Not too long ago I had the opportunity and pleasure of discovering a wonderful masterpiece, a hidden gem of sorts that surpasses the individual confinements of written words and drawn images. Unflattening by Nick Sousanis is technically a graphic novel, but such a label is inadequate to describe the work itself; suffice to say that it is also the first dissertation that was written in comic book format published by Columbia University. I must admit it took me a bit before deciding to write something about it – I needed time to better absorb and internalize its message. Unflattening conceals so many various layers of meaning that slowly and steadily echo within you as you read it and eventually reverberate within you like a heartbeat. It is the heartbeat of a literary work that talks about things that one might have realized at one point or another of their lives, but it makes one appreciate just how these concepts have been explained.
In a way, Unflattening is more a philosophical treaty and an exploration of human society than an actual graphic novel or comic book in the traditional sense. There is no specific plot, rather there is a subject, and that subject is the human being. It starts by depicting a process of standardisation that men have underwent in our contemporary society, not the process of equality and uniformity we might hope, but rather an impossibility of diverging from the norm. It is quintessentially the premise of human beings becoming nothing more than ‘cogs in a machine’, trapped by the borders and limitations of their own imposed vision. This is the flatness that the author denounces within his book; his work as such explores the possibilities of diverging from said status quo, the possibility of stopping the process of being flattened by the world and norms that surround us, hence the title.
As a scholar, Nick Sousanis references various sources and important texts; Marcuse, Abbott’s Flatland, Bakhtin, Plato, Descartes are just some of the names you will find in Unflattening. The thesis he demonstrates is just how easy it could be to develop a form of lateral thinking, even through something seemingly as simple as a comic book; furthermore, he does so by putting this theory directly into practice.
Finally, let me emphasize just how well the quality of his writing intertwines with the quality of his drawing. There is something almost ineffable in how everything is represented on the page. Written words, carefully pondered and selected, are knitted in the fabric of his drawings, creating a canvas that explain simple yet profound truths. The cohabitation in the spatial interplay between visual arts and written realms is used to explore a holistic view of the vast potential of human beings.
I encourage everyone, from all walks of life, to read Unflattening and take a moment to deflate from the weight of society.