Autobiography and the Empathic Imagination in Ernie Pook’s Comeek

This chapter explores the conventions of autobiography in the relation between memory and empathy while referencing Lynda Barry's long-running four-panel comic, Ernie Pook's Comeek. Even though the work is not inherently an autobiography, a narrative in Ernie Pook triggered tropes of autobiography in their structure, a combination of analysis and nostalgia, and emphasis on the incidents described illuminate the lives of involved characters. According to Barry, turning experience into narrative becomes a way of self-protection from vulnerability and making meaning out of the ephemera and chaos. Moreover, autobiographical gestures in Ernie Pook's Comeek continually play with how art utilized memory to construct, direct, and limit empathy. The chapter also elaborates on how layered narratives of autography could be either healing or a mode of attack.