This New Year, while others are busy keeping up with their resolutions, I keep my thoughts focused on growing older. In a few weeks’ time, I’ll enter a new box that begins with the magic number ‘3’. I’m anticipating the day with all the excitement in the world. I heard that being in your thirties means that you’d know yourself better. You’d know what you’re here for. You’d know what you really want and all that jazz. In short, thirties is the new black. No matter how magnificent that sounds, my heart still dreads the day I leave my roaring twenties for good. Sure, the decade rendered many uncertainties and heartbreaks; everything just seemed to be all over the place on most days. But I’d also seen better days, like discovering opportunities in the unlikeliest of places, especially when it comes to school, career and love.
So while I cling onto the last thread of my twenties, I thought I’d re-visit something that reminds of my early adulthood. One afternoon, while in the mood for some serious dosage of nostalgia, I picked up an old copy of Dan Clowes’ Ghost World and read it in one sitting. Everything came flooding back into memory and in a pressing manner, no less. I discovered the graphic novel, along with Blankets from Craig Thompson, in an obscure bookstore that specializes in art and design. I was 20 at the time, and I’d seen the film and had nothing but good thoughts about it. But I also believed that any novel could be better than the film version so I gave this one a try.
In a nameless town, the story revolves around the lives of Enid and Becky, two recent high-school graduates who spend the summer discovering their route to living in a world of Big Macs and shopping malls. They’re both snarky, moody and bestowed with the most acerbic-yet-awesome wit that flows seamlessly throughout the strips of comic. Their exchange of dialogues is appraisable. That’s what I love most about Clowes’ body of work: the flesh-and-blood realness in which the hilarity of the comic lies. He captures the essence and voice of these teenage girls with all truthfulness and authenticity. The characters’ banters feels very personal, at least to me. Reading this makes you feel as if you’ve known an Enid or a Becky in your life.
The amount of intertextuality given in Ghost World is somewhat akin to today’s production by Seth MacFarlane— we see Enid giving her funny commentary on Jane Pratt’s now-defunct Sassy magazine and even personal ads in the lonely hearts column (bear in mind that the graphic novel came out in the early ‘90s). This alone makes up for an intellectual feast for you thinkers. But what really draws me to the novel is just how similar I felt at the time to whatever Enid was going through in her world. Enid is a perfect caricature of my early twenties in college, from the way we look (black combat boots, fluorescent-dyed cropped hair, black-rimmed glasses) down to the way we think (yes, “David” Clowes lives up to our standard of a man). She's lonely in her own solitude and confused by how humanity really works. She questions how she’s somehow part of modern life’s alienating framework. She is, after all, a young person.
Yet everybody seems odd in Ghost World, no matter how mediocre their lives appear to be. Rejecting the idea of conformity, Enid metamorphs and changes her appearances from looking like a little old lady to dressing more punk-rock to wearing a bondage mask around town. Becky, on the other hand, is a WASP-y type who’s attractive (in the conventional sense) and gets on better with life because she grows to conform. Unlike Enid, Becky never really gets the peculiar taste of her best friend and only tags along just because. As time passes, this disparity wears their friendship, further diverting them into two different routes. Meanwhile, we witness how Enid contends with the idea of college as suggested by her dad and struggles with her feelings toward Josh, a quiet boy who’s a constant ‘joke’ among the two girls.
That pretty much sums up the plot of Ghost World, really. Enid shows how it’s completely normal to be flawed, confused and crying when the world becomes unbearable. She has her good points, too. Her humor, intellect and vigor for oddities make a strong female character. In short, Clowes made her human. It’s important to mention how refreshing it is to read a graphic novel that intelligently discusses the complexities of female friendships and teenagehood through a simple story set in one summer. Watching Enid growing far apart from Becky is heartbreaking but it happens, doesn’t it? I’d be-friended a couple of Beckys over the years— striking girls with better luck when it comes to attracting boys— and lost them just the same. We changed as we make our way into adulthood and parted ways to move on with our choices.
Despite its title, there are no literal ghosts over the course of the story (surprise, surprise). I read how Clowes draws the title from a strange graffiti he’d seen in his Chicago neighborhood in numerous interviews. The spookiness only comes from Enid’s inability to let go of the past that anchors her down. She browses through photographs of her as a little girl with Becky and breaks down listening to a vinyl record unearthed from her childhood. At a yard sale that she hosts, Enid finds great difficulty in parting with an old toy named Goofie Gus given to her in fifth grade by a plausible crush, David. Enid is one emotional hoarder at best! She still plans to move forward, and that is to take a bus to another city and morph into a whole different person. Yet to matter how much she anticipates change, Enid clearly fears parting and letting go her box of yesterdays. Doesn’t that just resonates life at times? Adulthood is certainly more terrifying than ghosts!
And there you have it. Ghost World suggests all the emotional state of a person who’s growing up. As everybody begins to change around Enid, she too, must do the same and move on. Reading this graphic novel as I’m moving closer to another box seems more poignant than it was when I was 20. The ending sees her leaving town for her own well-being. I’m on that same bus today as Enid is boarding, leaving what we knew before in our lives. Who knows where the bus will take us but with age, I’m convinced that there’s nothing to worry about. “You’ve grown into a very beautiful young woman,” she says of Becky, just before she boards the bus. I believe Enid has grown the same as well, and so do I.
