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Library of Congress Catalogue in-Publication Data ISBN 918-4-16-148410-0 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Illustrated by Bethany A. Schimmel MELONBALL PRESS Northfield, MN 2008.
Orlando A GRAPHIC NOVEL
ADAPTED FROM VIRGINIA WOOLF’S
Orlando: A Biography
Introduction REPRESENTING a narrative using black ink on white paper can be done many ways. This introduction shows one of them—characters forming words forming sentences on a page. When we read Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, or Paul Auster’s City of Glass, or Henry James’s Turn of the Screw, we read words on a page and from there, an entire narrative blooms in our minds. We perceive time, actions, characters, and morals stemming from strings of characters on a page. Another way to represent a narrative is the graphic novel. Growing up, my familiarity with comics extended no further than Cathy or Dilbert. I assumed that graphic novels were 400 pages of Dilbert-level stimulation, so I avoided them. When I read Paul Karasik & David Mazzucchelli graphic adaptation of Paul Auster’s City of Glass, I realized that this was not an extended Dilbert comic strip, it was a medium of art with the potential to be every bit as expressive as a novel. Graphic expression could even be used for an essay—Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics is just that—a graphic essay. Fascinating. Out of this realization sprang my idea to adapt a portion of Orlando into a graphic novel. I wanted to capture the spirit of some of the visualizations of narrative expressed in Paul Karasik & David Mazzucchelli’s graphic novel, and to add some narrative elements of my own. I decided to bring in some well-known Narratologists as characters to bring to
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light some aspects of the Orlando narrative and its transference to a graphic form. All of the illustrations of critics present in this novel are based on photographs of the original, so yes, that is what Wayne Booth looks like, more or less. It is very difficult (much more difficult than I imagined) to convey a narrative in a manner both visually pleasing and sufficiently clear. I tried to render visually the story and the discourse from the scene where Orlando encounters the Archduchess for the first time after Orlando has become a woman. I leave it to you, dear reader, to determine how I fared balancing beauty and narrative clarity. Bethany Schimmel November 19th, 2008
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Chapter 1
And so, bewildered as usual by the multitude of things which call for explanation and imprint their message without leaving any hint as to their meanings upon the mind, she threw her cheroot out the window and went to bed‌
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The next morning, she had out pen and paper.
She struck out a phrase, now in the depths of despair ...
... now in the heights of ecstasy, when ...
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It was a familiar shadow ...
It surprised Orlando.
It stared at Orlando.
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Who stared back from the window.
They stared at each other for a certain time.
Hi. My name is George Butte. I’d like to introduce a newly useful phenomenology of narrative for this situation.
Intersubjectivity.
Created by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whose view of intersubjectivity might be described as a web of partially interpenetrating consciousnesses that exist wherever perceiving subjects exist.
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Thus, in a situation like this, wherein two characters share a gaze...
How will the gaze of one character affect the other in this web of intersubjectivity?
...our intersubjectivity alarms go off.
Getting back to the story...
The Archduchess had arrived.
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As Orlando looked at her...
...her lank cheeks...
...her high headdress.
She thought the Archduchess resembled nothing...
...so much as a monstrous hare.
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This, then, was the woman who had chased Orlando from England.
At the thought, Orlando laughed aloud.
She had fled all the way to Turkey to escape her seductions.
There was nothing for it but to ask her in.
Soon the two ladies were exchanging compliments.
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A plague on women, said Orlando to herself.
They never leave one a moment’s peace.
Here she turned to present the Archduchess with the glass.
She walked to the cupboard to fetch a glass of wine.
A more ferreting, busybodying, inquisitive set of people do not exist.
AND BEHOLD
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In place of the Archduchess stood a man in black!
Writers have no overt means of prescribing the speed at which their work should be given temporal reality. Do graphic novelists?
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Oh! Sorry. I’m Paul Hernadi.
My friend Scott McCloud would tell you the secret is frames.
How do we perceive the narration of time differently in a graphic novel than in a traditional novel?
Moment-to-moment frames are slow-paced.
Compared with action-to-action frames. In this way, the illustrator can modulate the action’s pace.
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Exactly. but in a novel, there are no frames to indicate pace, so every reader’s perception of the pace of a novel like Orlando is different.
Let’s get back to the story.
...for now.
Recalled thus to a consciousness of her sex, which she had completely forgotten, and his, now remote enough to upset.
“La! How you frighten me!”
The Archduke kissed her hand.
The archduke told his story he had always been a man.
“Forgive me for the deceit I have practiced upon you!”
In short, they acted the parts of man and women with great vigor and then fell into natural discourse.
When he heard of her change, he hastened to offer his services.
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Here he teed and heed intolerably.
For to him, said the Archduke, she was ever the Pink , the Pearl, the Perfection.
Or his own? I wonder if the narrator is expressing Orlando’s views. The 3 P’s might have been persuasive had they not been interspersed with hees and haws.
The Orlando narrator is an interesting case because sometimes he has a privileged view of Orlando’s thoughts. I’m Wayne Booth by the way.
You see a writer can be more or .less distant from the story he tells... “If this is love,” said Orlando to herself, “there is something highly ridiculous about it.”
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Making a declaration of his suit, the Archduke told Orlando he had something like 20 million ducats in his castle.
As he spoke, enormous tears formed in his rather prominent eyes...
...while at other times, his authority has limitations.
...and ran down the sandy tracts of his cheeks.
Orlando was aware that women should be shocked when men cry, so shocked she was.
The Archduke apologized.
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He commanded himself sufficiently to say he would leave now, but would return on the following day for the answer to his suit. That was a Tuesday.
He came on Wednesday; he came on Thursday; he came on Friday; and he came on Saturday. It is true that visit began, continued, or concluded with a declaration of love, but between there was much room for silence.
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They sat on either side of the fire. The Archduke would bethink him how he had shot an elk, and Orlando would ask was it a very big elk. The Archduke would say it was not as big as the reindeer which he had shot in Norway. Orlando would ask, had he ever shot a tiger, and he would say he had shot an albatross.
Orlando would yawn, the Archduke would say, “I adore you.”
At which neither could think what to say next.
Indeed, Orlando was at her wit’s end thinking what to talk about and had she not bethought her of a game called Fly Loo, she would have had to marry the Archduke.
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Only 3 lumps of sugar...
...and embarrassment was overcome...
The Archduke would bet ÂŁ500 a fly would land on this lump...
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...and a sufficiency of flies...
...the necessity of marriage avoided.
...not that lump.
Orlando soon began to detest the sight of sugar.
She caught a blue bottle, pressed the life out of it, and secured it by a drop of gum arabic to a lump of sugar, and so began to cheat at Fly Loo.
In this manner, Orlando cheated the Archduke grossly. At last he had paid her ÂŁ17,000 and could be deceive no longer.
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To love a woman who cheated at play was, he said, impossible. He broke down completely. Orlando laughed. The archduke blushed. Orlando laughed. The archduke cursed. Orlando laughed. The archduke slammed the door and was gone.
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O “I am alone,� said Orlando.
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Bibliography Booth, Wayne C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. Karasik, Paul and David Mazzucchelli. Paul Auster: City of Glass. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004. McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994. Mitchell, W.J.T., ed. On Narrative. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Woolf, Virginia. Orlando. San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1928.