Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

I ordered this book on a whim and it spoke to me. When the amazing and insightful graphic artist/cartoonist Peter Dunlap Shohl pointed me to Brian Fies‘s work on Facebook, I got intrigued and began following him.

I have no previous experience with graphic memoir but as a longtime journalist I know that the best political cartoons land with a gut punch. Fies has recently been promoting the anniversary edition of his noteworthy book Mom’s Cancer. I ordered it from my local bookstore, curious to understand the mesh of words and images on a topic I happen to know.

I had my own cancer journey 17 years ago. Cancer is one of those diseases that is huge in human consciousness. The big C. It makes us tremble. For our friends and for ourselves. But the daily experience of being in cancer has odd rhythms — plodding, waiting, hoping, despairing, paining, numbing and sometimes triumphing. It’s also strangely disconnecting. This can’t be my body, can it? Yes. Yes it can. That biopsy. This surgery. That radiation. This poison cocktail. That test. These results. What we know. What we can’t know. Circling back to biopsy, God I hate that word. It means that they cut a hunk of your flesh out to see what’s going on with it. Don’t ever imagine that it feels as tidy as that word suggests. I once had a biopsy that hurt so bad I flat passed out.

I didn’t understand until I read Fies’s book the kind of deep skill it takes to bring the right words and the right images together. His mother’s journey was quite different than mine. Yet I felt myself in it. For anyone in any stage of that landscape, I imagine the book may have that effect.

Here’s what happens: Your body becomes the object of someone else’s working day. You are someone else’s work product. Not all of the caregiving team see you as a person. But a few of them do. And maybe that’s why this book touched me. Through all of it, Fies and his sisters see their mother. And each other. And the care team. In all their messy imperfect human glory.

And I now know that book-length graphic story-telling is an art I will hold in high regard.

Here’s a link to an interview with Fies for those who want more: https://autobiographix.substack.com/p/an-interview-with-brian-fies

And should you want to be knocked out by Peter Dunlap-Shohl, you can read more about him and his work here: https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/a-cartoonist-talks-about-how-to-be-an-artist-with-parkinsons/