Yesterday, a book was thrust into my hands. Despite the company I tend to keep and my own reading habits, this doesn’t happen as often as you might imagine. I thought the claim that I could read it in an hour and a half was probably a joke at first, but it turned out to be pretty close to true (two hours, maybe two-five?). Cleverly, Blankets is a graphic novel, though since that terminology is taken by bound comic collections, it is named on the cover an illustrated novel.

And, y’know, wow. Probably moreso for me than for the general case, but maybe not. It’s a coming-of-age story, which essentially says nothing at all, although I can conceive of it as common knowledge that this kind of thing is my bread and butter. I’m not sure precisely what it says about me that I so frequently revisit that period in my entertainment, yet have huge gaping holes in my memory about things that happened, and only the broadest brush strokes about things I can remember; and I don’t even know that I’d have the wherewithal to consider that unusual, if I didn’t know so many people who can recount events that long ago so vividly. Kind of like Craig Thompson recounting his own story in Blankets.

It’s a story about the foundations of first faith and first love, and how solid they seem, and it’s a story about how illusory and ready to crumble they really are. And also, about how similar they are. This stuff, I identify with on a visceral level. It’s possible, by which I mean probable, that it says something more about me that a lot of the things that I do remember, and as vividly as so many people seem to remember everything, revolve around these seminal events in my own life. My story has a lot less drama than his did, but the key elements are in there, and it was very moving to hear and see his story, probably the moreso for getting it all over the course of a morning. Now, I’ll spend the rest of the day in a melancholy, pleasant haze, I expect. Until I start rotting my brain right out of my head on this Crichton novel sitting on the back of the chair.

Also, I should point out that Blankets has a strong visual and thematic motif revolving around blankets. No lie.