Cartoons are no laughing matter

The energy of German writing has passed, very unexpectedly, to a creator of comic books

WE'D ALL like to think that, when we come to look at a new book, a new film, a new play, we have no vulgar prejudices; we start to read a novel without making any assumptions, and decide whether it's any good or not as we read it. But I doubt that's true. There are a thousand prejudices operating on us before we pick up a book, or go into the cinema. I like a book with a blue cover; I don't like films set in the future; I can't bear new musicals.

Some prejudices are more rational than others; if you've liked Julian Barnes's last five novels, then you're not just more inclined to try his new one, but more likely to make the assumption that you'll enjoy it. If you've never much liked Dutch painting, then you might as well not bother going to Dulwich to see the Pieter de Hooch; it might be the revelation you've been waiting for, but, more probably, it will just confirm your prejudices. Prejudices are deplorable, of course, but they are the means by which we protect our enthusiasms, and save ourselves a good deal of energy.

Sometimes, however, a prejudice is so widespread that it seems to stand in the way of any kind of recognition or enjoyment. In some cases, a vulgar and stupid prejudice means that a piece of work of genuine and substantial merit never reaches the audience it deserves.

I've been reading Raymond Briggs's new book, Ethel and Ernest. It's an odd and memorable semi-autobiography; an exploration of the lives of the author's parents from their first meeting in the 1920s to their deaths. It lovingly reconstructs the domestic and personal concerns of a working class couple, and sets them against the large political movements, the huge historical tragedies of the 20th century. There is a constant groundswell of background agitation as the Depression, the Second World War, and the post-war social upheavals impinge on the lives of an ordinary couple. It never loses the tight personal focus, and achieves, in the end, considerable pathos.

Ethel and Ernest won't be taken with the seriousness it deserves, however, simply because it isn't written in a respectable form. It tells its story in the form of a strip cartoon, beautifully drawn, and consistently appealing, but still a comic book. And so plenty of people who would get a lot out of it aren't going to read it, simply because it doesn't look quite serious, not quite grown up.

And this vulgar prejudice against comic books has cut English readers off from some of the most impressive work being produced in Europe and America. Art Spiegelman's two Maus books, for instance, used the genre to talk about the Holocaust and the Jewish diaspora, treating these difficult subjects in a direct and accessible form.

I wouldn't cross the road to read a new German novel: literary writing in Germany has become a dry, uninviting sort of thing, quite out of touch with its audience; the old energy of German writing has passed, very unexpectedly, to a creator of comic books. Ralf Koenig hasn't been translated into English, but his books are exceptionally brilliant.

His new book, Jago, stands hardly any more chance of being taken seriously in this country than any other comic book, but it's an amazing piece of work, a sort of fantasy on Shakespearean themes, set in London in 1600, with a cherishably anachronistic setting of leather bars and back-stage bitchery. The plots of Othello, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Macbeth get spectacularly confused; murder, unrequited love and a good deal of trouser-dropping propel the furious action, and in the end there is a pervasive and very characteristic mood of poignant hilarity.

I can't help feeling that this latest contribution to the long German love affair with Shakespeare would stand a better chance of being taken seriously in this country if it were in the form of a long and rambling novel. As it is, there is a double edge to the immediate appeal of Koenig's rubbery, vivid drawings and his ingenious, forceful plot: we can't help feeling that it can't really be serious, simply because it is so easy to enjoy. And, though both Jago and Ethel and Ernest are complex and troubling pieces of work, they slip down as easily as ice cream. Their problem is that they are judged, not as books, but patronisingly, as comic books.

It doesn't really matter. There are plenty of examples of modest little books, written in an apparently inferior genre, which have effortlessly survived their more obviously ambitious contemporaries.

The Diary of a Nobody is read where the novels of George Moore languish in the stacks; and in the end, it wouldn't be surprising if, despite all prejudice, despite all critical acclaim and the pronouncements of academics, William Golding will come to mean less than Fungus the Bogeyman.