[In reference to Radioactive: A Tale of Love and Fallout, by Lauren Redniss]
I love graphic novels. There, I said it. I love graphic novels, but why does admitting it feel like I’m divulging some guilty pleasure? Perhaps my shame is rooted in the glorification of words, which most writers (including myself) build their entire creative worlds upon. Individually and collectively, words can do it all—paint pictures, relay facts, create dialogue, provoke emotion—and it is the inherent burden of the writer to take advantage of this versatility, to embrace the medium and concentrate all of our efforts upon it. The idea that a writer would turn to a different instrument to do what words could do alone suggests in some minds a deficiency on the writer’s part—as though, if the writer were a true master of language they wouldn’t have to lean on illustrations (read: picture books) to accomplish their creative goals.
I saw this kind of condescension even in an article meant to celebrate new graphic writing: The Atlantic’s “Comic Books as Journalism.” At the article’s end, Kristin Butler writes, “These 10 books bring a childlike sense of wonder to their subjects, something that comes in part from the cross-disciplinary collaborations between artists, designers, and writers that yielded the work in the first place.” A “childlike sense of wonder”? Why? Because, since they are illustrated, the reader is returning to childhood when books were simple and spelled out through pictures? To so many in the literary community (myself included if I am honest about the reasoning behind my shame for loving graphic novels) images = easy = children’s books = simplicity. Simple books are rarely good books so graphic novels and the like are often demoted to the second tier of literature: interesting, but not serious.
There are several problems with these assumptions: the first is that words are all-powerful. I have yet to meet a writer who hasn’t been frustrated at some point by the limitations of words. In fact, some of the greatest writers in history found the need to invent new words to fulfill some open space of meaning that the language’s current vocabulary didn’t yet possess. The second problem lies in the assumption that deviating from the happy home of language and text is some sort of failure, a reversion to kids’ books, a resolve to settle for lesser depth or lesser creativity. It is as though graphics are a cheat, a shortcut. For those of us obsessed with the written word, it is hard to admit that words are not the only way to relay deep and complicated meaning. (Of course, to musicians and visual artists, this revelation comes as no surprise). What may be even harder to admit is that words and images can coexist in harmony, complicating text rather than simplifying. Together, they evoke different meanings than they do separately. Where words manipulate one sense, and images another, combined they play a new game with our brains, blowing open wider spaces for varied interpretation and transcendent information. It is for this reason that I love graphic novels—not because they are an “easy” read but because they have the potential to complicate and deepen.
What better example of a work of images and text that complicates its subject matter than Lauren Redniss’ Radioactive? Here is a book operating on multiple levels that come together to create a new intensity and depth. I’ll attempt to parse these levels out—explaining how they work by themselves and together:
1.) Words: How they stand alone
a. Informational Narrative. Redniss’ textual authorial presence is nestled mostly within these blocks of text that seem to be focused merely on relaying the facts. They are often descriptive, but simply so, in a way that does not distract from the (often complicated) information being provided. She uses this voice to provide context, but also to set up a section of authoritative quotations or testimony, which will paint in the nuances of the event in question. I find it quite remarkable that a book that reaches such emotional depth does so mostly through the author’s guidance towards primary sources, rather than her overt interpretations. Example: “As he crossed the busy intersection of Rue Dauphine near the Seine, in the gloom and the snarl of traffic, the physicist was struck by a horse-drawn carriage crossing the Pont Neuf. His daughter Eve later described the moment . . .” (96)
b. Curie Quotes. These sections demonstrate the wisdom behind Redniss’ choice of subject. How excellent it is to have a biographical subject that is so articulate! By including Marie Curie’s own alternately poetic and scientific (and always insightful) words, the author brings the subject out from under the thumb of two dimensional research and allows Curie to tell her own story. The repetition of this tactic and its employment in describing the various stages of her life means that Curie is a three-dimensional character, alive and involved on the page. This is a goal I think most biographers aim for, but never before have I seen it done with such few words and so little authorial interpretation. Example: “My Pierre, I got up after having slept rather well, relatively calm. That was barely a quarter of an hour ago, and now I want to howl again—like a savage beast.” (106)
c. Testimony. Here is where we are getting really interesting when it comes to the text department. Redniss interrupts the Curies’ story to introduce testimony from individuals somehow affected by Marie and Pierre’s research. Often, she provides no warning or introduction to these sections—they are stuck right between the pages of the Curie narrative, demonstrating that these stories are also their stories, just as the Curie story is now a part of the lives of those nuclear research affected. The testimony speaks for itself—Redniss’ own narrative is only injected as a means to create context. The testimony demonstrates the wide-reaching impact (both negative and positive) of the Curies’ life without Redniss expounding on it herself. She is allowing both facts (that the bombing of Hiroshima happened, for example,) and subjectivity (for example, that Daniel Fass can’t see his face in the radiation mask) to have its say and the effect is complicating and insightful.
2.) Images: How they interact with the text
a. Cyanotype prints. One look at these dreamy, impressionistic images and you know that Radioactive is no comic book. It is as much a work of art as it is of literature. Though I am no authority on art history, I find her prints to be expressionistic—which is a style intended to relay emotion or meaning rather than physical reality. Her images are atmospheric and provocative with a special attention to hands—which perhaps is a reference to the incredible power unleashed by the Curies’ own hands as they worked in the lab. The prints hold even deeper significance when one learns how they are made—that is, through chemistry and ultraviolet light. Consequently, Redniss uses science to explain or illuminate science, creating a lovely loop that turns method into meaning.
b. Photos/primary sources. Though the author has a clear creative vision for this book, she does not lean only on her own artwork, instead lending her pages to photos, print outs, testimonial art, scientific renditions and maps. In my mind, these inclusions are what ground this “Images” section in the nonfiction form. Redniss is linking her own interpretive artwork to factual sources, demonstrating the reality of the topics at hand. She also allows these sources to deliver information that the narrative would otherwise need to—for example, the picture on pages 110-111 of Marie teaching at the Sorbonne in front of a room of neck-tied men demonstrates powerfully the weight behind such an appointment to a woman, while Redniss writes only one sentence on the topic. The author chooses images already laden with visual significance—or if they aren’t, she alters them in some way to provoke a response. These sources work in conjunction with her own artwork, adding an extra, illuminative layer.
c. Layout of text. I have to include this layer under the “Images” category because it is more physical than it is literary. Unlike more books that include imagery, Redniss lays her text around images, rather than her images around text. She manipulates spacing to create an eye-pleasing physical appearance. She does not shy away from long open space among short lines of words. She frames blocks of text by parts of images or forms it into shadows of her illustrations. She turns the layout of her text into an avenue for authorial presence—subtly, she is telling us how to read each block of text, what context to think of it in, what emotion might be involved. Take, for example, page 128, where the text is shoehorned into the image of a long, claustrophobic corridor. The exit at the end of the hall looks to be so far away as the walls and its violent paintings close in on the reader and the text. The words on the page mirror the emotions invoked in the image—the walls of Marie and Paul Langevin’s love affair are now caving in as Madame Langevin launches an attack to end the tryst. The words on the opposite page, 129, are shoved between the images of a man and a woman with their backs to each other, demonstrating visually the emerging division described within the text.
As I think I’ve demonstrated here, Radioactive attains its thematic significances through a symphonic interplay between words and pictures. As the words work to illuminate the images, the images in turn illuminate the text, ultimately resulting in more depth and nuance than one might be able to obtain by sticking to a single medium. Is this book perfect? No—I look forward to hearing about the limitations my classmates might have found in this volume. However, this biography stands to me as solid evidence that graphic literature need not be simple literature, that not all picture books are childlike and one-dimensional.
So, am I still ashamed to say that I love graphic novels and other works of pictorial literature? Not with a work as nuanced as Radioactive to point to as evidence that the written word can find productive company amongst visual art.
P.S. Any book that glows in the dark has a special place in my heart.
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