Ed The Happy Clown by Chester
Brown (1982-9)
Recommended by Jeff
It’s a pain in the arse to
write about Will Oldham.
Why?
Well, for a start he
doesn’t do many interviews. The ones he does do, he mumbles through, and if he does
say anything of merit, it usually contradicts something he said before. Then he
goes on about R. Kelly for several centuries. But infuriating as that is, it’s
even worse to research people’s opinions of his music. And I’m not only talking
about his fans: huge swathes of music critics gibber out the purple prose when
confronted with a Palace release. Cutting through the platitudes is incredibly
wearisome.
That’s why this song, and
its video, is so refreshing:
The only time I blocked,
properly blocked, when writing Seasons
They Change was when I had to tackle Will Oldham’s career. And it was
Jeffrey Lewis’s song that got me through it. It was not only its mischievous take
on ol’ Bonnie ‘Prince’ that spoke to me. It was the ruminations on the worth of
living a creative life at all – sensations I was feeling keenly, as Seasons was already altering me (and I
wasn’t sure for the better).
I emailed Jeffrey out of
the blue, and asked if I could quote some ‘Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror’
lyrics in Seasons. He said yes! And
he was extremely interested in the book!
We met when he came over
to the UK; he asked me along to his show in Leeds, part of a joint tour with
the incredible Peter Stampfel of the Holy Modal Rounders (who I had also
interviewed). Seasons had just been
published, so I passed on copies to Jeff and Peter, grateful for their help.
Jeff swapped with me, giving me his comic book Fuff, and their joint album Come
On Board. He and I stayed in touch, and have now met a good few times when
he’s been in the UK. He is a complete delight to talk to, because he is so intelligent
about the things he loves, and sparkles that erudition with an infectious
wide-eyed enthusiasm. He cared for Seasons,
and I’ve never forgotten his kind words about it.
I hoped that he would
recommend me a graphic novel: as an artist himself, and a fount of knowledge on
comic art and culture, I felt sure he’d come up with something memorable.
Ed The Happy Clown was originally
serialised in Chester Brown’s comic book Yummy
Fur during the 1980s (aside: I had heard of Yummy Fur, but only because an an engaging Scottish band of the 1990s
appropriated the name). It was published as a standalone graphic novel in 1992.
I have the latest version (2012) with a few changes from the initial serialisation,
but with a whacking great notes section at the end.
It’s been a melancholy
week. Partly it’s to do with the snow, falling, falling, falling, and trapping
me in a merciless prism of cold. But, also, it’s my own fault: in this prism, I’ve
only really watched miserable DVDs. So let’s just say that Ed The Happy Clown slotted in nicely between the unflinching
hospital scenes in Dennis Potter’s The
Singing Detective, and Rainer
Werner Fassbinder’s film about prejudice and crippling isolation, Fear Eats The Soul.
Ed himself is a cheerful cove,
but by the third panel there’s a fatal fire at the children’s hospital he’s
about to visit. A broken leg, a rat attack, and the exploitation and subsequent
death of several pygmies swiftly follow. We’re on page seven.
However, in this and the
other ‘Introductory Pieces’ - written before Ed really gets going as a serial - the strips have a cartoonish quality to them. If
one were in a darkly humorous mood, one could – and perhaps should – laugh at
them. The fact that they upset me probably says more about me than it does
about them. But, even in this earliest part, real bleakness quickly sets in.
That panel where his nose
is removed cut me to the quick. Ed remains without the accoutrements of clowning
for the remainder of the book.
The kind, intelligent
Josie joins Ed in his misadventures. Killed early on in the story, she returns
to life, first as an unquiet spirit, and then as a vampire.
If it’s possible, Josie
has an even harder time of it than Ed does. The last few pages in the book see
to her fate and… oh, my… it’s surely one of the most harrowing endings of all
time.
The story itself, as Brown
explains in the notes, was almost entirely improvised. Ed began specifically as an exercise in spontaneity – Brown had
been taken with the Wallace Fowlie book The
Age Of Surrealism and wanted to tap into ‘unconscious art’ – and this
unplanned approach remained, to a lesser extent, throughout the comic’s
lifespan. This gives Ed a really
dangerous edge. It could, and frequently does, go anywhere. Overall the plot makes sense, although occasionally there
are frustrating dead ends (and Brown now says he regrets some aspects of Ed that he considers racist and sexist).
However, I doubt the very unusual and sustained air of chaotic menace in Ed would have been there had Brown
planned the story in advance.
In a mark of how far Ed The Happy Clown ate away at me, the
book invaded my dreams. In my nightmare, someone I knew got swept away in a
sewer, and she blamed me; she retaliated by coming up through my toilet,
showering me with shit, and grabbing at my legs. That’s a jumble of several
parts of the Ed story, and it was so powerful it woke me up with a scream at
4am.
Ed The Happy Clown is really not
something for the faint-hearted. It’s not just its gloom, horror, and anarchy.
It’s a transgressive work, with plenty of graphic bodily functions, and a fair
amount of explicit violence. Yet I absolutely adored it. It touched the same
nerve in me that makes Story Of The Eye by
Georges Bataille one of my favourite books. I’ve thought about Ed repeatedly ever since finishing it,
and some individual panels are burned onto my brain.
Like this one. Oh, oh, oh,
Ed.
