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A review by xterminal
Monologues for the Coming Plague by Anders Nilsen
2.0
Anders Nilsen, Monologues for the Coming Plague (Fantagraphics Books, 2006)
I was fond enough of Dogs and Water (viz. 14Mar2009 review) to go looking for more of Anders Nilsen's work, and the title of this one intrigued me from the first time I saw it; one of the libraries in my system, all of which seem notoriously slow at getting things in, finally grabbed a copy last year, so I put it on hold and waited patiently until last week. What I can tell you after reading it: Dogs and Water it is not, by any means.
While Nilsen mentions in a brief afterword that he did rearrange a few things for the sake of continuity (of which there is a bit, but not much), it is inferred that this is simply excerpts from two sketchbooks, complete with markouts and the like. This does serve in that it seems to fit rather well with Nilsen's overarching existential crisis/semiotics theme, but could just as easily be dismissed as laziness, if you're so inclined. While there are some pieces here that make use of that theme (by far the best of these is “Pittsburgh”, an Our Town-esque journey in which one character's head becomes the head of a different animal in each frame of the first two-thirds of the story, depending on how he's feeling and/or what he's doing), too much of the book seems to be just alternate takes on a single joke; there are long stretches containing the same woman-feeding-a-bird setup with variations (sometimes very slight) on a punchline. Two or three wouldn't have been out of place in The New Yorker, but the combined weight of seventy or so is a bit deleterious. For the completist only. **
I was fond enough of Dogs and Water (viz. 14Mar2009 review) to go looking for more of Anders Nilsen's work, and the title of this one intrigued me from the first time I saw it; one of the libraries in my system, all of which seem notoriously slow at getting things in, finally grabbed a copy last year, so I put it on hold and waited patiently until last week. What I can tell you after reading it: Dogs and Water it is not, by any means.
While Nilsen mentions in a brief afterword that he did rearrange a few things for the sake of continuity (of which there is a bit, but not much), it is inferred that this is simply excerpts from two sketchbooks, complete with markouts and the like. This does serve in that it seems to fit rather well with Nilsen's overarching existential crisis/semiotics theme, but could just as easily be dismissed as laziness, if you're so inclined. While there are some pieces here that make use of that theme (by far the best of these is “Pittsburgh”, an Our Town-esque journey in which one character's head becomes the head of a different animal in each frame of the first two-thirds of the story, depending on how he's feeling and/or what he's doing), too much of the book seems to be just alternate takes on a single joke; there are long stretches containing the same woman-feeding-a-bird setup with variations (sometimes very slight) on a punchline. Two or three wouldn't have been out of place in The New Yorker, but the combined weight of seventy or so is a bit deleterious. For the completist only. **