Ghost World

Ghost World by Daniel Clowes is about two excentric teenage girls living in New York. They have been best friends for years and know eachother inside and out. They share a "fuck the world and everybody in it" attitude. Enid Coleslaw is our main character and her best friend is Rebecca "Becky" Doppelmeyer. The title of the book comes from graffiti on a garage that says Ghost World. We see it written in different places throughout the book with each new chapter. The girls love things that are out of the norm and just kind of odd. The first reference to this is a horrible comedian that they decide is their God, because he is such a loser. Enid falls in love with a horrible 50's dinner that she thinks is the worst theme dinner ever...and that is exactly why she loves it! The girls have foul mouths that match their foul attitudes. They love to talk about guys and what assholes they are. When Enid's father convinces her to take a placement test to Strathmor, Becky is mortified. She doesn't know what she will do without her best friend and considers following Enid to college. They decided that this might look a little weird and Enid says she wants to go alone anyway. She wants to go alone so that she may re-invent herself. Become someone completely different from who she is, and if Becky goes with her it would be nearly impossible. After all Becky knows everything about her, mainly the things she wants to forget and change. Enid tells Becky that she has always had the dream that when things get boring she is going to just get on a bus to a new town and start all over where no one knows her. Enid was turned down by Strathmor and tells her father she knew she was never smart enough anyway. The second to last page Enid spots Ghost World painted on a fence,the paint is still wet, and then on a wall and tries to catch up with the person who did it, but never does. Which leads us to the final page, we see Enid walking with a small suitcase that looks like a hat box. She stops in front of a restaurant where Becky is seated by the window looking solemn with a drink in her hand. Enid says to her friend (though she can't hear her, and doesn't see her), "You have grown up to be a very beautiful young woman." Then she passes Norman Square (which is a square of pavement with the name Norman scratched in to it nearly a dozen times) and boards a bus. The End.

The theme of Ghost World is finiding one's self (and the smaller themes are teenage summer and friendship). The graphics in this GN are between realistic and iconic. I'd say about 60% realistic and 40% iconic. They are not colored, and not black and white. They are blue and white.

I enjoyed reading this GN. I saw the movie first. YEARS ago. I can't even remember any of it, I just know my mom rented it back when it first came out. Either that or we saw it at a film festival. Whichever it was I know I saw the movie! I could definitely tell that Ghost World was written by a man. Though a lot of women do talk similar to the way the girls were, I just don't think a woman would write that way. One thing I found annoying is that the chapters didn't always match up to the page that the table of contents said they were on. Also the only way to know that you were beginning a new chapter was to see Ghost World at the beginning of the page. There were no titles at the start of each new chapter, you had to look that up in the table of contents, which is when I learned that the pages didn't always match up.