RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewClyde Fans, is a brilliant trip that also plays tricks on you, slowing down, speeding up, going backward, creating endless loops ... Seth draws time out, both literally and metaphorically. It took him over 20 years to finish this book ... His drawing style changed over those years. It’s as if Clyde Fans itself is a monument to passing time ...Open Clyde Fans and let Seth take you into his time machine. The technology is relatively simple: cardboard, binding, glue, thread, paper and ink, words and pictures. Most of the drawings are in black and blue, as if the entire novel were composed of bruises. Perhaps we’re being reminded that the past can be a painful place to visit. There’s no room for nostalgia in Seth’s vision. The past is as sharp and painful as the present. In fact, the past is the present, conjured in words and pictures, existing in the spaces between what’s said and unsaid, what’s seen and unseen. It’s in these spaces where Seth knows alchemical reactions occur. In the end, as we close the pages on Simon and Abe and step back into our own lives, we might feel — even for just a moment — that we finally know what time looks like.
