Book Review No. 1 – Berlin : City of Stones (Book One) by Jason Lutes

How I discovered the book
 
My friend, who introduced me to graphic novels, sent me the link to a webpage in the Time magazine, which had the list of the alltime best graphic novels as recommended by the magazine. I had heard of some of the names on the list before (‘Bone’, ‘Watchmen’) but there were others which I hadn’t heard about. The one at the top of the list was ‘Berlin : City of Stones’. It was the first part of a trilogy of graphic novels set in Berlin between 1928 and 1933 – a momentous period in German history. The Time magazine site said that “even if the follow-up books never come, it will still be one of the premier works of historical fiction in the medium”. So at that time, I had decided that I will read this book at some point of time, and had put the book down in my wish list. But I had forgotten all about it till the other day when I went to the book shop and decided to do some exploration in the graphic novel section. And Lo, in front of my eyes, leapt ‘Berlin : City of Stones’. Close on its heels leapt ‘Berlin : City of Smoke’ which was the second part in the series. I searched for the third part on the bookshelf with a lot of excitement. But it was not there. When I later went to the publisher’s website, I discovered that the writer Jason Lutes works slowly and takes his own time (he had taken 12 years to finish parts one and two) and the third part has not been published it. So it is going to be an exciting wait for me – like I waited for the last volumes of Harry Potter, of the Inheritance trilogy (Eragon series by Christopher Paolini) and of the Bartimaeus trilogy (by Jonathan Stroud – the first volume was called ‘The Amulet of Samarkhand’). I hope Lutes comes up with the third volume in a year or two. I finished reading ‘Berlin : City of Stones’today and here is the review.
 
Summary of the story
 
I am giving below a summary of the story as given in the back cover of the book.

Berlin : City of Stones presents the first part of Jason Lutes’ captivating trilogy, set in the twilight years of Germany’s Weimar Republic. Kurt Severing, a journalist, and Marthe Muller, an art student, are the central figures in a broad cast of characters intertwined with the historical events unfolding around them. City of Stones covers eight months in Berlin, from September 1928 to May Day, 1929, meticulously documenting the hopes and struggles of its inhabitants as their future is darkened by a growing shadow.

What I think
 
I liked the book very much. The story is set in the period between 1928 and 1933 in Berlin, when many momentous events were happening in Germany. The book tries to capture the complexity of those times through the lives of everyday characters – a journalist, an art student, two workers and their family, children who are exposed to different complex influences, a communist sympathizer, supporters of the communist and the future Nazi parties, policemen walking on the streets, Jews who run businesses, a boy who liked Harry Houdini and other normal people. It is a novel and a history book combined into one. The pictures are quite beautiful too. The lines are clean without a lot of jazz and capture the details quite well. One of the reviews described Lutes’ style like this – ‘Lutes has a natural, clean, European drawing style, much like Herge’s Tintin’. The street scenes of Berlin depicted in the book are quite realistic and impressive. It is like watching it live. Another thing that I Iiked about the book was the way the story changed focus – presenting an overall, high level picture at one point of time, describing how historical events are shaping the city, and then zooming down to individual characters and describing their lives and work and loves and how their life is shaping and shaped by the events in the city. Sometimes the story also goes into a character’s mind and show us what a particular character is thinking and feeling. One of the reviews described this beautifully – ‘His story is full of novel combinations of text and pictures, shuttling between impassive bird’s eye cityscapes and diary-like internal monologues’. I liked the ‘diary-like internal monologues’ very much. One more thing that I liked in the book was the way the scenes blended into each other. Some of the characters in the story don’t know each other and so it was interesting to see how the author was going to move the story from one anecdote to another. The author does it seamlessly. There is one scene where two policemen are taking a walk and talking about things and they pass through a street where the heroine is knocking the door of a particular house. The story then zooms in on the heroine and we next see what she does.
 
Excerpts
 
It is a challenging thing to provide excerpts from a graphic novel, because reading the text alone is not going to give the same experience as reading the book. However, to give you a flavour, I will give a selection of some of the interesting lines that I liked in the book.

Art Teacher : No sense of coherent anatomy – an altogether plebeian grasp of line weight and gesture….Once again, I face the “artistically inclined” youth of today as Sisyphus faced his boulder. I only wish the admissions board would enumerate for me exactly what it is for which I am being punished!
 
Kurt Severing (internal monologue) : Here it is already the end of the month. Several articles intended for publication sit nearby, unfinished. I haven’t been able to work on them since Hindenburg’s birthday. I keep thinking about whose words had the power to change Irwin’s life. Lenin? Trotsky? At root, I suppose it was Marx. The leaves of the horse-chestnut trees have all changed color, but most still cling to their limbs. It’s unusually warm – the air is clear and sound moves cleanly through it – and I can hear the dim racket of other typing machines in use all along the street. A street of writers. Gathered about the newspaper district like bees about a hive. Each letter we press into paper adds to the message telegraphed into the open air, and sometimes I imagine I can pick out the coded signatures of men whose work I know : a cuckold theater critic, a dime novelist at play, a shut-in literary essayist, a freelance advertising writer. I think of where these words will find purchase in several weeks’ time, reproduced a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand times. Who will read them? What effect will they have? An ad for cigars appears in 100,000 newspapers; sales of that brand increase by 3% for a short time thereafter. A new play receives a viciously negative review in a theatrical journal that prints 500 copies; the playwright shoots himself. Who’s the better writer? I imagine the daily output of the entire newspaper district. It makes me think of drowning, but I want to be able to see it another way. Instead : human history as a great river, finding its course along the lowest points in the landscape, and each page as a stone. Tossed in without purpose, just to see the splash, thousands of them might raise the water level until it escapes the confines of the riverbed. The water spreads out, the force of the river diminishes; before long, a marsh. But if each stone is placed carefully and with purpose, perhaps something can be built. Not to dam the current, but to divert its course. Berlin was built on a marsh. I hope it will add up to more than a pile of stones.
 
Marthe Muller (internal monologue) : When I round the first corner, pass out of sight of Herr W, it’s as if the city enfolds me. My fear of setting-out in the morning has given way to a sense of relief. Gradually, the sense of being overwhelmed has become more like that of being absorbed, and instead of losing myself I feel a part of something larger, my life like a thread, unspooling and intertwining with those I pass on the street. Immigrant housewives, beggars and Jews; they could not be more different from me, but I imagine a higher force that binds us into a greater, unified whole. It is a pleasing thought.
 
Marthe Muller (internal monologue) : The first snow of winter – it is like waking up in a beautiful foreign country….It changes all the rules…frees the city from logic and geometry. Edges are blunted, open spaces blur into their surrounding obstacles; the snow mitigates and unifies. Overnight, the laws of perspective have been rendered useless.
 
Marthe Muller (internal monologue) : When I came here, I felt like I didn’t need anyone, but friendship has snuck up on me, and I like it.

 

Further Reading
 
You can find more information on the book and an interview with the author, Jason Lutes, at the below links.

      Alltime top 10 Graphic Novels : Selection by Time magazine – http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/0,24459,graphic_novels,00.html
 
      Review of Berlin : City of Stones

                         – http://www.popmatters.com/comics/berlin-city-of-stones.shtml
 
      Interview with Jason Lutes

                          – http://www.newsarama.com/comics/100801-Berlin2.html

 

Final Thoughts
 
The book is a beautiful history of Berlin during the momentous period between 1928 and 1933, told in graphic novel form. The illustrations are beautiful and realistic and transport one to that era. If you like history and you like graphic novels and want to read about how Berlin was between the two world wars, and you don’t have the time to tackle a regular history book, this book is a good place to start. Highly recommended.
 
Hope you enjoyed reading the review and the excerpts.