Introduction
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. And then Wittgenstein went on to say a lot about how we manage to say things at all. Philosophers are easy targets, but the joke is on us. When we speak, who are ‘we’ speaking for? Or are we an evanescent construct of that speech? These difficulties are made worse by the mediums we use. Graphic fiction is a particularly strange genre, one that is neither purely prose nor purely image, but instead, an alchemical hybrid of the two. How is something said in graphic fiction? We can talk about stream of consciousness in prose fiction, but how would it play out in graphic fiction?
One of the pleasures of Eliza’s brief but touching story is its daring use of speech bubbles. It requires a different kind of reading. There is no left to right, no top to bottom, no one word plodding behind another to spoon-feed you the Written Sentence’s main story: Who did What to Whom. Higgledy-piggledy, ortho-octo-jumble, Irish stew of thoughts and prejudices and a bit of this and grief bucket of that: Eliza speaks thereof of whereof she is beginning to understand: becoming an adult.
— Anil Menon
The Bombay Literary Magazine
Author | ELIZA SCUDDER
Eliza Scudder is an artist and writer who creates poetry, drawings, and graphic narratives inspired by her life. Many of her stories are about childhood memories, experiences of sexual trauma, astrology and mental health. Her work has been featured in Oddball Magazine and The Radical Notion. You can follow her on instagram @elizascudderwriting.
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