Art

Wilson by Daniel Clowes

Michael Pollitt | Thursday 22 July, 2010 19:14

If Larry David could draw he might come up with something like Wilson, the new graphic novel by Ghost Town creator Daniel Clowes.

The milieu of Wilson is familiar to anyone who has seen Curb Your Enthusiasm. Our anti-hero is a white, middle-aged man growing old and miserable in world as disappointed in him as he is in it.

He’s a failure as a husband, as a son, as a father, as a man. His pregnant wife left him to seek a better life as a prostitute and he’s never had a proper job. But that doesn’t stop him berating strangers he meets at airports when they tell him they work in consulting. “Listen brother,” he says, “you’re going to be lying on your deathbed in 30 years thinking ‘Where did it all go? What did I do with all those precious days? Some shit-work for the oligarchs?’” Ouch.

Such episodes punctuate a larger story, as Wilson ages and confronts the landmarks of a 21st century life—things that await us all if we haven’t suffered them already: the death of a parent, partial reconciliation with an ex, the moment your estranged adopted daughter whom you tried to kidnap finally provides you with a grandchild.

The tone is darkly comic, the restrained illustrations complementing the deadpan prose. Human relationships are held together by selfishness, necessity and the fear of dying alone. The death of Wilson’s father provokes a bout of inarticulate self-absorption: “I’m all alone”, he moans, sitting in a playground in the middle of the day, drinking and heckling the kids for daring to interrupt his silence with their joy.

By contrast, the death of his dog produces a 200 world eulogy: “My love for you was always tempered by the inevitability of your loss,” runs a typical extract, “but in contemplating that unthinkable vacuum, I am better able to grasp my own finite trajectory, and by extension that of all things.”

It’s these moments of wider perspective which elevate Wilson above the simple comedy of the Grumpy Old Men, and perhaps even the more sophisticated work of David. “I wonder if progress always felt like this?” Wilson asks of the disillusionment he feels at his growing reliance on computers, while the pathos of an online video chat with a grandson who can’t be arsed returning his love brings a shock of sadness to the novel’s final pages.

Doubtless Wilson would call comparisons with David a bit of fucking lazy journalism from someone who was too ignorant to judge the novel on its own merits. But if, like this reviewer, you’ve never read a graphic novel before because you suspected they were the preserve of a bunch of loser gimps, you might find his misanthropy a pleasant surprise.

Wilson by Daniel Clowes is published by Jonathan Cape. RRP £12.99

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