Review by Ian Keogh
The Ephemerata concerns artist Carol Tyler pondering on grief, and as such being intimately part of the process discussed. She notes in an introduction of living with some form of loss over a fourteen year period starting in 2011 and a long list of the departed is shown etched onto a tombstone shortly into the book. She considers them, what they mean to her, and her reactions to their dying.
Grief is an individual experience with shared similarities, and Tyler’s personal version is what she refers to as an exile in Griefsville, a theoretical construct given form within her head. It’s stitched together from real places, objects and experiences, yet not without fantastical additions, and those mourned include the living, but estranged, as well as the dead. Within Griefsville there’s time and opportunity to consider death and associated subjects, and with scattershot reference to the people who’ve died.
Tyler’s previous autobiographical work has hopped from subject to subject, but always with a connecting thread. The Ephemerata extends that idea by broadly dispensing with traditional structure. Much the same applies to the art. The actual drawing is accomplished, primarily Tyler’s brilliantly expressive cartooning, but when required there’s a switch to whatever works for the point being made. Allegorical illustration is a speciality, such as the pages being spattered, as if with tears. Despite the remarkable illustration and a position teaching art to college students Tyler admits at one point to no longer having confidence in her skills. Is this grief?
The more straightforward autobiographical sections are heartbreaking, their density often requiring pages of text with illustrative adornment. The process of dealing with people as they decline is spotlighted, with Tyler’s extremely difficult father adding to the stress of her mother’s illness, although the honesty imparted by impending death is also revelatory. Tyler’s mother is very specific about her final resting place not being near her husband of 68 years. Also while stressed and grieving Tyler has to deal with her paranoid husband and his OCD and her daughter’s addict boyfriend living in the house and stealing things. Then it gets worse.
Grief is dealt with differently, both abstractly as an internal mental condition and via physical manifestations. Tyler’s intelligent observations and emotional reactions are matched by a creative instinct that takes wonderful leaps, often in small throwaway moments such as the construction of fictional book titles to track the progress of a closed down bookshop. She then realises they might also apply to her life.
There are conclusions, a fundamental one toward the end, but a rudimentary observation is that throughout the tragic deluge of her life there doesn’t seem to have been anyone Tyler could talk to. Everyone shown as being around her has their own serious problems, and there’s only a brief visit to a counsellor. It’s very sad. Misery memoirs have 21st century ubiquity, but The Ephemera is a large cut above such button-pushing. Tyler’s observational intelligence, artistic innovation, emotional honesty and sheer talent make this a heavyweight graphic novel that needs to be taken seriously come awards season.
