BOOK - The Wisdom of Crowds and the Wisdom of Comics: "The Wisdom of Crowds" and "The ACME Novelty Library"

Don’t read just this review, or you’ll piss off James Surowiecki, author of “The Wisdom of Crowds.” After all, one of the major points of the socio-economic study is that an individual is almost never as accurate as a group. Instead, you should take all of the individual reviews and find the aggregate score, through www.metacritic.com, perhaps, or some other compiling device. Much as I might enjoy you placing all your trust in me, Surowiecki is correct in his assertion that no one, be they the sharpest of CEOs or most intelligent of scientists, is going to be right all the time.

Then again, if you base your purchase of this magnificent book solely on the amount of positive press it receives, Surowiecki may grow wealthier, but he’ll still be pissed at you. After all, another of his points—supported by the most appealingly bite-sized of anecdotes and studies—is that simply going with the flow won’t always be correct. This is far from contradictory, as “The Wisdom of Crowds” will show, but merely a statement towards the intricate structure of society. Knowing how to best utilize the group, or for what types of problems it will be most efficient (there are three, cognition, coordination, and cooperation) is part of what you’ll learn. True to his message, Surowiecki supports the whole agglomerate of work with case studies taken from—where else?—the crowd. Those delightfully well-summarized issues span the second half of the book, ranging from what really went wrong with Space Shuttle Columbia, to the machinery of investment bubbles, and even to the mundane problems of traffic jams, a day-to-day failure to communicate.

It’s all extremely digestible and written so suavely that it’s barely like reading nonfiction. Conversational and relatable for both the white- and blue-collar, “The Wisdom of Crowds” is a fantastic, intelligent read—like “Freakonomics,” only more relevant.

On the other hand, Chris Ware’s omnibus of assorted cartoons and depressingly solipsistic ruminations, “The ACME Novelty Library” is wholly irrelevant. Which just goes to show that a book—or comic book, though Ware is hardly kid-friendly—doesn’t need to have a point to be enjoyable or enlightening, so long as it is exceedingly well-written, aesthetically playful, and above all, different. If you can’t tell from the packaging (hint: the world’s smallest comic strip is on the ridge of the book, another strip accompanies the author’s information), Ware’s collection is unlike anything you’ve seen before (unless you’ve seen his other work before, in which case, you’ve probably already picked this up).

Ware has been taking risks like these for years, perfecting a uniquely geometric form of cartooning that eschews realism in favor of a more cubist expressionism. Though the characters may not be anything more that three loosely connected spheres, their situations, expressions, and dialogue more than convey the intensity of emotion—mostly sadness, though there’s abundant humor in that, too—and allow Ware to be intensely affecting, even as the author himself attempts to distance himself through more and more obscure metafiction.

For all his tricks (and his bag is just as inexhaustible as Felix the Cat’s), Ware manages to cram more onto one page than any other author does, even when he’s using just a few panels. Each strip is a wholly self-contained story, and each is immensely satisfying. Ware uses still panels of inaction to show desolate loneliness, and skips years at a time using symbolic conjunctions (and, but, so, then) to get right to the essential of what is really a life story. Even in small doses, “Big Tex,” “Rocket Sam,” and “Rusty Brown” (to a name a few) are emotionally devastating—examples, allegories, or reminders, depending on the reader.

My personal favorite, “Big Tex,” follows the adventures of a somewhat retarded southerner whose father hates him. While other writers might play up the comic aspect of a father trying to kill his son, Ware doesn’t joke around at all. On one page, his father simply finds himself unable to pull the trigger of the gun (Tex, of course, is oblivious); on another, Tex is driven by his father out into a clearing and left with the most brusque and definitive dialogue I’ve ever seen written:

“Okay Tex, you git out and go over there by the big tree cuz there aint gone be no goddamn icet cream for you today and there aint gone be any no more ever and then you don’t never come back or try to find me or the house again because you aint welcum there anymore at all, unnerstand?”

As the car pulls away, Ware’s cinematic camera (he could easily direct film, instead of drawing still comics, but the effect is somehow stronger when static) focuses on Tex’s confused expression.

There are jokes, too, mostly self-referential ones to the “doomed” art of cartooning, and some historical homage is made to the classic adverts of the 1930’s. But all that is just kid’s stuff, the icing on a rich and multi-tiered cake. Ware, an intelligent revolutionary, doesn’t need to be overt: he simply lays the cards on the table and lets the world take it as they may. As they say, it’s “Something for everyone, a comedy tonight!”