DAVID BORING
Daniel Clowes
Jonathan Cape/Random House Publishing
They don't make films like this anymore.
Comics like this are likewise all too rare.
David Boring - the book - is about three things: David Boring - the man; the End of the World; and arses.
If Sam Mendes had filmed David Boring, you'd all have bought the video by now. Kate Winslet would be adding a second shelf to the office, just to hold the awards that she - never mind her director boyfriend - had won for being in the film. And Tobey Maguire would be using his spare Spider-Man costume to polish the Best Actor Oscar he had won for playing the title character.
But it's not a film. Sorry. Although, now I wish I was a movie producer. Because David Boring is a fascinating story about what it means to truly long for something, and I could sell a film like that to every corner of the earth.
The eponymous lead is an emotionally withdrawn young man, almost completely detached from the world around him. His relationship with his mother destroyed by her constant sniping, his only contact with his father is through the pages of an old comic book. His only friends are his roommate and his old high school buddy. His relationships with women are passionless affairs, documented with clinical precision.
At least, that's how it is on Page One.
As the story progresses, David's world is changed irrevocably, several times. He falls in love (twice, sort of), gets caught up in the middle of Armageddon, is seriously injured (twice), has a lot of sex, and goes to the theatre.
David Boring narrates the story in a conversational, yet academic style. Talking directly to the reader, aware (or convinced) that he's the protagonist of his own story, explaining the significance of each scene, each character. It's a matter-of-fact style of delivery that made me think, before the end of the first page, of Kevin Spacey (which, yes, contradicts what I said above, but you get the picture).
If David Boring is driven by anything, then it's an adolescent crush that he just can't let go of. He is compelled by and drawn to the memory of the first girl he ever kissed, his "feminine ideal." There's a fetishist aspect to David Boring - not the rubber mask or licking stiletto heels sort of fetish, but a more general emphasis on the type of women that he falls for.
David Boring is a subtle drama with a great deal of raw emotion: heat, to counter the title character's seeming sang-froid. Dan Clowes, who also penned the superb Ghost World, constructs a compelling narrative. While David Boring may not be the most likeable of men, necessarily, with his carefully constructed standoffishness, he is undoubtedly a most sympathetic and fascinating character to watch.
Clowes' art has a timeless quality to it: while the story is set firmly in the dying days of the 20th Century, it could also be any time in the last fifty years. Some people have used the term "paper movies" to describe comics, and while I hate the pretentiousness of the term, it's a fitting enough way to look at David Boring. The careful pacing of the story, the introspective, almost dreamlike narrative, and the cast list at the back of the book would all seem to point to this.
But, ultimately, honestly and thankfully, David Boring is, as it says on the cover, a comic book. And one of the best that I have read this year. A book any reader could enjoy. A subtle, yet resonant story from one of the medium's true
auteurs.
Review Text (C) Matthew Craig
Originally Published in the pop culture magazine Robot Fist