Nonsense

On picture books for adults

Dead Ducks by Benjamin Taggart

Picture books may be facile by design. But at least picture books for children have an appreciative audience who might learn something from them.

They serve an obvious purpose.

Picture books for adults have to justify themselves with the implicit claims of real bravery and boldness. Perhaps theirs is a voice which is silenced. Or they are telling truths that the man wants suppressed. If you’re a dissident or someone who is telling a truth others would rather hide, you have my permission to use whatever medium you consider appropriate. Have at it; this one’s free.

If the books and their authors claim to be funny, however, they have another problem. They have to prove that the joke is so good, or the satire so profound, that it is worth the misuse of format and form. This is not an easy thing to do.

Unsurprisingly, the great, great majority fail to pass the test. They fall short of the bar. They do not make the grade. And that is not too surprising. Much like everyone I have ever met has at one time or other told me that they could definitely write a children’s book — either because it’s easy money or because the target market is made up of idiots who don’t know any better or know what they like, or because they don’t really know anything about writing and consider it a doddle — very many comedians probably think they can do something similar, but for adults.

Something really different, right? Really hardcore, something with a bit of edge, something with a few truths about what life is really like, yeah?

Because we all read picture books ourselves when we were children, or we read them to our own children or our brothers’ and sisters’ children quite recently. We know what they’re like, don’t we? We know the format, the form, offhand.

No wonder comedians who are now thirty immediately think it’s a plausible thing for them to do. The satire is so plain, so obvious. Something child shaped but for adults. It is a no-brainer. The subversion is integral; it’s inescapably subversive. You simply cannot lose!

Books like Go the Fuck to Sleep (a massive bestseller, very widely read aloud in public by famous faces) were popular not only because they were marketed brilliantly. The artwork was legitimate-seeming, done by a real artist. Promotion done by real stars, too, may often help.

But of course, this is not how art works. Art is generally either good or bad. Ideas matter a good deal less than execution. No one gets points for the attempt if the attempt is poor.

(The same is true of real children’s books, which of course, many famous people have decided they are the perfect people to write — or to have written and issued in their name. The involvement of the rich and famous and moneyed and known and loved and wealthy may guarantee a certain amount of sale, a certain notoriety, but it does not make the work of art good on its own terms.)

Picture books for adults are on occasion saved by very good artwork and design. Many children’s books are already in the same boat: they are mediocre ideas, carried off with a certain professionalism, made infinitely better by every ounce of editorial and design talent that the big multinationals can wring from the flannel.

If the art is fabulous, it sets the tone and pays everyone’s bills. If the art is mediocre, the book sleeps on the metaphorical sofa all its life. It never achieves the big time. It never does what its author sincerely if idiotically once believed it could do.

This particular book is dull and ordinary and has no message worth summarising. The art is boring and not original. In the future, of course, and indeed it must be happening now, a million comedians will do precisely as Benjamin Taggart has done here. But they’ll use image generation to cut out the artist middleman and diminish overheads and barriers to entry and the minimum threshold of talent yet further.

What a world we are soon to enter.

Best of luck, kids! All the luck in the world.