Salon Books | The Funnies


	A L S O + T O D A Y Spurious George: A geek tragedy By Jake Tapper In yet another tell-all book about President Clinton, former aide Stephanopoulos offers a tour de force of betrayal, self-loathing and self-promotion T A B L E+T A L K It's almost spring, and books about baseball are a hot topic in the Books section of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes By Stephen Holmes and Cass Sunstein Nonfiction (03/18/99) The Power to Destroy: How the IRS Became America's Most Powerful Agency; How Congress Took Control; and What You Can Do to Protect Yourself Under the New Law By Sen. William V. Roth Jr., and William H. Nixon Nonfiction (03/18/99) The Greedy Hand: How Taxes Drive Americans Crazy and What to Do About It By Amity Shlaes Nonfiction (03/18/99) Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein By Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn Nonfiction (03/17/99) Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin By Alice Echols Nonfiction (03/16/99) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - SEARCH REVIEWS BY: title of book author publisher reviewer - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BLACK VOICES An archive of stories on African-American themes - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -		t.h.e..f.u.n.n.i.e.s BY J. ROBERT LENNON RIVERHEAD BOOKS FICTION 301 PAGES BY ALEXANDER CHEE \| Every year when Tim Mix, the hero of J. Robert Lennon's new novel, "The Funnies," was a child, his cartoonist father would draw a few strips as if Tim had done them and tell his readers he'd gone on vacation and his son was taking over. Now he's dead, having pronounced as a last wish that Tim really take over his all-American cartoon strip, "The Family Funnies" (think "Family Circus"), a "bread machine" of syndication and merchandising. Tim's family, released at last from their role as fodder for the strip's simple jokes, implodes, while Tim -- who narrates their story, and his -- transforms from reluctant son into reluctant family hero. The problem is, Tim has decided to stay away from cartoons and make unsalable found-art sculptures instead. After his father's death he gives up his girlfriend and his sculptures and goes home to the house he grew up in, deeded by will to his schizophrenic brother, Pierce, the one sibling who was never represented in the strip. Intent on protecting the "Family Funnies" franchise, Tim sits at his father's desk, tutored by Brad Wurster (a grumpy acolyte of the old man's who could never do a strip of his own), racing to learn the style he had once disdained fast enough to avoid being replaced by the impatient syndicate. The novel dramatizes the pain at the source of the strip's visual gags, and there's pain in its own gags, too, such as the teenagers costumed as Tim and his siblings at the annual "Family Funnies" fair (they mock him when he tells them, "You're me"), or the Timburger ($6.50, gouda and bacon added) at the same fair. When Tim discovers pornographic cartoons of his parents that his father had hidden and, later, in a storage room, giant cut-out versions of his family with red wagons full of their secrets, the strip characters begin to seem like two-dimensional voodoo dolls controlling the family's lives via symbols of their torments. Pierce, the likable schizophrenic who believes his father controlled his every thought, seems completely reasonable by the end. "You're not looking hard enough," he says when Tim tries to reassure him about his absence from the strips. "I'm in every one of them." Lennon entertainingly sends up celebrity culture and the new children-of-celebrity culture, but his most substantial achievement is his three-dimensional portraits of Tim and Pierce -- something their father never did accomplish in his strips. The novel suggests an unnerving reason that all the children in "The Family Funnies" were so little at the same time and never grew up. It makes large what the real funnies make small. SALON \| March 19, 1999 Alexander Chee has written for Out, Poz, the San Francisco Review of Books and Publishers Weekly.