“Okay, I read this quite a number of years ago. I didn’t review it at all because I didn’t have much good to say about it. But just recently I was asked to say a few things because this book, which has become a darling of sorts, doesn’t get a lot of one-star reviews.
Like I said, it’s been awhile, so I’ll do my best. But everything will probably be based on how I remember FEELING more than anything.
This came out in 2003, so at that time I was just starting college. I think I would be just about the ideal audience in a lot of ways. Sensitive (wussy), smart (thinking other people were stupid), and into comics (knee-deep in college trim), this really had it all, I was led to believe. I mean, this was a time when I thought that the world’s biggest problem was that there may never be another Postal Service album. To summarize, my primary function at the time was FEELING FEELINGS.
So, when presented with what I was told would be an epic tale of a young man’s feelings presented in comic book format, I set up my Dell desktop to play a loop of downloaded indie emo and dove in.
As an older man, an elder statesman, I’m prepared to admit that some of the strong dislike I felt for this book could have come from the fact that it was so popular. Just like every young person who becomes upset when he sees an Ashanti album climbing the charts while his favorite bands stagnate, there’s something about being young that makes everyone else’s bad taste a personal affront. You like Sean Paul? Why do you hate me and everything of quality?
Just to be clear, there may have been an element of that here. Because Blankets was goddamn everywhere. This was the era when big box bookstores and libraries were dipping toes in the graphic novel waters, and Blankets was one of the books you’d find absolutely everywhere. Part of the problem was that I didn’t think it was all that good. But the other part of the problem is that it felt like Blankets was one of those books that people used as a tool to separate Comic Books from Graphic Novels. No, this isn’t about a man with a freeze ray taking over the world. It’s about a young man’s real life. Therefore, it is a real thing for grown-ups to read.
I hate that mentality. Because to me, a story about a man who messed up in his pursuit to save his wife, and eventually finds himself running around with a freeze ray because saving his wife is the only thing that matters to him, speaks to a lot of the same issues as Blankets, but in a way that I find a lot more creative and engaging. We all have more in common with Mr. Freeze than we’d like to think. How many of us made a life out of pursuing a doomed relationship that was idealized because the pursued was not involved in any real way?
At any rate, that mentality is not the fault of Blankets, nor is its popularity in bookstores. But I just wanted to lay all my cards on the table and say there was probably some malice because of who I was and where I was.
Now onto the actual book.
Here’s the thing: I’m a HUGE fan of autobiographical, heartfelt, small memoirs. I love stories of heartbreak, and a simple story told well, especially where romance is concerned, will get me every time. Jeffrey Brown is a great example, to me. Also a comic book artist, he writes stories that seem almost pointless, but as you read through the tiny events add up to someone’s entire life. Even if the small events are not super memorable, you’ll never forget how the book made you feel. It’s honest and comes from a very real place, which is what makes it work for me.
Blankets didn’t feel honest. Perhaps it is. Perhaps it is 100% genuine and I’m being unfair. But to me, as a young man of the exact same age, it felt like a very romanticized version of early college life. It felt like a version of the truth that my mom would want to read. There’s one masturbation sequence, and it’s so overwrought and guilt-ridden that it was hard for me, a kid who went dumpster diving for Playboys, to identify with.
Again, my problem isn’t whether or not Thompson is telling the truth. But for me, it doesn’t FEEL real. It FEELS like revisionist history. It FEELS like he was spending a lot of time thinking about who would be reading about his life as opposed to putting it down on paper. It FEELS less honest than I needed it to be.
The book also has a strong religious theme throughout. It’s a struggle with religion, which I’m sure is something a lot of people go through, but for me was never an issue, and it’s one of the few things I struggle with as far as identifying with others. There’s no hell I can imagine worse than hearing someone in their early 20’s discuss his or her personal religious philosophy and the struggle they went through to find it. Seriously. I’m certainly an atheist, but not so much so that I’m above pretending to love Christ in order to get out of a conversation with a near stranger about religion. In fact, religion-wise, I’d say my orientation is 100% flexible, the flexibility being based on saying whatever will get me out of conversations about religion. Not because I struggle with my own beliefs, but just because I’m not interested.
And that’s the core of what I don’t like about Blankets. Hearing the character talk about religion, I felt like I was reading the words of a complete stranger. After spending 500 pages with a character, especially in what is ostensibly a very personal story, the one thing I should feel is that this person is no longer a stranger to me. I should care about this person on some level. It’s okay to hate a character or love a character, but I should have SOME opinion on what I’d like to see happen to him or her.
In Blankets, I really didn’t.
The graphic memoir has gotten quite popular, for better or worse, and it’s something I try to keep up with. There are some that are poorly drawn, some that are clearly not well-suited for a comic format, and many that feel a little less than honest. I can overlook all of it. The one thing I can’t overlook? Finishing reading it and feeling nothing.”