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O'Neil's Long Paid Journey Into Naught
Read Tim O'Neil's review of the Scott Pilgrim volumes in the latest TCJ. The first problem isn't his but a chronic problem the magazine has--timeliness. Good criticism is good criticism anytime, yes, but it's funny--I'm helping edit the print edition of Comic Foundry and shot down a proposed review of Pilgrim because the time has, for me, passed. That is, it can be reviewed as a group when the next one comes out. The reason is that Pilgrim was such a hot, buzzworthy book a year ago that I think that timeliness really does come into play there. I mean, are YOU interested in the 280th review of the books at this point, or would you rather wait until the next one is about to drop and you're getting excited again? Exactly.
The other problem I have with the review is really just O'Neil's notion that the Pilgrim series "derailed" when he realized the plan for the books was to structure them in pretty much a videogame format. Actually, O'Neil uses a curious mixed metaphor that the "shock" (of discovering the series' true focus) is enough to "totally derail the series in one fell swoop: Scott Pilgrim is a videogame in comics form." First, when someone writes about something being derailed in one fell swoop, I think of pterodactyls striking locomotives, and I also think "one fell swoop"--how old is Tim O'Neil?
O'Neil's rub (as long as we're using archaisms) is that by choosing this structure, creator Bryan Lee O'Malley is not just "lazy" but "dishonest", too, because he isn't doing the "brick-and-mortar work" of "developing a plot through character interaction and thematic progression." This is just foolish and wrong, and, well, lazy and dishonest...on O'Neil's part. I don't see anything inherently wrong with borrowing the videogame structure of working through little thugs on your way to the big one. Lots of great mysteries and films noir/romans noir are like that. It seems to me just a more recent descendant of the heroic quest, right? Some plots do develop via character development and interaction, and some don't. Some of the greatest authors have started with the ending and worked their way back, making their characters hit their marks and be wherever the author needed them. Calling that lazy or dishonest is incorrect; even calling that method of creation less organic is arguable, depending on how linear you are. My point is that the videogame structure is valid, if along the way you're developing your characters. Yes, it may be almost impossible for a videogame or buddy cop comedy to reach me emotionally, but I remain a believer in the possibility that there are people talented enough to make that happen. To dismiss the series now (and by the way, "totally derail" is redundant--it's derailed or it's, uh, railed. It's like "total annihilation.") based on the structure alone, as O'Neil does, is unfair. It's also unfair to the readers of the magazine that he adds five more paragraphs after this. If you can't accept the premise, move onto another book.
Now, where I do agree with O'Neil is that the Scott Pilgrim character isn't very likeable. I wouldn't call him "doggedly unlikeable," nor would I call him a "loser" with "no prospects." I haven't read the books since they came out, but I seem to recall that, hard work or not, Pilgrim does have some talent. I agree Pilgrim is shallow and thoughtless, but his lack of malice keeps him from being really unlikeable. I also agree that by the time of the third book, O'Malley should have developed the characters better, especially the women, and he hasn't really shown much sign that Pilgrim is the way he is because he's heading for a fall and going to grow emotionally from it. That could happen, but like O'Neil I'm not convinced. I don't care that much whether Pilgrim is likeable, but whether he is accessible.
It's in the second-to-last (to be fair, my instinct is to write "penultimate") paragraph that O'Neil's moralism is revealed as the barrier towards his enjoying this series. "What happened to the idea that age brought maturity, and that maturity brought deeper understanding?" And to this I say, yeah, Krazy Kat--he's not that into you! Beetle, why aren't you protesting the war?
I mean, what was one expecting from these books, anyway? O'Neil throws a couple petals O'Malley's way that there are some interesting sequences in the book, but admits in the last paragraph that because he saw great promise in O'Malley's first book, Lost At Sea (likeable character? Hmm), he wanted more tender coming-of-age stuff, only, y'know, better and different, in this series. And because he gets O'Malley doing something more along the lines of an action comedy fantasy, it's no good. In fact, as O'Neil lumbers up and concludes, the Pilgrim books are a "monumental conceptual misfire that cannot be excused or ignored, only marveled at from a distance," which begs the question of who asked O'Neil to excuse them, and again, if the concept is his problem with the material, isn't a two page review as "disingenuous" as he claims O'Malley is? Whatever the flaws of the books, dishonesty is not one of them. O'Malley makes no claims outside of the books, nor does he plant any seeds inside them, that he's out to subvert the genre and do some rich, emotionally involving epic. It seems he's just trying to be really entertaining and working something he knows and loves into a fun, humorous story. The critic is dishonest when he faults the art for not being what it is, but what the critic wants or expects it to be. Now, it would be structurally more sound to conclude the exercise of pointing O'Neil's words back at him and saying this review shouldn't be excused but can be ignored or marveled at, but I won't do that. I think I've laid enough on the guy, and besides, I know the feeling of getting that head of steam when you're writing about a book that pisses you off and it's very, very easy to go out with both barrels on your conclusion, writing something a bit too strident or apocalyptic. At the time, it probably felt like O'Malley came in O'Neil's eye or something, and once the piece is turned in, it may be that O'Neil cooled off and thought, "That was a little strong, but oh, well, better than finishing off boring." But since he didn't realize his inability to accept the concept of the series disqualified him from writing about the execution of that concept, why would he soften the blow at the end?
By the way, who's editing these reviews? I know it isn't TCJ style to modulate an irate tone in a review, so whatever about the ending of this one, but how about some plain old elements of style were botched here. O'Neil used "deft" twice in two paragraphs, one of those times inaccurately. Deft certainly applies to physical dexterity, and O'Neil uses it capably enough to describe O'Malley's creative skill of handling story elements, a kind of mental juggling. However, deft really doesn't apply to one's understanding of something. People don't have skillful or adroit or nimble understanding, which are adjectives synonymous with deft. That, along with the redundant "totally derailed" show not just the writer but the editor needing to take a little more care with the final product.
The other problem I have with the review is really just O'Neil's notion that the Pilgrim series "derailed" when he realized the plan for the books was to structure them in pretty much a videogame format. Actually, O'Neil uses a curious mixed metaphor that the "shock" (of discovering the series' true focus) is enough to "totally derail the series in one fell swoop: Scott Pilgrim is a videogame in comics form." First, when someone writes about something being derailed in one fell swoop, I think of pterodactyls striking locomotives, and I also think "one fell swoop"--how old is Tim O'Neil?
O'Neil's rub (as long as we're using archaisms) is that by choosing this structure, creator Bryan Lee O'Malley is not just "lazy" but "dishonest", too, because he isn't doing the "brick-and-mortar work" of "developing a plot through character interaction and thematic progression." This is just foolish and wrong, and, well, lazy and dishonest...on O'Neil's part. I don't see anything inherently wrong with borrowing the videogame structure of working through little thugs on your way to the big one. Lots of great mysteries and films noir/romans noir are like that. It seems to me just a more recent descendant of the heroic quest, right? Some plots do develop via character development and interaction, and some don't. Some of the greatest authors have started with the ending and worked their way back, making their characters hit their marks and be wherever the author needed them. Calling that lazy or dishonest is incorrect; even calling that method of creation less organic is arguable, depending on how linear you are. My point is that the videogame structure is valid, if along the way you're developing your characters. Yes, it may be almost impossible for a videogame or buddy cop comedy to reach me emotionally, but I remain a believer in the possibility that there are people talented enough to make that happen. To dismiss the series now (and by the way, "totally derail" is redundant--it's derailed or it's, uh, railed. It's like "total annihilation.") based on the structure alone, as O'Neil does, is unfair. It's also unfair to the readers of the magazine that he adds five more paragraphs after this. If you can't accept the premise, move onto another book.
Now, where I do agree with O'Neil is that the Scott Pilgrim character isn't very likeable. I wouldn't call him "doggedly unlikeable," nor would I call him a "loser" with "no prospects." I haven't read the books since they came out, but I seem to recall that, hard work or not, Pilgrim does have some talent. I agree Pilgrim is shallow and thoughtless, but his lack of malice keeps him from being really unlikeable. I also agree that by the time of the third book, O'Malley should have developed the characters better, especially the women, and he hasn't really shown much sign that Pilgrim is the way he is because he's heading for a fall and going to grow emotionally from it. That could happen, but like O'Neil I'm not convinced. I don't care that much whether Pilgrim is likeable, but whether he is accessible.
It's in the second-to-last (to be fair, my instinct is to write "penultimate") paragraph that O'Neil's moralism is revealed as the barrier towards his enjoying this series. "What happened to the idea that age brought maturity, and that maturity brought deeper understanding?" And to this I say, yeah, Krazy Kat--he's not that into you! Beetle, why aren't you protesting the war?
I mean, what was one expecting from these books, anyway? O'Neil throws a couple petals O'Malley's way that there are some interesting sequences in the book, but admits in the last paragraph that because he saw great promise in O'Malley's first book, Lost At Sea (likeable character? Hmm), he wanted more tender coming-of-age stuff, only, y'know, better and different, in this series. And because he gets O'Malley doing something more along the lines of an action comedy fantasy, it's no good. In fact, as O'Neil lumbers up and concludes, the Pilgrim books are a "monumental conceptual misfire that cannot be excused or ignored, only marveled at from a distance," which begs the question of who asked O'Neil to excuse them, and again, if the concept is his problem with the material, isn't a two page review as "disingenuous" as he claims O'Malley is? Whatever the flaws of the books, dishonesty is not one of them. O'Malley makes no claims outside of the books, nor does he plant any seeds inside them, that he's out to subvert the genre and do some rich, emotionally involving epic. It seems he's just trying to be really entertaining and working something he knows and loves into a fun, humorous story. The critic is dishonest when he faults the art for not being what it is, but what the critic wants or expects it to be. Now, it would be structurally more sound to conclude the exercise of pointing O'Neil's words back at him and saying this review shouldn't be excused but can be ignored or marveled at, but I won't do that. I think I've laid enough on the guy, and besides, I know the feeling of getting that head of steam when you're writing about a book that pisses you off and it's very, very easy to go out with both barrels on your conclusion, writing something a bit too strident or apocalyptic. At the time, it probably felt like O'Malley came in O'Neil's eye or something, and once the piece is turned in, it may be that O'Neil cooled off and thought, "That was a little strong, but oh, well, better than finishing off boring." But since he didn't realize his inability to accept the concept of the series disqualified him from writing about the execution of that concept, why would he soften the blow at the end?
By the way, who's editing these reviews? I know it isn't TCJ style to modulate an irate tone in a review, so whatever about the ending of this one, but how about some plain old elements of style were botched here. O'Neil used "deft" twice in two paragraphs, one of those times inaccurately. Deft certainly applies to physical dexterity, and O'Neil uses it capably enough to describe O'Malley's creative skill of handling story elements, a kind of mental juggling. However, deft really doesn't apply to one's understanding of something. People don't have skillful or adroit or nimble understanding, which are adjectives synonymous with deft. That, along with the redundant "totally derailed" show not just the writer but the editor needing to take a little more care with the final product.
Posted by ChristopherAllen at 11:32 PM [Link to this post]
2 Comments:
A few thoughts -
First, you're absolutely right about the timeliness of the review. The review actually sat on the shelf a few months before being printed. As it was, the review was also assigned late in the press cycle for the third book. So, yeah, we definitely could have been more timely.
I'd defend my usage of deft in both cases. "Deft really doesn't apply to one's understanding of something. People don't have skillful or adroit or nimble understanding, which are adjectives synonymous with deft." I have used the word in this meaning before and I think it definitely qualifies as correct, if figurative usage. (You're right about it being repetitive when used twice.)
"That, along with the redundant 'totally derailed' show not just the writer but the editor needing to take a little more care with the final product." I'd also argue for this usage as well, but not for the same reason - it may be slightly redundant (since, as you point out, derailed is an absolute state, not a quantitative state), but occasional repetition is acceptable, I have always believed, when used for purposes of punching up the syntax - read the sentence with and without the adverb, and tell me it doesn't read better with it.
I wasn't expecting a redux of O'Malley's first book, merely something that built on what he had previously produced in terms of insight, skill and conception. I take issue with Pilgrim because, by legitimizing video games in the context of the narrative, he undercuts any interest I - and I think the majority of people - would have with his story. Video games are, to put it bluntly, not something on which you can built a narrative - video games are not something I think grown adults have any interest in, nor should they. The celebration of willful, repugnant arrested development isn't very "fun". The whole thing was rather offensive on those grounds, and I hope the review effectively communicated my disappointment in this regard.
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