Eddie Campbell viene y enloquece

Hola a todos:

Ayer recibí este emilio de Eddie Campbell, en el que me da permiso para usar el material de su blog —The Fate of the Artist— aquí en Ven y enloquece.

Nino,,
yes of course you may do as you wish with my blog and with the old interview. You know I'm your servant. Coincidentally, Anne was asking me if I had written to you recently, and said she had noticed your recent comment on my blog, about the kiss, and had checked out your blog but couldn't follow it as of course it is in Spanish.
I've just finished revising everything for the big Alec Omnibus dus mid 2009. Once again you will be in print.

we're thinking of you,
Eddie

En un principio, mi idea es la de traducir uno de sus textos a la semana, y usar su trabajo gráfico para acompañar mis textos literarios y divagaciones. ¡Vamos, que ya tengo un ilustrador por la patilla para mi novela!

Puede que a algunos os suene el nombre de Eddie Campbell por su trabajo en la novela gráfica From Hell, ambientada en la época de Jack, El destripador. Personajes tan importantes dentro del cómic generalista como Batman, Superman, Spiderman o Hellblazer han contado con su ingenio. Con el Campbell.
Pero, al auténtico Eddie lo encontraremos en su narraciones serializadas autobiográficas — Bacchus y Alec—.
Uno de los ejemplos más descarnados de lucha por desarrollar la identidad personal y afianzar su habilidad artística se encuentra en su figura, cruce entre lo narrado por James Joyce en A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, y lo vivido por Cesare Pavese en Il mestiere di vivere.

No en vano, su Alec, tiene mucho del Stephen Dedalus de Joyce, lo veremos madurar, sufrir y exforzarse por acercarse a aquello que sueña ser y ansía querer.

I must admit I discovered Campbell’s work due to his work in From Hell, where I arrived for Moore but stayed for Campbell.
Later, due to his visitto my hometown, Gijón, in order to attend to an exhibition of his panels for From Hell, I happened to meet him. During our walkabouts around the city, we talk about life as an art form. We shared feelings and jokes, while drinking or staring at seagulls who grabbed fish from a restaurant’s kitchen in La cuesta del Cholo.

At the time I was hopelessly in love with the most beautiful girl in my world, Susana. Eddie drew a sketch of her, and asked me to give it to her while he was singing an old Sinatra’s standard —I think it was I get a kick out of you—. If she had any doubt about my being the bizarre person in her universe, it disappeared at that moment.

The next afternoon, when I picked Eddie up at the hotel, he handed me a copy of his graphic novel, Graffiti Kitchen, and urged me into reading it: “Nino, this is your story too”.

Eight years, and a century of blackness, have passed by since that very moment. Now Susana is married —I wish her well—, Anne is still the alpha and the omega in Eddie’s life —he is the luckiest man in the solar system— and I keep on falling in love too easily.
I happened to give that Graffiti Kitchen’s copy to the one I dreamt would be the last, and now is just the past.

I own a different edition of the graphic novel, and another heart makes mine beat faster.

Where there was darkness, there’s light .

If life is a three piece suit, I’m happy Eddie Campbell still plays it with passion.
If I were a character, Alec would be my reflection.

Cuidaros.

Nino Ortea