Issue 244
From CerebusWiki
| July 1999: Going Home 13 | |
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| Issue 244 | |
| President | Dave Sim |
| Vice-President | Gerhard |
| Administrative Assistant | Carol West |
| Proofreading | Diana Schutz |
| Going Home: Fall and the River | |
| Previous | Next |
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Contents |
Issue Summary
F. Stop sits on the roof of his statehouse all night, drunk on gin and tells no one in particular the story of his education. The whole comic is mainly full page spreads and text pages from F. Stop's novel in progress.
Characters
- F. Stop Kennedy (last seen in issue 243; next appearance in issue 245)
Locations
add list of locations, or location where issue took place
Artist Notes
Chasing Scott commentary in the back of the Going Home phonebook
- "The Mary Noble monologue actually makes up only a part of the 'Symposium' chapter in The Beautiful and Damned, although it does tend to dominate the chapter." Dave goes on to state that it "...surprised the hell out of me when I read it. 'You mean Scott didn't just write Maury Noble's monologue off the top of his head and neglect to take another look at it? He actually rewrote the thing and it's still that stupid and incoherent?"
Dave's Q&A From Dec 2005 / Jan 2006
Q3: Although you have stated quite plainly that F. Stop Kennedy is not a literary version of Dave Sim, and quite obviously so (no argument there), haven’t you mapped yourself into your version of the Maury Noble speech (the young Dave looking for fame and love, the maturing Dave looking for truth amongst the meaningless trappings of society, and the older Dave coming to terms with his Creator)
DAVE: I suppose so, but, to me only in the sense that all men either go through only one of those three stages, two of them or all three. If you actually find love, I think it’s safe to say that you stop looking (fame is largely irrelevant, I think) either for truth or Truth or coming to terms with God. I think the response to genuine love is “True enough.” Which as I say compels you to stop looking. Likewise if you look for Truth but rule out God, I think you tend to just settle for whatever else you can acquire or attain in a material or experiential sense and likewise settle for a kind of peace that naturally comes with experience and age.
Q3 con't: Let it not be lost on the reader that the name of the "middle" character (who would hereby represent that part of your life being left behind) is named Sym-ington (even though, yes, the name is a mingling of Blatchford Sarnemington and Stuart Symington). Could this then also be a case of Kennedy's gin-soaked mind acting as a gateway for some vestige of the God-Who-Is-Dave to poke his head in and dispense a little wisdom, or a sincere glimpse into your own awakening? Or both?
DAVE: Again, sure. The inversion of the sensibility of the Maury Noble monologue from scrupulously secular to God-seeking is far more suited to Dave Sim (the sin and vice-addled “work in progress” of the time) than it is to either F. Scott Fitzgerald or F. Stop Kennedy. It represents a kind of foolish optimism that attaining to a truthful or Truthful state can still be achieved while drinking yourself into a stupor every Friday which is what I was doing at the time. I’ll drink, I’ll smoke, I’ll masturbate, I’ll be celibate while keeping my eyes out for a little nookie if I feel like backsliding, I’ll pray and I’ll develop a nice little relationship with God without giving up any of my actual vices. I’ll just apologize for them a lot. You know: “God and me, we’ll negotiate and come to an understanding of what my vice needs are and we’ll work it out somehow.” It’s an improvement, I think, on the original—Fitzgerald’s cursory assessment of the Bible and the “Old Testament God” in a few glib and artful phrases and then *PLIK* back face down in his gin bowl—but virtually anything would be. An improvement, I mean.
Annotations
- F. Stop is writing a chapter in his book entitled "Singularity" which talks about such concepts as an unnamed YHWH type creature and of "trying to merge the darkness of neutralism with the white light of the truth. . ."
- This is the ninteenth issue of the series in which Cerebus does not appear. It last happened in issue 172, and happens again in issue 258.
This issue summary is a "stub" Please help complete it.
