at most, a very depressing soap opera. (Questionable parentage of babies, framing of individuals for crimes, overbearing mother: check.) If you feel you have to read this to make friends, do so. To anyone else, stay away. Read something interesting like, say, the drug information of things, the nutrition information of your favorite morning cereal, etc. David Boring isn't good. Customer Rating: Summary: "It's like Fassbinder meets half-baked Nabokov on Gilligan's Island." * Comment: If you like Robbe-Grillet or David Lynch, you'll like David Boring. Surrealism isn't my cup of tea, and so I found myself alternately put off and bored by the book. But I can appreciate the thought that went into planning its seeming disjointedness. There's no plot to speak of, and what storyline there is is one that seems a parody of hardboiled detective stories. Panels abruptly break into different narrative threads. Interpolations that make no sense whatsoever interject themselves. The "Yellow Streak" comic/missing father subtheme is baffling. There are tons of nonsequitors: Wanda's disappearance in a sexual/religious cult; Manfred's running off with David's mother; Mrs. Capin's seduction of David; the affair with Naomi; the abrupt termination of Dot's lesbian affair; and the never-developed hints at apocalyptic disaster. Temporal sequence seems unimportant, chance encounters carry mysterious weight, characters appear and vanish with magical realism fluidity. Sometimes it's intriguing, sometimes perplexing, sometimes quite tiresome. And the woodenness of the drawing--again deliberate, one suspects--only adds to the surreality of the story. Facial expressions seem frozen, bodies pre-pubescent. Even in the love-making scenes, the characters look like store front mannikins. (And what's up with all the socks? Can Clowes not draw feet?) Is there a point here? The absurdity of existence? The deep and futile human longing for love? creative expression (David is a failed screenwriter)? deep meaning? Is David a kind of Camusean l'etranger, unable to connect with anyone on a deep emotional level? Or in fact is there no message at all to "David Boring"? Is the negative reviewer who said that the book seemed to have been dreamt up panel by panel as Daniel Clowes proceeded on the money? I don't want to think this is how the book was actually written, but ultimately it's so artificially mysterious that it might as well have been. _______________ * Clowes' own description of his novel. Customer Rating: Summary: Very erratic Comment: I just got done reading this about an hour ago, so everything is still pretty fresh in my mind. The art work is fantastic, and the writing is MOSTLY pretty good. But there are these occasional spots throughout the story that just kind of come out of nowhere, it becomes very difficult to follow after a while, so I'm not sure how good I should say the writing really is. The dialogue is generally enjoyable at least, even if you're not always sure whats going on. I would still recommend this to anyone looking for a good, non-superhero graphic novel, but you should still be aware that there quite a few instances of panels not really transitioning very well into one another, giving way to confusion in the story. Customer Rating: Summary: His worst Comment: Just because it's in the title doesn't mean i CAN'T say that this was just boring. It really seemed for the first time that Clowes was TRYING to be hip. The characters were nothing to be liked, there was nothing about the main character that made me care what happened next. The ending wasn't really an ending, so much as the story just stopping. Read Pussey!, Ghost World, Velvet Glove Cast in Iron (masterpiece), Caricature, or even Lloyd Llewellyn (for quick laughs). This one... buy it if you think the late 90's were cool. Customer Rating: Summary: Good stuff. Comment: Daniel Clowes, David Boring (Pantheon, 2000) Meet David. David is a nineteen-year-old security guard who meets, and becomes obsessed with, his dream girl. When she vanishes, David finds himself lost in an almost surreal tangle of violence, mystery, and revenge that is backgrounded with odd rumors of terrorist attacks, which makes this book all too eerie in retrospect. Clowes is, of course, best known as the author of Ghost World, which was made into a surprisingly successful 2001 film, but David Boring is, I think, a superior work in every way; the characters are simply fantastic, the plot is just absurd enough to be believable, and the art, while somewhat primitive (Clowes is consciously drawing in the style of fifties superhero comics here), is evocative. If you're into graphic novels already, you probably don't need me to tell you you should be reading Daniel Clowes; if you're not, or you're new to the genre, then maybe you do. And I just did. *** ½
Editorial Reviews: Meet David Boring: a nineteen-year-old security guard with a tortured innner life and an obsessive nature. When he meets the girl of his dreams, things begin to go awry: what seems too good to be true apparently is. And what seems truest in Boring's life is that, given the right set of circumstances (in this case, an orgiastic cascade of vengeance, humiliation and murder) the primal nature of humandkind will come inexorably to the fore. "Boring finds love with a mysterious woman named Wanda, loses her and sort of finds her again. He also gets shot in the head (twice) and stranded on an island with his brutish family. Meanwhile, the world may or may not be ending soon. And did I mention that much of this is hilariously funny?" -- Time From the Hardcover edition.
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