I don’t read Wired Magazine very often -- I used to buy the print edition sometimes for the funky layout, and I always liked the word watch column (first place I saw the term “going postal”), but I always felt it was aimed squarely at all those technological optimists I’m always arguing with at science fiction conventions. And, nowadays, their vision already seems like retro-futurism (isn’t wireless the big deal now?)

But their six-word story collection is brilliant, so you should read it, if you haven’t had it recommended to you a million times already. (Two separate mailing lists I’m on both had two people post the link more or less simultaneously -- it’s popular.)

Because I was there, I poked around, and ran into this surprisingly annoying editorial. It’s called “The day the music died" and his point seems to be that he is deeply, deeply offended by the fact that one of his co-workers has a collection of 90,000 digitized songs.

Mike, du-u-ude. That’s nuts. You’re crazy, man. Nine months’ worth of music? You could have a full-term baby without ever playing the same song twice.

Right. Sounds good to me -- the music, not having the baby. He rambles on to sort of vaguely tie this in to Tower Records going under (what? where have I been? oh, that’s happening right now). But his big point seems to be that -- actually, I don’t know what his point is. Sure, 90,000 songs is a lot of music, whether it’s on a hard drive (about 375 gigabytes, at 240 songs/gig) or on CDs or vinyl albums lining your walls. But I’ve known people, audiophiles, music hobbyists, who probably have close to that much music. And the funny thing is, even though that’s a lot more music than most people own, when you put it in terms of time -- nine months with no repeats -- it sounds pretty reasonable. It’s only nine months, dude. You’re probably going to live for at least ninety years. So what’s the big deal?

Then, in mostly a non-sequitor, he moves on to start dissing the concept of the “graphic novel." You can tell you’re in trouble whenever anybody introduces the topic by casting asparagus on the very notion of "graphic novel.”

Gene Luen Yang is a teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area who also happens to be a fine illustrator. He produced a graphic novel (or “comic book,” as we used to call them)

First, no matter how much pop-culture snobs like to pretend otherwise, there is a real honest-to-pete diference between a comic book and a graphic novel. Length. So, my Sandman original issues are comic books, and the story arc collections are graphic novels. It’s not that confusing, really, and if you have any doubts, look at the spine. Is it stapled, or perfect-bound? Perfect-bound is a graphic novel.

So, from the start you know he doesn’t like the art form, which makes his opinions on its relative merits highly suspect. He goes on to state,

First, I’ll bet for what it is, it’s pretty good. Probably damned good. But it’s a comic book. And comic books should not be nominated for National Book Awards, in any category. That should be reserved for books that are, well, all words.

This is not about denigrating the comic book, or graphic novel, or whatever you want to call it. This is not to say that illustrated stories don’t constitute an art form or that you can’t get tremendous satisfaction from them. This is simply to say that, as literature, the comic book does not deserve equal status with real novels, or short stories. It’s apples and oranges.

If you’ve ever tried writing a real novel, you’ll know where I’m coming from.

Okay, goober, I’ve tried, and even succeeded, at writing a "real novel" so I’ll tell you -- I know exactly where you’re coming from. You’re coming from a place of desperately middlebrow kneejerk snobbery, where you are both blind and indifferent to what makes stories good, or important, or meaningful.

As The Stranger once observed, your attitude would classify the latest Danielle Steele as literature, and Persepolis as not-literature. Which seems sort of insane, frankly. And I doubt it’s even what you mean. But then -- what do you mean? Do you mean that it’s harder to tell a story if you don’t get to "rely" on pictures to help you out? What about illustrated novels, then, are they "real novels" or are they comic books? Especially since the award you’re objecting to was for children’s literature, which is notorious for being highly illustrated. Or are you talking about length, sheer number of words? But then, you can’t be talking about length, because you claim that comic books aren’t on par with short stories, either. So, what is it, exactly, that short stories -- which you allow to be "real literature" -- do, that comic books don’t do? Contain narrative exposition? (By which I mean, "she picked up the cigarette" and so on.) Some comics do contain that, and some short stories don’t, so that can’t be it, can it? You don’t mention plays, which most people allow to be literature, and they certainly don’t contain narrative exposition. Imagine that, say,Hamlet didn’t already exist -- if somebody wrote it today, and published it as a graphic novel, would you consider it not deserving of equal status with short stories? Why not?

So, listen, if you want to claim that graphic novels shouldn’t get the same awards as non-graphic novels, because the art forms are fundamentally different, I might think you have a point. Plays don’t get the same awards as short stories, which don’t get the same awards as poetry, which don’t get the same awards as novels, screenplays, teleplays. But your argument strongly implies that they shouldn’t get the same awards as novels or short stories because they are inherently a lesser form of storytelling.

And if you still think that’s true, I’ll put up a Maus against all the Left Behind novels plus The DaVinci Code and we’ll see who wins.