![]() ![]() In taking “historiographic metafiction” as a primary point of reference, I am deliberately locating Beaton in the tradition of the “Canadian postmodern” that Hutcheon delineates. On the whole, her work raises the issue of “what exactly can be said to constitute fact and fiction” only insofar as it cheerfully ignores such categories, crossing traditional borders and boundaries with effortless aplomb. Its aim in so doing is to study how we know the past, how we make sense of it.” This account of metafiction helps clarify Beaton’s method of making and remaking the past in her comics. “Historiographic metafiction,” Hutcheon writes, “questions the nature and validity of the entire human process of writing – of both history and fiction. Her riffs, quips, and satirical re-imaginings exist in the margin between history and fiction, playfully emphasizing and taking advantage of familiar fault-lines and frictions between different kinds of discourse. In The Canadian Postmodern, Linda Hutcheon uses the term “historiographic metafiction” to designate “fiction that is intensely, self-reflexively art, but is also grounded in historical, social, and political realities.” There is a correspondence between the formal and ideological implications of this literary mode, and this correspondence often involves margins or borders, “the place where new possibilities exist.” Through the lens of Hutcheon’s definition, Beaton’s work reveals itself as a particularly parodic strain of historiographic metafiction that is notable for its great variety – not only in terms of its various literary and historical subjects, but also in its wide-ranging approach to parody as such. It is Beaton’s keen sense of absurdity, however, that ultimately animates her literary and historical interventions, yielding work that is not merely clever or jokey but genuinely funny. Her deliberate anachronism produces a history that is constantly folding over on itself. By comparison, Beaton asserts her own point of view in work that is highly visible: through chronological discontinuities, she shows the seams of history. Menard’s project is invisible, seamless: by imagining himself into the mind of Cervantes, he produces an identical Quixote. In “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” Borges lauds the eponymous author for his tremendously ambitious, unfinished, spontaneous word-for-word rewriting of Don Quixote. In some ways, this is a variation of the technique that Jorge Luis Borges attributes to Pierre Menard: deliberate anachronism. In her gleeful re-imaginings of history and literature, Beaton contrasts historical events with a distinctly contemporary sensibility, juxtaposing past and present in a manner that unexpectedly illuminates each. Though her short comic strips are regularly published in book anthologies, most of them initially appear online at, where they are generously collected in a thematic archive whose categories include (among others) history, literature, superheroes, Nancy Drew, Lunch Break Comics, and nonsense. In the process, she has become one of the most reliably accessible and compelling popular historians working today, elevating the historical literacy of her readers even as she makes them laugh. ![]() As the 500,000 unique monthly visitors to already know, no one turns the ironic absurdities of history and literature into comedic fodder as hilariously as Beaton.Canadian cartoonist Kate Beaton has been making fun of history for over a decade, cloaking her deep understanding of the subject with arch humor that often tips into absurdity. Hark! A Vagrant features sexy Batman, the true stories behind classic Nancy Drew covers, and Queen Elizabeth doing the albatross. Anthony is, of course, a "Samantha," and that the polite banality of Canadian culture never gets old. ![]() She deftly points out what really happened when Brahms fell asleep listening to Liszt, that the world's first hipsters were obviously the Incroyables and the Merveilleuses from eighteenth-century France, that Susan B. No era or tome emerges unscathed as Beaton rightly skewers the Western world's revolutionaries, leaders, sycophants, and suffragists while equally honing her wit on the hapless heroes, heroines, and villains of the best-loved fiction. Hark! A Vagrant is an uproarious romp through history and literature seen through the sharp, contemporary lens of New Yorker cartoonist and comics sensation Kate Beaton. Featured on more than twenty best-of lists, including Time, Amazon, E!, and Publishers Weekly! ![]()
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