Joe Matt
Fair Weather (2003)
Author: Joe Matt
Genre: Graphic Novel (Nonfiction/Memoir)
Book Summary:
Joe Matt was a greedy, cheating, selfish, bed-wetting pain in the butt as a kid. Fair Weather tells the story of one suburban summer weekend, hanging out with his friend Dave, hoarding money, shirking lawn-mowing duties, and avoiding getting his butt kicked by a guy who he cheated out of a valuable comic book. The story moves quickly through the weekend, framed by the scheduled appearance of a small-time celebrity at the church fair his father is helping to organize. Matt fights with his sister, discovers a rooftop spa, loses his beloved comic book collection, and digs an underground fort. Through a series of betrayals and humiliations, Joe Matt learns absolutely nothing.
Geographical Setting: the suburbs
Time Period: 1970s
Appeal Characteristics:
Joe Matt as a youngster is not a sympathetic hero and this is not a sentimental idyllic-childhood memoir, but his exploits will strike a chord with other victims of a boring suburban upbringing. The story is character-driven, and Matt's childhood self is the main appeal. His complete self-absorption and greed, and the ensuing temper tantrums, are humiliating and funny at the same time. Secondary characters are also strong: Matt's tough friend, the stoner his father befriends, the mother at her wits' end. The plot moves quickly through the weekend, although it does not have a typical beginning-middle-end story arc: it is more of a window into 1970s suburban existence. The artistic style is more like a comic strip than a comic book: Joe's whining is drawn in all caps. Fair Weather was nominated for an Eisner for Best Graphic Album (Reprint) for 2003.
Read-alikes: Joe Matt is probably best known for his serial comic strip diary PeepShow, the first six volumes of which were collected into The Poor Bastard (2001). Readers fascinated by Matt as a boy will enjoy seeing the neurotic, self-obsessed porn, um, aficionado that he turned into. Another male childhood memoir devoid of sentimentality is Scott Getchell's Ritchie Kill'd My Toads (1994), which takes place in rural Maine. A gentler, more dysfunctional, character-driven comic is Lynda Barry's fictional The Freddie Stories (1999), following the childhood of a boy and his two sisters. Two of Matt's biggest influences are the cartoonists Harvey Pekar and R. Crumb. Try Pekar's Ego & Hubris (2006), an un-sentimental faux-autobiography of jerky guy Michael Malice; and R. Crumb's ultimate autobiography The R. Crumb Handobok (2005). Finally, for a reader looking for a traditional novel, Matt's work has been compared to that of Philip Roth. Try The Great American Novel (1973), in which Roth messes with America’s pastime (baseball!) in the same way that Matt messes with America’s hometown (the suburbs!); both are cynical, slapstick explorations of American culture.
Red Flags: F-bomb!
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