Well, "read" is a bit misleading as this is a graphic novel. Look? Watch? See? How does one absorb a graphic novel? No matter as this is unlike any graphic novel you may have encountered before. Absorb is a much more apt description.
In 1989, McGuire created "Here," a short, 6 page illustrated story which was published in RAW, a comics anthology edited by legendary graphic novelist and cartoonist Art Spiegelman along with Françoise Mouly. The narrative was simple enough: a meditation on a single home and all the people who have lived there and things that have transpired on that spot at different points in history and time. But the execution was something the comics world had never seen. McGuire effectively deconstructed the comic format, something that had not been done before. It proved so revolutionary that, in his book READING COMICS: HOW GRAPHIC NOVELS WORK AND WHAT THEY MEAN, author and critic Douglas Wolk wrote that its "influence has echoed through art comics for decades."
The idea was so profound, McGuire greatly expanded on it and published HERE, a 300+-page version of the story, in 2014 and I am so glad he did. This is a deeply moving, thought-provoking book which keeps the same basic premise but covers even more time.
Imagine a film camera set up on a single spot, filming everything that passes in front of it. Imagine that camera has been there for a long time. I mean a long, long time. And imagine that it will stay there for a long, long time to come. Now imagine you get to flip through moments this camera has captured over this time span...past, present, and future. After all, physics tells us all time is simultaneous. We begin in a house, camera pointed toward a corner...window on the left, fireplace and mantel on the right. People come and go, families live there and pass on. They may be related, they may not be. People celebrate holidays, people have parties and dance, people get angry with each other, people misplace keys and wallets, people have children, people lose loved ones. But before the house was there, the location was there...and so was our camera. The angle and placement of our view never changes. And never will.
As you can see, the story unfolds simultaneously, in windows--sometimes small, sometimes large--that show us glimpses of what was, what is, and what will be, identified by the year in the top left corner. The windows move around in our frame, showing us something in this corner, that corner, by the fireplace, all around the space. It is a startling premise, one that proves to be truly transcendent. The cumulative effect is one of impermanence and permanence at the same time. When you step out of the subjective time stream, it all looks so fragile and beautiful: the grandeur and the daily minutiae is heartbreaking. Embedded in the change is a sense of eternity.
This story resonated with me deeply because I basically grew up in my grandmother's house in upstate New York. The house itself was built on the site of a previous home. My grandparents bought the plot of land and the shack that was on it for my grandfather to tear it down and build a new home for his bride. He dug the basement and poured cement and fitted rocks for the walls and foundation. This was during The Great Depression and materials and money were scarce so he had to be inventive. An indoor miniature golf attraction at the edge of town had recently closed and the raw pieces were being sold off so he sourced the wooden floor boards to be the floor boards in their new home. An occasional golf-ball-sized hole is still visible if one stands in the basement and looks up. My father and his siblings all grew up in that house, my grandfather died in the house he built with his own hands--so much love and resentment and laughter and joy and tears and new life and death all contained within a small structure of wood and glass and metal--and the home stands there to this day, with new occupants who have no idea how the house came to be, what has transpired in it, who lived there, or how much it means to certain people who are still alive, and who would love to step into it once more. I actually got to walk through it several years ago when it was between owners, and the smell of the kitchen was the exact same as when my grandmother lived there. Yet the backyard had changed. A small hill had been filled in and a flower garden and extensive vegetable garden had been eliminated. It was all just grass, no trace of the strawberries, sweet corn, and crunchy peas I used to nibble on as a child. The charming white fences had been destroyed. My aunt, who grew up in the house as well, had a chance to rent it recently but discovered that the house has not been cared for the way it should have. She moved away. Ever since I was young, I have tried to imagine the little shack that stood there before the home that I know and love so well, the home that occupies my dreams at night. I try to imagine what was there before the town existed, the First Nation people who lived there. And the ice sheets before that...all the way back to Pangea, to a molten ball of lava, to the formation of our solar system and galaxy. And there, the little house sits now. What will become of it? And what will become of us? We will all be eliminated and destroyed like the flower and vegetable gardens and fences. But your spot will remain.
Recommend? Absolutely. Buy it and absorb it. It is a quick "read"--about 20-30 minutes. But once you are done, wait a few days and then go back and ponder through it again. You will pick up more each time. It's just gorgeous.
http://www.richard-mcguire.com/
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