Michel Rabagliati: Paul in the Country
Drawn and Quarterly Publications
P.O. Box 48056
Montreal, Quebec, Canada H2V 4S8
drawnandquarterly.com
28 pages
"Cat Lake--we never saw a single cat there-- was
small and
full of black stumps, but it was heaven for us."
The first time I came across Michel Rabagliati's work, it was
in Drawn & Quarterly 3, an anthology which
highlights many of the artists from D&Q, as well as some
older artists, such as Frank King, of Gasoline Alley. Paul:
Apprentice Typographer is only Rabagliati's second comic
strip, and immediately stood apart from the other comics in
the anthology for its unique drawing style and gentle and
touching storyline. The story, which introduces the
characters from Paul in the Country, Rabagliati's
first full-length comic, is about a young boy living in
Montreal in the early 1970s, eager to tail along with his
father as he goes to work. After Paul and his father share a
pair of sandwiches, he takes his son to work, where they are
alone except for the presence of an old-timer who proclaims,
with much dignity, "Typography's an art and your dad's
an artiste!" Just the sort of thing you want to hear
about your pop, (this mystery in progress) at such a young
age.
Michel Rabagliati, born in Montreal in 1961, worked as a
graphic designer and illustrator throughout the past two
decades. Just recently has he started drawing and writing
comics, with a full-length 150-page book, Paul Has A
Summer Job, to be published in 2001 by D&Q. According
to his biography
at D&Q's website,as a kid "He copied his
favorite cartoonists: Franquin (Gaston and Spirou) and Seron
("Les Petits Hommes") and wrote and drew his own
short comic strips, soon forgetting them in a drawer."
He writes stories from a Quebecois perspective, and shows a
Montreal that provides many memories for the older Paul of Paul
in the Country..."Heh, Heh, I'm getting nostalgic
with age." At one point he reflects on the old
neighborhood, "our block was a great place for kids:
Five large apartment buildings with a huge courtyard in the
middle, it was a fabulous playground." He follows this
with a genius frame in which he attempts to remember all of
the neighborhood kids, shown here "line-up"
style...Renee, Luc, Jacques, me Alain, etc. It is through
this remembering that we can delve into the heart of this
work.
While reading this story, I am transported to that childhood
place where I often wondered what so many things were about.
It is like poet Robert Duncan's "place of first
permission" from his poem "Often I am permitted to
return to a meadow." In this childhood place, we are
unique and forming; it is how we look back on this place that
creates the validity of the memory. Through his use of
intelligent perspective and point of view, Rabagliati is able
to interchange the earnest views of the young Paul and his
friends with the perspective of the grown-up Paul, who begins
this book on the same road his father took with him, many
years before, to the family cottage in the village of St.
Sauveur in Quebec. The story shifts between the present, with
Paul at the wheel, reflecting on memories of his past as
he drives, and the past, with memories of his father driving
the same route.
There is one particular frame that I love, which shows the
young Paul and his sister sitting in the back seat, dwarfed
by the largeness of the area, "All the space in the back
seat made us feel tiny." In the next frame they are
joyfully having fun and shown kicking each other. What helps
to set this story apart from other comics is the careful use
of dark and light tones, often juxtaposed to create
particular emotions. This accents the familiarity of these
family trips very well, with one picture showing Paul sailing
along the Quebec highway next to some happy cows grazing, and
then on the next page we see the evil infiltration of
"another pseudo-Swiss development project," with
the dark mountain looming above. We realize that with each
vacation comes inevitable change, but what a better time to
ignore this for the pleasures of life than childhood! By
showing Paul return to his childhood vacation spot, we
understand that the best way to shake the cynicism of the
world and get back the earnestness of youth is through the
eyes of a child.
At the cottage we meet up with Paul's father and mother, who
have taken the cottage of his youth (actually his Aunt
Janette's) and fixed it up. His mother is seen happily
clanking through the refrigerator looking for a "Diet
Pepsi, 7-UP, or beer" for her guests. Paul reflects as
he watches his daughter Alice run down to the stream he
enjoyed as a boy. In one particular memory, Paul remembers
how he was told not to point his new gun at anything. As a
turtledove flies by, he shoots it, contrary to the warnings
of his father..."I had thought that if you kill
something, death would be spectacular, like in the
movies." He soon realizes it is not like the movies, and
ends up guiltily gazing into the stream, his reflection a
bird in the water.
When the older Paul reflects that he is getting nostalgic
with age, we realize that nostalgia is not just something we
experience later in life, it is part of a building up of
emotional moments. Whether we choose to reference these
moments later in life is really more of an indication of what
type of person we are (or become). In an increasingly hectic
world, it is fit to reminisce over our youth, even if it does
bring back the reflection of a dead bird; this means we are
feeling and not just living.
Rabagliati is an artist who understands, like Proust before
him, that the shadows and light before us must be examined,
even in minute particulars. In the final pages of the book,
his daughter sees a bird, and we see Paul's pained expression
as he tries to tell her "Birds are like that, Alice, you
shouldn't try to catch them." And we realize that there
is much to be learned.
--Erik Sweet [June 2001]
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