Epileptic is a graphic memoir by French indie comic artist David B., narrating the author’s experiences growing up in and around his brother’s epilepsy. It is the early 1960s, David (then Pierre-François) is 5, Jean-Christopher is 7, their sister Florence 4. Amidst childhood adventures, Jean-Christopher has a seizure. Doctors are seen, remedies are sought, including period-appropriate attempts at holistic medicines—all to varying degrees of failure. Jean-Christopher, Pierre-François, and their family are left with the consequences of living with illness. Oh. And Pierre-François has a bunch of extravagant dreams and draws a bunch of extravagant pictures, and takes a pen name. David B. It’s not without pretension. He is an artist and he is French.

I think the critics dig the pretension. They observed that the book is filled with specters, that the text produces a “haunting” effect. The usages of the ghost metaphor stressed the grand impulses of the book— these ghosts are of ancestors, of childhood insecurities, of human limitations, of archetypal sins. Rick Moody (NYT) calls them ghosts of European history. So it is this epic ghost story, the annals of an artist and his medium. Beautiful art, by the way, simultaneously whimsical and intense. It is not that I disagree with “epic”, but what about personable? Amiable? Fellow readers, let us not dismiss the importance of Epileptic being a friendly ghost.

Indeed, the book is beautifully saturated with symbolism and iconic imagery (totem creatures, Celtic knights, etc). And yes, the book possesses the thematic gravity (human limitations, oh fuck) of an art comic. But ambitions are usually boring as hell, and only palatable because David B. goes out of his way to make the story engaging. He tempers the monotony of a relentless disease with levity and mischief: He speaks of his brother’s misguided obsessions with Hitler, of the absurdities of a macrobiotic colony. And then there’s that time where he forces his little sister to copy his comic drawings over and over to sell as zines. I am not so interested in sob-stories, but behind the narration, there’s a bit of a smirk.

Not only does David B.’s idiosyncratic humor keep easily bored reviewers a-reading, it reveals itself to bear narrative importance. As the book and the disease wears on, we begin to understand the disconnect between author’s nonchalant tone in his violent images—his deadpanning, if you will—to Pierre-Francois’s inability to open up and share. It is mid 1960s Jean-Christopher wants to draw a Nazi flag, in hopes of recreating Hitler’s army. He has forgotten how to draw a swastika. It is the early 1970s and Jean-Christopher wants to sing Marseillaise to his Algerian roommates, to teach them a lesson for being so foreign. But he doesn’t know how. Thank god. The author(now David B.)’s punchlines are filled with melancholy, as he attempts and fails at explaining what’s happening, what’s been happening. It has become a memoir of trying to find a cure layered on top of a memoir of trying to tell a story, both seeming more and more impossible as time passes.

Forgive the sentimentality, but it’s moving, right? Trying to be understood and loved? Here, I get to on with a bit a writer tangent. Back in undergrad, the very awesome George Saunders (my writing mentor and hero) told me of an anxiety that writers face when I expressed fear that I was trying too hard. They have this here story, and they want to write it well. Because they want it to be a good story for sure, but mostly because they want to impress it on their readers that they are smart, and funny, and ten times better looking than they were in high school. (Okay, some of this may be just me putting words in Prof Saunder’s mouth—sorry, George!) No one cares to admit it, but it’s not a bad thing. George Orwell wrote (for other reasons too, but still) for the same desperate egotism. Joan Didion wrote to give universal law of words to her own lawless images. There’s a more than a little bit of vanity at work. Listen to me. And then. Listen to me, please.

I do not belittle Epileptic’s worldly concerns, nor its extensive imagination. I love both the fantasy, and the humorous manner in which it is conveyed. I only want to explain what made the book ultimately affecting for me was the expression of a rather basic need. Nothing too ambitious. Is it an academic faux-pas to suggest the text wants to be liked? But I think it does. In Epileptic, there is a rudimentary anxiety that flows throughout all its ostentatious imagery and ideas, animating historical armies and imaginary beasts, all those epic ghosts. Listen to me. Ecoute-moi (s’il vous plait). There is a grave poignancy in the text’s effort to be heard, to be recognized, to be understood.

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David B.’s Epiletic was recommended for June’s Prompt: You Can’t Write About Comics Without Reading. Thanks, Dave M. for his recommendation, and his super erudite email.