American Book Review
Review of Flood! A Novel in Pictures
by Richard Kostelanetz
February 1993Whereas visual poetry is language enhanced primarily by design, visual fiction would be images in sequences that depend upon changing pictures for narrative development. Whereas one image from Eric Drooker's new book would be graphic, in succession his pictures tell a story. His protagonist is a single male artist in New York City; and to judge from the few times the protagonist's face appears in the story, I would say that his resemblance to the author's photo on the back cover is more than slight. In the first part of the novel, the protagonist goes from home through the subway to a workplace that is surprisingly closed; he meets at a bar a young woman whom he seduces, only to discover that she is an addict with a nasty boyfriend. In the second part, while working at his drawing board, he imagines a flood the envelops New York, including a protagonist-within-a-protagonist.
Technically, Drooker generally casts a single line image into his books' seven-by-ten-inch pages, sometimes breaking through its narrow frame; but from time to time he divides his page into four frames, accelerating his narrative by reducing the size of his picture. His image initially resemble those of Lynd Ward (1905-1985), perhaps the most distinguished visual fictioner in America, who favored woodblocks and heavy contrasts between black and white (and, like Drooker after him, portrayed earnest artist protagonists attempting to survive economic misfortunes). However, by the second part, the imagined flood, Drooker has developed his own visual style, with far more detailed drawings that benefit from the printer's adding a light blue color to a deep black. Principally because of this last development with Flood!, look forward to Drooker's next novel.