Pursuit and Growth: The Magic of “House of Miracles” (Recommended Book of the 13th Wenjin Award)

 
 
“House of Won­ders” is anoth­er mag­i­cal work by Amer­i­can graph­ic nov­el­ist Bri­an Selznick. Based on a true sto­ry, the “House of Won­ders” in the book is the Den­nis Seforth House, a muse­um cur­rent­ly open to the pub­lic in Lon­don, Eng­land. This “his­toric place” is actu­al­ly a “mir­a­cle” cre­at­ed entire­ly out of thin air by a col­lec­tor’s imag­i­na­tive imag­i­na­tion, with a mov­ing sto­ry behind it. How­ev­er, in this graph­ic nov­el, the sto­ry is pre­sent­ed as mag­i­cal and even more inspir­ing.

 
 
Graph­ic nov­els were orig­i­nal­ly pri­mar­i­ly intend­ed for adult read­ers, but because comics con­sti­tute a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of their con­tent (either exceed­ing or equal­ing the text), they have grad­u­al­ly gained a sig­nif­i­cant audi­ence among young read­ers and, in recent years, have become a main­stream genre in young adult lit­er­a­ture. Selznick made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to this endeav­or. His book, Hugo the Dream­er, won the pres­ti­gious Calde­cott Medal (typ­i­cal­ly award­ed to chil­dren’s pic­ture books), and the film adap­ta­tion of the same name won an Oscar, fur­ther cat­alyz­ing the devel­op­ment of graph­ic nov­els in the chil­dren’s book indus­try.

 
 
“House of Won­ders” appears even more sub­stan­tial than “Hugo the Dream­er” (at a stag­ger­ing 670 pages!). While it main­tains a hybrid sto­ry­telling approach, empha­siz­ing both visu­als and text, its nar­ra­tive is strik­ing­ly orig­i­nal: the illus­tra­tions are com­plete­ly sep­a­rate from the text, even the sto­ry­line itself being com­plete­ly iso­lat­ed. The first sec­tion, near­ly 400 pages long and told entire­ly in pic­tures, tells a fam­i­ly sto­ry span­ning from a ship­wreck in 1766 to a the­ater fire in 1900. Read­ers unfa­mil­iar with comics might find it dis­ori­ent­ing. Even more pecu­liar, the next 200-plus pages, entire­ly in text, seem to unfold a com­plete­ly sep­a­rate sto­ry, set between 1990 and 1991. It tells the sto­ry of Joseph, a 13-year-old from a wealthy fam­i­ly, who runs away from board­ing school to vis­it his uncle in Lon­don. This leads to a unique fam­i­ly sto­ry, a heart­warm­ing sto­ry of heal­ing, and the ori­gins of the “House of Won­ders.” If read­ers can patient­ly read to after page 540, they will grad­u­al­ly under­stand the won­der­ful con­nec­tion between the afore­men­tioned pic­ture sto­ries and the text sto­ries. The con­tin­u­ous pic­ture sto­ries that serve as the epi­logue after page 610 are a per­fect cur­tain call, bring­ing the whole sto­ry into the edge of fic­tion and real­i­ty, allow­ing the once excit­ed emo­tions to return to peace and tran­quil­i­ty.

 
 
This nar­ra­tive tech­nique tru­ly resem­bles a mag­ic trick! Strict­ly speak­ing, the book has three main plot­lines: the fam­i­ly his­to­ry of Bil­ly Mir­a­cle, a ship­wreck sur­vivor depict­ed in the illus­trat­ed sto­ry; the sto­ry of Joseph, a wealthy young man, search­ing for his fam­i­ly and grow­ing up; and the sto­ry of Joseph’s uncle Albert’s upbring­ing and the cre­ation of the “House of Mir­a­cles.” To the read­er, these sto­ries are all fic­tion­al, but for the char­ac­ters, which is real and which is fic­tion­al? Fur­ther­more, does this ques­tion real­ly mat­ter? The book’s open­ing apho­rism is also the apho­rism of the real House of Mir­a­cles: “To see or not to see”—though “see­ing is believ­ing” is often said, don’t our eyes often deceive us? Per­haps we only believe what we pre­fer to believe. How much “truth” is hid­den from view due to famil­iar­i­ty and prej­u­dice? If we tem­porar­i­ly set aside the so-called stan­dards of truth and fic­tion, we may see that these three sto­ries are actu­al­ly one: a sto­ry of pur­suit and growth.

 
 
In my opin­ion, the most chal­leng­ing aspect of edu­ca­tion, regard­less of era, is help­ing future gen­er­a­tions find the mean­ing of life. Selznick­’s char­ac­ters often appear fraught with con­fu­sion: Leontes, the young man from the Mir­a­cle Fam­i­ly, con­fused about his iden­ti­ty, pre­pares to secret­ly leave home and sail to India; Joseph, a boy, escapes his aris­to­crat­ic school and trav­els to Lon­don in a hope­less search for his uncle and close friend; and Uncle Albert, drift­ing from Amer­i­ca to Lon­don with his quirky dreams… They are all search­ing, yet unsure of what. A series of unex­pect­ed events, an unex­pect­ed friend­ship or fam­i­ly con­nec­tion, lead them into a won­drous jour­ney through life, a jour­ney that will undoubt­ed­ly bring both joy and sor­row, but coura­geous­ly fac­ing and bold­ly ques­tion­ing will yield rich insights.

 
 
Although the so-called “House of Won­ders” is entire­ly fic­tion­al, entire­ly new­ly con­struct­ed, and to some extent, non-exis­tent, all the spir­i­tu­al ele­ments and phys­i­cal mate­ri­als that com­prise it are incred­i­bly real. To oth­ers, they might appear worth­less and mean­ing­less, per­haps sim­ply invis­i­ble. How­ev­er, con­struct­ed by those with a heart and a dream, they are mirac­u­lous­ly imbued with mean­ing. This per­haps con­firms Selznick­’s long-held belief: even machines and objects have their own mean­ing, let alone peo­ple?

 
  But you must pur­sue it your­self, and you need to build the “House of Mir­a­cles” your­self.

Ajia …
Writ­ten in Bei­jing on March 30, 2018