July 2005
Carrie Jones
nonfiction
The Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man by John Porcellino
The title would be fitting for an indie rock record, the publisher is in an
indie rock band and many of the drawings first appeared in a self-published
zine. The author even has the McSweeney's seal of hip approval. But overall,
Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man ends up being more "ho hum"
than "hey-ho, let's go."
Taken as a whole, the collection seems to be about the cyclical nature of life,
either the author's or the larger world's. The dedication makes John Porcellino's
current state of mind pretty clear: "This book I dedicated to, with love,
to mosquitoes, men, women, and all beings; grasses, rocks, fences and sky."
The art graduates from messy, hand-drawn panels (most of these are taken from
the author's long-running zine, King-Cat Comics) to a smoother style that lacks
the superficial intensity of the older ones, but is much more reflective about
the subject matter. The older comics detail the methods and motivations of a
career in extermination. The wild drawings of bugs, depictions of geographical
oddities and anecdotal observations are visceral road tales. The later comics
are cause less of a physical reaction--no stings, no stink, no sex--pondering
instead the larger questions of living in an ecosystem.
Maybe it's because I just finished Paula Kamen's recent memoir on chronic pain,
All in My Head, but the most interesting story in Porcellino's book
is the previously unpublished "Death of a Mosquito Abatement Man."
It is the most personal and, out of all the stories, gives the largest picture
of Porcellino's life beyond the mosquito truck. Charting the mysterious illness
that plagued his last year of bug-killing, the rounds of doctors and treatments
and the religious conversion that followed, "Death of a Mosquito Abatement
Man" is drawn in the clean, simple style of modern Porcellino and drags
the deep end of the Diary's pool while keeping us in the story.
A few other stories stick in the mind. My favorite two are "Scott"
and "24 Hours," both originally written originally more than 10 years
ago. In "Scott," Porcellino meets a cheese-popcorn-eating hobo with
questionable mental facilities. You expect something horrible or disgusting
to happen, but the two's sedate parting ends up being much more satisfying than
an exposed rash or an attempted murder. "24 Hours" charts the inner
life of a young exterminator. Guess what: It's really really boring, but the
one-panel riff on the litany of driving and spraying transforms the repetitive
nightmare into a comic study on what happens when work takes over your mind.
Despite the focus on one subject and the delight of seeing the evolution of
one artist's work over time, Diary doesn't feel complete as a collection.
The flashes of voyeuristic fun a reader feels peering into another's life are
eventually deflated by the slightness of the book, even with Porcellino's charming
introduction and the helpful appendix that fills in a curious reader on the
timeline of the pieces. The stories themselves are drown out by the larger story
of the author's personal transformation, but there's not enough meaty biographical
detail throughout to really understand how it all ends up. The book asks you
to question your own work and its relation to the larger world through Porcellino's
experience. Instead, what you're left with is a desire for him to tell more
and more stories about the world (at which he certainly is skilled) that touch
the places that this collection never seems to get to.
Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man by John Porcellino
La Mano
ISBN: 09765225OX
106 pages
