By Esther Pearl Watson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-314-9
This arrived cold: I had never heard of the strip nor the magazine Bust where it has run for years, but as I’m always up for something new I sat down and lost myself in the world of Tammy Pierce, Texas Teen…
Ostensibly based on an actual diary the artist found in a gas-station restroom in 1995, this concluding volume resumes with the innermost thoughts, dreams and experiences of a dumpy, utterly ordinary girl surgically displayed for our examination in a catchy, breathless, effusive warts ‘n’ all style as she endures her Sophomore year of High School, from Christmas Eve 1988 to the Summer of 1989.
When you’re a teenager some things are truly timeless and universal: parents are unreasonable and embarrassing, siblings are scum and embarrassing and your body is embarrassingly finding new and horrifying ways to betray you almost daily… Your friends can’t be trusted, you’re attracted to all the wrong people and sometimes you just know that no one will ever love you…
Drawn in a two colour, faux-grotesque manner (you can call it intentionally primitive and ugly if you want) the page by page snapshots of a social hurricane building to disaster is absolutely captivating. Although this is a retro-comedy experience, behind her fatuous obsession with fashion, boys, music (equal parts Debbie Gibson and The Smiths!), social acceptance and traitorous bodily functions, Tammy is a lonely bewildered child that it’s hard not to feel sorry for. Actually it’s equally hard to like her (hell, its difficult to curb the urge to slap her at times) but that’s the point after all…
If you live long enough you’ll experience the pop culture keystones of every definitive era of your life at least twice more. The base, tasteless and utterly superficial aspects of the 1980s are currently in vogue for the current generation, which is too young to remember them – but you and I can get all nostalgic for the good bits and blithely ignore all the bad stuff: this big little hardback (408 pages, and about 15x15cm) is a delightful and genuinely moving exploration of something eternal given extra punch with the trappings of that era of tasteless self-absorption.
Like those other imaginary diarists Nigel Molesworth, Bridget Jones and Adrian Mole Tammy Pierce’s ruminations and recordings have something concrete to contribute to the Wisdom of the Ages and this book is humorous delight tinged with gentle tragedy – although that’s more in the readers apprehension of how her life eventually turned out…
Modern and Post-Ironic, Unlovable is unmissable. Now please excuse me, I’ve got to put on my legs warmers and chunky sweater and hunt down a copy of volume 1…
© 2010 Esther Pearl Watson. All rights reserved.