Clyde Fans is the story of two brothers, Abe and Simon Matchcard, and their fraught relationship over the years, as well as their father’s fan manufacturing company, Clyde Fans, and its rise and fall from the post-war years to its eventual bankruptcy a few decades later.
Seth is one of my favourite cartoonists but I always thought Clyde Fans was among his least interesting projects. I read the first book (which makes up the first third of this edition) years ago and thought it was pretty good but the fragments that cropped up here and there in his sporadically-published Palookaville comic didn’t really add much to this initial offering and became quite dull to read over time.
It took Seth over 20 years to finally complete the story of the brothers Matchcard, which I suppose is good for those who wanted to read the whole thing (and it sounds like a relief that it’s over to the creator from his afterword), but, I found re-reading over half of it and finishing off the rest of it was a bit of a chore. There’s some quality stuff here to appreciate but the overall effect just left me mostly tired and just as relieved as Seth to finish it!
Right off the bat the book is quite challenging to wade through as it begins with a 60-page monologue(!) by Abe that tells you the entire story of the fan company and gives you an idea of his family. It’s rarely interesting though the sense of nostalgia is tangible at times. The next part, set in the ‘50s, is about Simon’s disastrous first (and last) attempt at being a fan salesman. Simon is by far the more interesting character and it’s intriguing to watch a deeply introverted man try to be a people person.
It becomes quite a tense narrative as you watch Simon fail and fail and become more desperate until you don’t know what he’s going to do next. It’s not really clear though why Simon wants to be a salesman in the first place, though it shows you his mind is already starting to wobble a bit, setting up the next part of the book, where he’s become his dementia-addled elderly mother’s caregiver.
Similar to Abe, Simon’s monologues aren’t much more entertaining and, in parts, they’re far more tedious. Like when he’s describing all the individual items in his mother’s room - I get that it’s a kind of eulogy to his mother but, my god, it’s boring! - or the final part where he’s describing the dilapidated parts of Dominion City. Both brothers’ extensive ramblings underline the themes of Clyde Fans, on aging/time, memory and Canada’s post-war past, but these are ponderous discourses that rarely say anything particularly enlightening or compelling.
At nearly 500 pages, this book is far too long by half. The later sections don’t really add much to what made up the first Clyde Fans book. We see Simon become more senile, we see more of Abe behaving like the bully blow-hard womaniser he is, we learn more of their parents’ doomed marriage. There’s no real plot to speak of, nor much of a climax, and things just kind of tick over until they don’t - it’s not enough to justify such length and feels indulgent of Seth. The scenes where the two brothers interact though are pretty good, and I liked seeing Simon finally standing up for himself to Abe.
It’s interesting to see Seth’s drawing style change over the years - it ends up looking quite different from how it started, which is to be expected. The panels become smaller over time, almost Chris Ware-esque in places, and the lines become thicker and more stylized - cartoonish - compared to the thin lines and large panels of the early parts. I prefer the earlier art style but I enjoyed the art throughout the whole book, and I loved the blues accenting the black and white, giving the whole piece a moody twilit atmosphere, particularly given that most of the pages feature empty buildings and landscapes devoid of people.
The art and Simon’s failed sales trip to Dominion City were my favourite aspects of the book, though there are moments of real pathos in the regret the characters feel during their monologues, so they’re not wholly bad. But there are also huge swathes of this book that really don’t offer up much besides pretty visuals and a lot of Clyde Fans will challenge the reader’s patience as nothing stubbornly refuses to happen over and over and over.
Clyde Fans is worth reading if you’re a Seth fan but it’s definitely not much fun and for more casual readers interested in this creator I suggest checking out his more engaging books It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken and Wimbledon Green instead.
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