Many memoirs advertise an impossible upgrade from impulsive self-sabotage to equally impulsive self-help, and still remain the most accessible literary genre. Graphic memoirs, although they entice readers with a seemingly naïve aesthetic or confessional narrative voice, aren’t the work of amateurs: if anyone can write a memoir, hardly anyone can draw one.
A compelling graphic memoir such as Amy Kurzweil’s Flying Couch evokes personal and cultural memory by way of gestures, poses, angles, text written sideways, poetic fragments, and arrow-flung words imitating perception itself. Each pencil mark of Kurzweil’s reminds you that the book is handmade, and is meant to be held, pored over; Kurzweil’s graphic memoir reminds you that all books aspire to be as artful.
The obsessively layered density of creative expression page-by-page in Flying Couch attests to the fullness of life scrawled upon the templates of desk surfaces, computer screens, open suitcases, purses, windows, and couches....
