real places in Ohio – Page 6 – Son of Stuck Funky

Smote him

There’s not much to say here as Les is about as punchably smug as he’s ever been, comparing himself to Moses and his audience, presumably, to the slaves he leads out of Egypt with his stupid books about his dead wife.

And I was initially baffled by what circumstance could have led the most punchable man in the world to say this awkward line, but I think it’s supposed to be about why he decided to write the third book, “Lisa After She Died”. If so, it merely confirms that this endeavor was a monument to his own solipsism. He stole what should have been the story of his wife’s fight with cancer and made it all about him and his circumstances.

Anyway, Les’s expression in today’s strip made me think of another book that’s much more fulfilling than his.

Monday, October 2

Today’s strip

Boy, all you guys who said last week that this looks nothing like a museum and more like a library were more right than I suspect you knew. This disparity makes me wonder if, for all Batiuk’s reverence for “art”, he has even been to a museum, or a museum bookstore, at that.

Apparently this week we have to look forward to Les jabbering some more about Lisa to a rapt audience of no-one-we-know’s, although I do have to wonder who that odd person in panel one with the lanyard and the laptop is. Does Les have someone helping him out with this event who he hasn’t mentioned? Highly likely.

Anyway, anyone want to bet that we’re going to see some new revelation about Les’s relationship with Lisa this week? I’ll set the line at one revelation and take the under, but I know no one will go for it.

As for the punchline – meh. It is amusing imagining that Cayla’s speaking literally here, however. “Go get your voicebox crushed, you douche, so I don’t have to listen to you whine anymore.”

Right where he belongs

Link to today’s strip

So today breaks with the week’s continuity by showing a lot of people waiting in line behind Lillian as she asks Les to sign the books she’s purchased. I have to admit, having Lillian be the only person who actually came to the book signing, mostly to reminisce with Les about her bookstore, was satisfying, but now that’s been shattered by today’s strip.

So Les gets more material for his pity party as Lillian upstages him, with every single person in line much more interested in seeing her than him. In an unexpected twist, Batiuk uses some subtlety in bringing up his standard “the masses prefer twaddle to true art” statement, revealing that Lillian’s books have two cats in them and that that’s what people love. I actually prefer this to his usual less subtle fashion, which would feature that semi-corpulent woman (although she lost a TON of weight between the penultimate and the final panels) raving about how Lillian’s books don’t force her to think about the human condition or some such crap. Thank goodness for small favors.

Let’s all find out if this travesty continues next week!

How ’bout “Murder-by-Book-Signing”?

Link to today’s strip

Look at that douche in panel 1, visible strain on his face as he forces himself to listen to Lillian’s blathering. Les does however hit paydirt as Lillian acknowledges that she’s here to buy “the new Lisa’s Trilogy books”. This is not how a real person would describe what she’s doing, but at least Les made one sale. I suppose that’s the part that drives this book signing sequence forward, since the punchline is nothing more than a continuation of yesterday’s punchline. I do like how Les in the last panel, looking puzzled, holds Lillian’s book right up to his face as if he’s never seen such a thing before in his life, deciding to smell it. He looks confused and disoriented. Oh, Lillian, your delightful smile is wasted on this man. He’s never going to read your book. Don’t kid yourself.

I have to admit that I’m more intrigued by the subtitle in panel 2 for The Last Leaf, which is “Lisa’s Story Concludes”, which with that awful stylized lettering I’ve read more than once as “lisa’s story omelettes.” How could this possibly be a conclusion to Lisa’s Story? She DIED in the last one! If it’s about Les’s ability to become a functional member of society again after his loss (which not only has a debatable premise, but is also the most reasonable direction for the book to take), that’s not about Lisa. That’s about Les. It’s as if Fitzgerald wrote “Gatsby’s Story Concludes” about how Nick Carraway got on with his life.

But that’s not really a surprise. After all, I bet if you took all the strips in the new “Lisa’s Trilogy books” of Batiuk’s and counted the strips where Lisa appears and the strips where Les appears, Les would have more by a substantial margin. Hell, dump the book where his purported protagonist is dead and I’d bet Les still has a wide margin in the other two. It’s never been about Lisa. It’s always been about Les. For every strip of Lisa reflecting on her own about her life’s circumstances in a way that doesn’t focus on Les, there are probably ten of Les moping about some damn thing.

Whew, what a tangent. Anyway, your main character, ladies and gentlemen.

He never knows….

Link to today’s strip, oriented correctly since you might actually want to read it

Today’s strip features one of the few things Batiuk does that actually amuses me. He owns himself.

Lillian tells Les that he inspired her to become a writer simply due to his appearance at her bookstore a quarter of a century ago, then promptly lists all the books she’s written, all of them filthy genre fiction. Batiuk links all of her novels’ titles together with the presumed joke being that they’re all derivative, insipid and absurd. He then mocks the prolific Sue Grafton out of nowhere by suggesting that that’s where Lillian got the idea.

But the fact is, Lillian’s asinine Murder-by-places-you-buy-books conceit could have been directly inspired by Les. After all, here’s Les, who’s supposed to be a respectable writer revered by his peers and his creator for his great artistry and vision, yet over the course of the last two decades, here are all the books he’s written:

Lisa Before She Died
Lisa Dying
Lisa After She Died

That’s an own goal.

I’m also curious about Les’s omnibus Lisa edition. I’m going to assume that “Lisa Before She Died” was the same standard non-fiction prose of “Lisa’s Story”, but “Lisa After She Died” was clearly portrayed as a graphic novel. So are we supposed to think that there are two staid non-fiction stories, followed up by a story told through pictures? How would you even format such a monstrosity?