#black paths
The short version: Semi-historical account of the events leading up to the revolution of Fiume, a city lost from Italy just after WWI. Four stories intertwine: rival gang members fighting over stolen goods, the poet-politician D’Annunzio’s rise to power, a cabaret singer finding love in a war-torn world, and an ex-soldier reeling from the trauma of his experience in the trenches.
What I thought: A bit of research has told me that the revolution in the story really did happen, more or less in the way this graphic portrayed it. Some pretty ridiculous measures and philosophies were put in place by people who should have known better, rioting was a common occurrence, and it all happened to take place during the rise of the Dadaist movement, which used elements of art and symbolism to protest against political ideals. Ok.
I didn’t feel any real attachment to any of the characters, though I came close to it with the soldier. I still feel like his story was forced and rushed, painting him as this mysterious neutral force in his own world, but then doing a hard 180 and declaring that he is constantly hallucinating horrifying visions from the war. Maybe it’s part of the absurdist tone the graphic takes, but the soldier doesn’t seem all that bothered by seeing his dead friends and having flashbacks. He just sort of accepts it and goes about his business writing for an art newspaper.
The singer didn’t need to be there at all. Her part in this was pretty much to be a sexy lamp, as she doesn’t do anything and doesn’t affect the plot in any way, and even in the epilogue when she breaks off her relationship with the soldier, both of them are nonplussed and don’t particularly care that she did.
The gang member story didn’t really need to be there either, as they mostly represented a series of faces and names that appeared and were killed off too quickly to keep track of, let alone care too deeply about.
The political story was interesting, but like anything that has to do with WWI, even distantly, it’s incredibly complicated and there’s no good way to tell if the person speaking is telling the truth, or is even loyal to his apparent team. It’s a mess, just like life, but not in the way that regular life is a mess. It’s a mess like only an anarchist, sort-of Italian government who is literally taking advice from madmen can be. (This is true, actually. They recruited extremely delusional people from local mental institutions for their “original thinking and lack of inhibition.”)
All in all, read it if you like extra-chunky art style and historical fiction. If you’re turned off by overly-complicated political stories, maybe skip it and read some of the philosophical “if you liked” suggestions instead.
Read it if you liked: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard, Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, The Stranger by Albert Camus, Equusby Peter Shaffer.
