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GRAPHIC NARRATIVE PROJECT
Reading Session: Chris Ware's "Building Stories"
Wednesday November 28, 2012 | 05:00 -07:00 PM | Stanford Humanities Center

A sturdy box containing 14 "easily misplaced elements," Chris Ware's "Building Stories" reimagines the very idea of the book. With architecture as its central organizing principle, "Building Stories" elaborates on the lives of the tenants of a three storey apartment building in Chicago, in a striking vision of the potential of graphic narrative. With no legislated way in to the story, "Building Stories" rewards exploration, offering a tactility that could not be translated to digital reading. In his NY Times review, Douglas Wolk writes: "He’s built a whole microcosm in this box, over the course of more than a decade. You have to play by his rules to perceive its complicated splendor, or find yourself like Branford the bee, stuck behind a pane of “hard air” and unable to reach the flower beyond it." In this reading session, we will approach this "microcosm in a box" as a group.