Tales of a Seventh-Grade Lizard Boy (i)

from narrative artist Jonathan Hill of the South Carolina Academy of Design

Mine just arrived after pre-order. Hurrah! Then another arrived the next day. I hope it is not a review copy. We do not accept review copies. They burden me with guilt.

See, they don’t belong here. We have never reviewed a new book in a timely way. We carve out 20 hours a week after my day job to say what I really think that afternoon about some part of a book, usually one published long ago.

You might think that I look like a book reviewer and that you must agree or disagree with me. Don’t do that. I don’t like anybody thinking I am something I am not, for all that is the common fate.

You might think I don’t write with proper self-regard. You might find me over-familiar, or instead pompous and in either case regard me with contempt. Ouch. I am thin-skinned.

Like the confused and insecure hero of these Tales, who changes his faces at will. They are masks, like yours. That is what person means, what the comics and stand-up tragics wore to address the assembled citizens of Athens, a mask you speak through. This is not a book review.

It greets a work of art we will read many times. I do now recommend to your interest and pleasure Jonathan Hill on how Booger Lizk’t got over his personal problems as Tommy Tomkins the Seventh-Grade Lizard Boy, with help of a friend with a name that isn’t funny in Viet Nam.

These Viet Nam letters are themselves comics. Words and pictures, our friend Harvey Pekar put it, you can do anything with words and pictures.

When the words concern a picture, they are ekphrasis. When the words themselves make up a picture they are an emblematic poem.

I seek to avoid the chat box of the curator and the graphic novel of the uptown. If you enjoy this letter’s ekphrasis on Seventh-Grade Lizard Boy by narrative artist Jonathan Hill we refer you as well to

the 7 letters so far on Une si jolie petite guerre, the bande dessinée from Marcelino Truong. The first letter went out on February 28, 2022, the second on March 5, 2022, the third on March 26, 2022,

the fourth on April 25, 2022, the fifth on May 28, 2022, the sixth on July 9, 2022, and the seventh on May 22, 2023.

Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.

The colophon of these Viet Nam letters, directly above, shows the janitor speaking with poet David A. Willson on a Veterans Day.