Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth

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The story was serialized in the alternative Chicago weekly newspaper Newcity and in Ware's comic book Acme Novelty Library in issues #5–6, 8–9, and 11–14) from 1995 to 2000. [1] Plot summary [ edit ]

Jimmy has no memories of the man whose name he bears, and when one day the mail brings an invitation to spend Thanksgiving with him, his head is filled with hope, hate and fear. But what he finds in Michigan is neither a saint nor a devil, nor even a consistently inadequate parent. His father has brought up another child - and pretty well, to judge by the "Number 1 Dad" T-shirts she buys him. He can be unthinking and dull, but who can't? And he wants to make amends. He says it not with flowers, but with bacon: four strips of 100% US grade-A Country Morn that spell out the word "HI" on Jimmy's breakfast plate. CW: We’re all connected in ways we don’t and can’t ever completely understand. The chain of causality that links us from the subatomic level up through the sphere of thought and how that thought, though it apparently still arises from the interactions of particles, somehow also seems to have an effect on the physical world, is simply unfathomable in its complexity. I find this immense incomprehensibility greatly reassuring, especially its seeming meaninglessness.The Harvey Awards' Special Award for Excellence in Presentation and Best Graphic Album of Previously Published Work, 2001

I very much believe that one of the most important things we can do is to try as hard as we can to imagine other people’s lives, with the ultimate aim of understanding and empathising with everyone we possibly can. We already do this unconsciously when we dream, or consciously when some jerk cuts us off on the highway, but fiction can act as an assisting rudder; books can’t tell us how to live, but they can help us get better at imagining how to live. Maureen said the club’s demise began once other venues began imitating its formula for success. James died in 2000 having made and lost his fortune.SL: A big theme of your work seems to be human connection (and its failure). Is that why you weave stories in and out of each other? One day James and his father visit the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, climbing to an observation platform above one of the great halls. As the world stretches out below, the father mutters something and just walks away, never to be seen again. "He'd told me dozens of times that he didn't want me around, and that he'd never asked for a child in the first place," James later recalls. Jimmy's suffering and his father's delinquency suddenly shrink in scale. The Jimmy of the title is a prematurely aged office dogsbody, blowing around Chicago with only fantasies to keep him company. He is shrunken in on himself, round-shouldered and hunched as if to present the smallest possible target. He has tiny, droopy eyes, never meets a gaze, has no small talk or social graces. The only person who even tries to connect with him is his mother, and Jimmy finds her such a burden that he buys an answering machine to keep her at bay.

SL: You – or someone with your name – figures in the book as a character (though, at the time in which the book is set, I’m guessing you would have been closer to Rusty’s age than his). How autobiographical is the book and in which way? What does it do to introduce “Chris Ware” as a character? Jimmy Corrigan was born to Mrs. Corrigan. Jimmy Corrigan had no relationship with his father when he was growing up, considering his mother kept Jimmy's father's identity a secret for most of his life. Creation Elements of the novel appear to be autobiographical, particularly Jimmy's relationship with his father. Ware met his father only once in adulthood – while he was working on this book – and has remarked that his father's attempts at humor and casualness were not unlike those he'd already created for Jimmy's father in the book. However, the author states it is not an account of his personal life.This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Sam Leith: Rusty Brown collects a number of different storylines written over a number of years. How much do you think of it as a coherent single work?