What keeps a man of 62 running like this, however, is not comic at all, if one is to take Araki at his word.
A comic image, if it is poetically comic, carries with it something that is not comic, as in the case of Don Quixote or Falstaff; and the image of something terrible is never, in poetry, without an atoning element of loftiness, goodness and love.
Like most modernist novels, The Man without Qualities is not tragic, but it is not comic, either, if we take comic to mean that at least some of the characters achieve authentic connections with one another by the end of the novel (of course, there is no ending, since the novel was unfinished).
Helen's unvarnished assessment of Zoë's musical talent puts old and young at stubborn odds, and Ms. Hafner in the uneasy middle, and kicks off a half-year of simmering resentments and more miscommunication than a French farce (though the tone is not comic).
Espousing hate is not comic relief, but just another wedge between sanity and insanity.
If typeface is "fashion for letters," as Stevens says, it is not Comic Sans's fault if we have the bad taste to use it for undignified documents like divorce papers.
Stripping isn't comic or tragic: it's just great.
Many of my poems try to use a comic element to reach a place that isn't comic at all.
But don't worry -- this isn't Comic Con 101 class.
It's not comic book storytelling, it's cinematic storytelling.
Though Flashman has the resilience of a comic-book hero, his testimonies to nineteenth-century barbarities are not comic.
