Category: Books Page 1 of 2

I’ve decided to only check out graphic novels (for various reasons).

I enjoyed the last one I’d read (“The ring of the Nibelung”), and moved on to something random yet promising (essentially, browsed the stacks, picked one of three that I liked).

“The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.”

Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

I had mentioned earlier about the graphic novel I was reading.

I finished reading it in a week (would’ve read it in less than a day, but these days I have to “chunk everything up”).

The story towards the end was a bit “huh? cmon!” for me, but the overall effect was powerful.

The appendix mentions how the panels were sometimes segmented to correspond to motifs in the operatic score, which I thought was a neat concept, a sort of synesthetic effect.

This comic series won the Eisner award twenty years ago, but P. Craig Russell has other similar works, and I know I need to read more of them!

I hadn’t been to the library “proper” for over two years.

It had been closed for over a year.

It opened earlier a few months ago, and we have been going once every six weeks or so, since then.

I go with my daughter and end up spending all our time in the kids’ section.

I finally ventured in the regular area, just before checking out and leaving, giving myself a few minutes to look and return.

The graphic novel section was one of the three or four possible places within a two-minute radius, and I headed there.

By one of those strange acts of serendipity, I was led to a single book there, “The Ring of Nibelung”.

Wait, I thought, that one?

I should mention I was only vaguely aware of this before picking it up. I knew of the opera, but no specifics.

My closest exposure, as I expect it to be for others too, was to have come across The ride of the Valkyries by way of Apocalypse Now.

I’ve read the first odd-dozen pages now, and … this is amazing.

More than the story itself, I see echoes, in terms of names, and scenes and themes, which remind me of that other epic saga, The Lord of the Rings.

I have no way of judging how closely this hews to the original, but such a chasm of time separates each of these works!

• I am reading this today, in the year 2021.

• The graphic novel was first published as a comic series about two decades ago, in 2000.

• The Lord of the Rings was published about seven decades ago, between 1955–65.

• The first production of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen was about fifteen decades ago, in 1876.

It’s good stuff 🙂