Blurry
Cartoonist: Dash Shaw
Publisher: New York Review Books
Publication Date: August 2024
Blurry, the new graphic novel from cartoonist Dash Shaw, is a bit of magic trick, structurally. It’s a story that unfolds across nearly 500 pages, many of which move quickly with four panel layouts, following what feels like nearly a dozen characters, many of whom are connected. But the way it unfolds is bold, to the point of feeling almost flighty, as if Shaw himself is meeting his cast for the first time and inviting us as readers to follow along.
The way this book is structured, characters spend most of it telling stories about their pasts, specifically about the decisions they made — both big and small — that pushed them toward someone or away from someone else. As the reader follows these stories, it is not uncommon to then get lost in another character’s story, and still yet another story within that. At times I found myself forgetting when the focus had shifted and from whom, but I don’t mean that at all in a pejorative way.
I found this to be a very bold story-telling technique for a graphic novel, a smart risk undertaken by the creator who was likely trying to connect the way his story was told to its themes. It’s also a credit to Shaw’s cartooning and storytelling that I never felt disoriented moving between characters. No, in fact it had a couple interesting effects on me. The first was about the pacing. Perhaps it was the way the pages are laid out, designed to pull you through them quickly, but every time we switched to a new character, I found myself excited to soon learn what that person was concerned about, rather than disoriented by a new focus.
The second effect was perhaps the more powerful one. As you move between characters, a (blurry) web of connections subtly begins to reveal itself. It’s not belabored even a little bit by the text, but the book seems to want to show you how little there is between us as people, how our feelings and concerns and histories are more often things we share in common than things that should keep us apart, once you look into them deep enough.
And I suppose that’s where the book’s title comes from, the blurry nature of our shared humanity. It’s an idea that takes hold slowly as you turn the pages of this large book, jumping from well-drawn character to well-drawn character, until you emerge wondering what kind of narrative magic trick you’ve just witnessed. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
For this all to work, I think, it also required there to be narrative throughlines and shared themes within the micro arcs of the characters. Shaw does a wonderful job forging a cast of artistic people who are all largely unsatisfied with their lives and unsure of the choices — both big and small — that they’ve made to create those lives. The artist range from novelists to nude models to students in a live drawing class. And the decisions they and their loved ones grapple with are both (seemingly) innocuous — what shirt should I wear? — and rather momentous — should I break off my secret affair and make myself more present with my husband and child?
But plot in this book is really a bit beside the point. Blurry is more about how it all makes you think and feel. By the time Shaw brings the reader to the moving and poetic finale of Blurry, the reader’s head is likely to be spinning with ineffable thoughts about their own lives, their own priorities, their own choices, and the stories that got them and others to this point.
This is all ambitious territory for a graphic novel to occupy, but Shaw’s book is as smart as it is fearless, without question up to the task.
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Blurry is available now.
