Unsurprisingly, Ray's fantastic techno-utopianism - he popularized the "singularity," the claim humans can achieve immortality by uploading their consciousness to computers - comes across better when communicated by his daughter. Amy caricatures herself in winning self-deprecation as an anxiety-rattled New Yorker cartoonist (is there any other kind?) and as the frazzled artist barely keeping up with Ray's laser-focused scientific inquiry. Frankenstein project.ĭeputized into sorting Fredric's journals and letters so they can be fed into the program Ray calls "Dadbot," Amy uses that structure to jaunt off on loosely associated recollections of her family, husband and career. Amy's deftly humane spirit makes this idea come across as a loving investigation of the ineffable rather than a Dr. The author of "Flying Couch" goes further by incorporating another imposing familial figure: her late grandfather Fredric, a Viennese composer who fled the Nazis and whom Ray wants to reincarnate through an algorithm. But in the philosophical memoir "Artificial," Amy Kurzweil faces up to that challenge. Many artists would be too intimidated by having a father like polymath futurist Ray Kurzweil to draw a one-page comic about him, much less a whole book. Publisher: Europa Editions, 256 pages, $26. They cast a dreamy spell but their underpopulated spaciousness fails to transmit the clannish claustrophobia and nerve-rattling violence of Ferrante's novel.īy: Elena Ferrante, adapted by Chiara Lagani, illustrated by Mara Cerri. This is partly due to Mara Cerri's illustrations. Though Lagani hits the story's emotional beats well, her adaptation is a bit too serene. In a dramatic, fireworks-strobed moment where Lila suddenly demands eternal loyalty, it's unclear if she is driven by love or envy. Their relationship splits into jealousy, misunderstandings and emotional re-engagements. As the pair moves into adolescence, the dichotomy grows between Lila's impetuous, anger-flashing brilliance and Elena's cautious, analytic worry. Growing up during the 1950s in a poor neighborhood outside Naples, the two bond as precociously smart girls in a world that crushes the hope of living outside gender norms. The latest classic to get the graphic novel treatment ("Kindred" and "Watership Down" are among many others), Chiara Lagani's adaptation targets the story's emotional core: the impassioned yet combative relationship between narrator Elena and Lila, who morphs from friend to enemy to doppelganger. But as fans of the Neapolitan Novels know, there is nothing common about it. Like many fictional narrators, the voice powering Elena Ferrante's "My Brilliant Friend" is an introspective personality enthralled by a more confident pal. Publisher: Metropolitan Books, 304 pages, $29.99. Rodriguez ends "Worm" with a note of potent familial love, tinged with the anxiety of somebody who has lost one country and worries about losing another. Rodriguez's MAGA anguish - his image of an orange-faced Trump holding the Statue of Liberty's severed head was a common sight at protest rallies - grew as America seemed to turn against refugees like himself. But those wanting a schematic "Communism bad/America good" narrative may be disappointed by Rodriguez's take on Donald Trump: "I saw shades of my childhood in Cuba, of the repudiation acts against people considered enemies of the homeland." Readers buying into the revolution's utopian mythology will be disturbed by the harrowing violence (a student mob beats a teacher to death) and thought control (people terrified of being overhead by a "chivato," or government snitch). But though Rodriguez spent only nine years in Cuba, his memories have scars like those of escapees from other oppressive regimes. There are glimmers of Cuban kitsch: lush landscapes, fading colonial architecture, ironic revolutionary art. The book's title derives from the slur hurled by pro-government Cubans against those who decided, like Rodriguez's family in 1980, to leave what he calls an "island prison." His graphic memoir "Worm" grippingly evokes his life's dramatic turns and how political passions turn to hate. One of America's smartest illustrators, Edel Rodriguez grew up in a small Cuban town where paranoia was as rife as poverty. Four graphic novels, among the many fascinating titles hitting stores this winter, delve into a range of subjects: the stark politics and emotional legacy of the Mariel boatlift, a family's fraught experiences with digital reincarnation, thrilling exploits of hip-hop's pioneers and a graphic adaptation of a beloved Italian book series.
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