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La novela gráfica más ambiciosa de Seth, en cuya realización ha empleado veinte años, ahonda en los temas que más le preocupan: la memoria, el paso del tiempo y el papel del artista en la sociedad.
Finalista al Mejor Cómic 2019 concedido por la Asociación de Librerías de Madrid.
Ventiladores Clyde es, probablemente, la obra más importante del dibujante Seth, uno de los nombres imprescindibles del cómic independiente norteamericano, a la cual ha dedicado cerca de veinte años. En ella despliega su sabiduría y elegancia gráfica, heredera de los ilustradores del The New Yorker de los años treinta del pasado siglo.
Ventiladores Clyde es la historia de dos hermanos que luchan por mantener a flote una obsoleta empresa familiar incapaz de competir con los nuevos modelos de negocio y los constantes avances tecnológicos. Con este telón de fondo, Seth desgrana una emocionante historia familiar llena de sinsabores y desencuentros que redunda en una atmósfera narrativa desoladora y melancólica.
La maestría del autor en el desarrollo de personajes complejos y creíbles, unida a su aspecto gráfico, convierte Ventiladores Clyde en un gran cómic; pero, además, la habilidad de Seth para imponer al lector un ritmo que acerca su trabajo a la poesía hace de ésta una obra única y eterna.
ENGLISH DESCRIPTION
"Open Clyde Fans and let Seth take you into his time machine. There’s no room for nostalgia in Seth’s vision. The past is as sharp and painful as the present. In fact, the past is the present, conjured in words and pictures, existing in the spaces between what’s said and unsaid, what’s seen and unseen... In the end, as we close the pages on Simon and Abe, we might feel ― even for just a moment ― that we finally know what time looks like."―Brian Selznick, New York Times Book Review
A masterful work about a failing family business and the ensuing erosion of sibling relations and one’s sanity.
Twenty years in the making, Clyde Fans peels back the optimism of mid-twentieth century capitalism. The legendary Canadian cartoonist Seth lovingly shows the rituals, hopes, and delusions of a middle class that has long ceased to exist in North America―garrulous men in wool suits extolling the virtues of their wares to taciturn shopkeepers with an eye on the door. Much like the myth of an ever-growing economy, the Clyde Fans family unit is a fraud―the patriarch has abandoned the business to mismatched sons, one who strives to keep the business afloat and the other who retreats into the arms of the remaining parent.
Abe and Simon Matchcard are brothers, the second generation struggling to save their archaic family business of selling oscillating fans in a world switching to air-conditioning. At the center of Clyde Fans’s center is Simon, who flirts with becoming a salesman as a last-ditch effort to leave the protective walls of the family home but is ultimately unable to escape Abe’s critical voice in his head. As the business crumbles, so does any remaining relationship between the brothers, both of whom choose very different life paths but still end up utterly unhappy.
Seth’s intimate storytelling and gorgeous art allow urban landscapes and detailed period objects to tell their own stories as the brothers struggle to keep from suffocating in an airless city home. An epic time capsule of a story line that begs rereading.
