Richard McGuire’s Here as an Autography of Place

This book concludes with an analysis of Richard McGuire's graphic novel Here to show how profoundly the architecture of place pervades our reading and seeing. It argues that, like many so-called graphic novels, Here makes use of temporality as if it were the only logic able to make sense of place, with its non-human ontic timelessness. It also considers Here to be ideal for identifying how autobiography operates when it is not a generic paradigm but a mode, precisely because the text is neither künstlerroman nor autography in the traditional sense. There are no recognizable self-portraiture of the artist hard at work, but Here still conjures the work behind the work and the creator who both carries out and covers over that labor. The fact that Here is not a self-announced autobiography helps to conceal the apprenticeship strategies in reading and viewing that structure it.