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Education
A father and son go on a road trip to discover train station relics, a professor explains his intricate grading methods, and a pen-pal correspondence gets more suggestive and dangerous. These are all interconnected in John Hankiewicz's Education through reveries, memories, and nostalgic abstraction to tell a story that only the medium of comics could do justice. In this experimental and rewarding graphic novel, chronology and permanence are in flux while surreal illusions weave in and out of lucid states, remarkably held together by Hankiewicz's confident, clean line and crosshatchings. Much like Here by Richard McGuire, Education is a time-fracture stream of consciousness told by a veteran cartoonist in his poetic prime.
138 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 8, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 27, 2018
This is going to be a first-draft response to a book I need to read several times.
Here are some images of his work, just to show you the precise craftmanship.
https://www.google.com/search?client=...
I read (Chicago-born!) Hankiewicz's Asthma and was floored by it. New language of comics. Of storytelling. Now (2017) Fantagraphics releases Education, which had been released some time ago, but I expect it looks a bit different in the hands of this great publisher. Call it surrealism, abstract comics, poetry comics, art comics, alternative comix, experimental comics. But it creates its own category, in a way. On the surface level it is about 1) a guy who is teaching an introductory writing course to college students, addressing his students; 2) that guy's road trip with his father to see things connected to their mutual interest in railroad/train memorabilia, and 3) it is about 2-3 Canadian women who he is corresponding with, at least one of whom is attempting to seduce him.
The opening frames this guy's anxiety about what to do with the letters, which would seem to be fan letters. The one from the woman who is trying to openly seduce him bothers him most, he says. Then we are on a trip with Dad, though the other person in the car would seem to be a somewhat different image of himself. Like father, like son? While Dad talks of past trips, of shared history, Son thinks of this seducing woman, imagining interactions with her (yes, it's working, this seduction, in spite of his resistance, but the interactions are not graphically sexual, they are mostly flirting). The opening sections seem somewhat straightforward: We think of one thing while we experience another. Simultaneity of past and present experience. We drive in the present, we talk about the distant past, we think of the recent past. An image of that moment would reflect all three aspects of time and memory.
Then things seem to intensify in terms of the simultaneity. Time--past and present, gets increasingly complicated as we add in the teaching he is doing, primarily focused on the lecturing he does to the students about the writing process. Capturing this process would seem to create an image of Mind: As we think, our minds wind back and forth between various past and present experiences. We are talking to someone and thinking of the chili we have to make for supper (did I buy cinnamon?), that slight that Jerry seems to have said to me (was he kidding when he said "nice hair!"?!), images of Mom in the garden, the smell of the lilac bush she trims. If you are going to narrate "experience," couldn't it be that complicated?
A series of images/motifs repeat: The woman sends him an envelope filled with silver stars, which he tries to hide when his father visits, but they are all over the place, he can't seem to rid them of his consciousness. His discomfort with the stars seems to indicate his ambivalence about intimacy. He begins using them on his student papers! He hides them from his Dad, whom he worries will ask him questions about them. And they're scented with perfume, augh, hide them!
There's also a maple leaf "helicopter" seed that appears throughout. Still have to figure that one out.
What the guy says to his students is relevant to Hankiewicz's own story:
"Anyway, I was disappointed, frankly, with the narrative papers. It's not that they weren't solidly written. It's maybe that they were too solidly written. You write as if life were a set thing, an unremarkable thing."
Story for Hankiewicz is multi-layered, creating a reciprocal relationship between past and future, but it is also stream-of-consciousness, layer simultaneously operating with other layers. I think of Joyce in the last chapter of Ulysses, (the Molly section, yes, yes yes!) or perhaps the whole of Finnegan's Wake.
"Maybe you can't really write seriously until your sense of permanence is eroded."
"These events add up."
"This is not rational, this is what you feel deep down. I implore you, mine that sense of transformation, let it inform your writing."
The images and text go in different, or perhaps complementary, directions, they comment on each other, in a way only comics could possibly do, Hankiewicz shows us. It's (in part) a primer on comics. Like Here by Richard McGuire it is a commentary on time and memory, though this one is also about intimacy. And Education, or learning, in life and school! It's in part about learning how to be present, in relationships, with each other, and the effect of the disjointed/tri-sected narrative also affects our ability to connect with the anxious loner main character. Even if you don't "like" the story, you have to admit that is a cool idea, right?
This is really compelling comics work. It's about the ordinary world as a "remarkable thing." And not easy to read, as it is an artistic artifact, it's literarily complex. And odd. And so cool.
Here are some images of his work, just to show you the precise craftmanship.
https://www.google.com/search?client=...
I read (Chicago-born!) Hankiewicz's Asthma and was floored by it. New language of comics. Of storytelling. Now (2017) Fantagraphics releases Education, which had been released some time ago, but I expect it looks a bit different in the hands of this great publisher. Call it surrealism, abstract comics, poetry comics, art comics, alternative comix, experimental comics. But it creates its own category, in a way. On the surface level it is about 1) a guy who is teaching an introductory writing course to college students, addressing his students; 2) that guy's road trip with his father to see things connected to their mutual interest in railroad/train memorabilia, and 3) it is about 2-3 Canadian women who he is corresponding with, at least one of whom is attempting to seduce him.
The opening frames this guy's anxiety about what to do with the letters, which would seem to be fan letters. The one from the woman who is trying to openly seduce him bothers him most, he says. Then we are on a trip with Dad, though the other person in the car would seem to be a somewhat different image of himself. Like father, like son? While Dad talks of past trips, of shared history, Son thinks of this seducing woman, imagining interactions with her (yes, it's working, this seduction, in spite of his resistance, but the interactions are not graphically sexual, they are mostly flirting). The opening sections seem somewhat straightforward: We think of one thing while we experience another. Simultaneity of past and present experience. We drive in the present, we talk about the distant past, we think of the recent past. An image of that moment would reflect all three aspects of time and memory.
Then things seem to intensify in terms of the simultaneity. Time--past and present, gets increasingly complicated as we add in the teaching he is doing, primarily focused on the lecturing he does to the students about the writing process. Capturing this process would seem to create an image of Mind: As we think, our minds wind back and forth between various past and present experiences. We are talking to someone and thinking of the chili we have to make for supper (did I buy cinnamon?), that slight that Jerry seems to have said to me (was he kidding when he said "nice hair!"?!), images of Mom in the garden, the smell of the lilac bush she trims. If you are going to narrate "experience," couldn't it be that complicated?
A series of images/motifs repeat: The woman sends him an envelope filled with silver stars, which he tries to hide when his father visits, but they are all over the place, he can't seem to rid them of his consciousness. His discomfort with the stars seems to indicate his ambivalence about intimacy. He begins using them on his student papers! He hides them from his Dad, whom he worries will ask him questions about them. And they're scented with perfume, augh, hide them!
There's also a maple leaf "helicopter" seed that appears throughout. Still have to figure that one out.
What the guy says to his students is relevant to Hankiewicz's own story:
"Anyway, I was disappointed, frankly, with the narrative papers. It's not that they weren't solidly written. It's maybe that they were too solidly written. You write as if life were a set thing, an unremarkable thing."
Story for Hankiewicz is multi-layered, creating a reciprocal relationship between past and future, but it is also stream-of-consciousness, layer simultaneously operating with other layers. I think of Joyce in the last chapter of Ulysses, (the Molly section, yes, yes yes!) or perhaps the whole of Finnegan's Wake.
"Maybe you can't really write seriously until your sense of permanence is eroded."
"These events add up."
"This is not rational, this is what you feel deep down. I implore you, mine that sense of transformation, let it inform your writing."
The images and text go in different, or perhaps complementary, directions, they comment on each other, in a way only comics could possibly do, Hankiewicz shows us. It's (in part) a primer on comics. Like Here by Richard McGuire it is a commentary on time and memory, though this one is also about intimacy. And Education, or learning, in life and school! It's in part about learning how to be present, in relationships, with each other, and the effect of the disjointed/tri-sected narrative also affects our ability to connect with the anxious loner main character. Even if you don't "like" the story, you have to admit that is a cool idea, right?
This is really compelling comics work. It's about the ordinary world as a "remarkable thing." And not easy to read, as it is an artistic artifact, it's literarily complex. And odd. And so cool.
December 19, 2018
This graphic novel seems to be a stream-of-consciousness "confessional" by the protagonist, a college English teacher - perhaps an extended consideration of the futility or meaninglessness of his life, and the corrosive passage of time.. which makes everyone into "dogs" running around a track, just as trains endlessly circulate on tracks of their own.
The drawing is excellent - and the book is certainly thought-provoking, can be interpreted on a number of levels I suppose. The protagonist is indeed trapped by the deadening circumstances of his life - seemingly forever teaching the same thing, how to write essays, in the English class to indifferent students who are only interested in the letter grade, evidently. They always ignore his written critiques no matter how much care he puts into his comments.
The novel is in its own way, quite a serious commentary on modern life - perhaps the alienation many of us experience in a world where no-one seems to care, where everyone is instead wrapped up in their own competitive "battles" or simply their own smart phones. There is no-one in the graphic novel other than the protagonist, his father, a phantom female who may or may not be the Canadian pen friend who sends the teacher perfumed letters and with one letter gold star stickers, and a greyhound dog, a remembered remnant from a story the dad told his son about a trip he took to Detroit to see a dog race. Otherwise, there is only scenery, or a corner of the interior of the classroom, or the dad's hotel room, or the son's apartment. Oh, and the defunct railroad station where the father and son go to soak up the atmosphere - since the dad is a railroad engineer in real life, the trip to the abandoned train station is a bit of a "bus man's holiday." There are no other people and actually very few "narrative" elements in the story. The few recurring motifs perhaps are the keys to unlocking the meaning - or one possible interpretation - of the graphic novel.
The book has a dream-like quality (to say the least) and so all three characters might be different aspects of the person who is having the dream. The dad - who is shown starting out as not that much older than his son but gets old and decrepit in the course of the book - could represent the son's apprehensions about aging, time passing, and ultimately dying. The female character - presumably the Canadian pen friend - is the playful, uninhibited aspect of the protagonist's personality, which is always kept under control - although at one point, he seems to crack in class. There's life as it could be led - free, perhaps meaningless in the end anyway, and responsible, like his dad led his life. The son seems headed in the direction of his dad - dull, responsible, grading every paper every time even if the students do not read his comments. The greyhound dog that makes an appearance may be another aspect of the protagonist, disciplined, running around on a "career track" until he can no longer carry on and he quits and heads out of town on a train - even though we know the train is also running on a track, following a schedule, and so forth. Of course it will take the dog to another locale which at least is different from the locale it's in currently so that's a kind of freedom.
The protagonist is so wrapped up in his work as a teacher that he even hears himself droning on in class in the dream (if the book is a dream) - as the Canadian girl and his father (as a young man) sit at desks, with the girl not paying any attention as his father attempts to take notes. He knows he is not making any impression whatsoever on the students - so his life as a teacher is meaningless. They keep turning in the same papers, year after year. He tries to be as nice to them as possible, but they do not seem to take the class seriously.
The helicopter seed pod that recurs a few times in the book may symbolize freedom perhaps or also simply hopelessness, since it's unlikely to germinate into another maple. It is falling to earth in interior scenes - the apartment and the train station. There is no future for the seed in either location.
As they visit the closed train station, the dad says (on page 116) "Every place I worked is gone..." That about sums up the devastation that permeates the book. Broken windows in the defunct train station, boarded up windows in businesses, disinterested students, former work places all gone.
This graphic novel is not really about anything specifically - but it can be interpreted as a meditation on time, the fear of growing old, the meaninglessness of everyday life, the angst of missing out on any sort of opportunities, and perhaps the death of many small towns in America, once train stations close down and Main Streets are deserted for the malls or big box stores like Walmart's. And then even the malls shut down because of Amazon. I think "Education" can be interpreted many different ways which is what makes it so interesting.
The drawing is excellent - and the book is certainly thought-provoking, can be interpreted on a number of levels I suppose. The protagonist is indeed trapped by the deadening circumstances of his life - seemingly forever teaching the same thing, how to write essays, in the English class to indifferent students who are only interested in the letter grade, evidently. They always ignore his written critiques no matter how much care he puts into his comments.
The novel is in its own way, quite a serious commentary on modern life - perhaps the alienation many of us experience in a world where no-one seems to care, where everyone is instead wrapped up in their own competitive "battles" or simply their own smart phones. There is no-one in the graphic novel other than the protagonist, his father, a phantom female who may or may not be the Canadian pen friend who sends the teacher perfumed letters and with one letter gold star stickers, and a greyhound dog, a remembered remnant from a story the dad told his son about a trip he took to Detroit to see a dog race. Otherwise, there is only scenery, or a corner of the interior of the classroom, or the dad's hotel room, or the son's apartment. Oh, and the defunct railroad station where the father and son go to soak up the atmosphere - since the dad is a railroad engineer in real life, the trip to the abandoned train station is a bit of a "bus man's holiday." There are no other people and actually very few "narrative" elements in the story. The few recurring motifs perhaps are the keys to unlocking the meaning - or one possible interpretation - of the graphic novel.
The book has a dream-like quality (to say the least) and so all three characters might be different aspects of the person who is having the dream. The dad - who is shown starting out as not that much older than his son but gets old and decrepit in the course of the book - could represent the son's apprehensions about aging, time passing, and ultimately dying. The female character - presumably the Canadian pen friend - is the playful, uninhibited aspect of the protagonist's personality, which is always kept under control - although at one point, he seems to crack in class. There's life as it could be led - free, perhaps meaningless in the end anyway, and responsible, like his dad led his life. The son seems headed in the direction of his dad - dull, responsible, grading every paper every time even if the students do not read his comments. The greyhound dog that makes an appearance may be another aspect of the protagonist, disciplined, running around on a "career track" until he can no longer carry on and he quits and heads out of town on a train - even though we know the train is also running on a track, following a schedule, and so forth. Of course it will take the dog to another locale which at least is different from the locale it's in currently so that's a kind of freedom.
The protagonist is so wrapped up in his work as a teacher that he even hears himself droning on in class in the dream (if the book is a dream) - as the Canadian girl and his father (as a young man) sit at desks, with the girl not paying any attention as his father attempts to take notes. He knows he is not making any impression whatsoever on the students - so his life as a teacher is meaningless. They keep turning in the same papers, year after year. He tries to be as nice to them as possible, but they do not seem to take the class seriously.
The helicopter seed pod that recurs a few times in the book may symbolize freedom perhaps or also simply hopelessness, since it's unlikely to germinate into another maple. It is falling to earth in interior scenes - the apartment and the train station. There is no future for the seed in either location.
As they visit the closed train station, the dad says (on page 116) "Every place I worked is gone..." That about sums up the devastation that permeates the book. Broken windows in the defunct train station, boarded up windows in businesses, disinterested students, former work places all gone.
This graphic novel is not really about anything specifically - but it can be interpreted as a meditation on time, the fear of growing old, the meaninglessness of everyday life, the angst of missing out on any sort of opportunities, and perhaps the death of many small towns in America, once train stations close down and Main Streets are deserted for the malls or big box stores like Walmart's. And then even the malls shut down because of Amazon. I think "Education" can be interpreted many different ways which is what makes it so interesting.
August 31, 2021
I’m finding this book really tough to give a star rating.
On one hand, this book felt like a new medium of comics, looking more into the author it’s more so classified as comic poetry rather than just an average graphic novel. This is kind of written in stream of consciousness, lots of stories being kept up in the air at one time, thoughts all intertwined at once, characters taking up the same spaces from panel to panel just switching characters. So it was unlike anything I’ve read before just in terms of trying to follow the ‘story’ because it wasn’t a story, really.
On the other hand, it just felt like everything was going over my head at all points in time and I was just confused as to why the narrator was the son, the protagonist it seemed, but then he was with his father, then he was teaching like a younger version of his father and then there was just a girl who was never explained who we can only assume was the narrators Canadian pen pal??? and as the story progressed the father just got older and then there was a greyhound dog that was randomly popping up, and it just felt like a David lynch movie where I was traveling on a time line that I didn’t understand because it was not actually a linear timeline and you should not have assumed it was.
So was this book cool? Yes. The artwork was breathtaking, it took me a week to read because I really took my time looking at the detailing of each panel and just appreciating the pure time and energy that went into the crosshatching. Individually, I was very interested in each story line - especially the narrators personal life between of him and his Canadian pen pal. But, as this was a weaving poetic work, it never spent too much time on any one plot which really left me wanting more.
There was a different review here that went IN on explaining what everything in the book could have meant and represented (what’s up little helicopter leaf that popped up throughout the whole book who tf are you?) and it did open up my mind to more complexity than I am capable of getting out of my leisurely reading times, so I appreciate that.
I’m gonna give this book 4 stars, even though there were times in this book I was lost, it never got dull or disinteresting because the art was just so impressive and the story aspects I did follow and keep track of we’re really good.
On one hand, this book felt like a new medium of comics, looking more into the author it’s more so classified as comic poetry rather than just an average graphic novel. This is kind of written in stream of consciousness, lots of stories being kept up in the air at one time, thoughts all intertwined at once, characters taking up the same spaces from panel to panel just switching characters. So it was unlike anything I’ve read before just in terms of trying to follow the ‘story’ because it wasn’t a story, really.
On the other hand, it just felt like everything was going over my head at all points in time and I was just confused as to why the narrator was the son, the protagonist it seemed, but then he was with his father, then he was teaching like a younger version of his father and then there was just a girl who was never explained who we can only assume was the narrators Canadian pen pal??? and as the story progressed the father just got older and then there was a greyhound dog that was randomly popping up, and it just felt like a David lynch movie where I was traveling on a time line that I didn’t understand because it was not actually a linear timeline and you should not have assumed it was.
So was this book cool? Yes. The artwork was breathtaking, it took me a week to read because I really took my time looking at the detailing of each panel and just appreciating the pure time and energy that went into the crosshatching. Individually, I was very interested in each story line - especially the narrators personal life between of him and his Canadian pen pal. But, as this was a weaving poetic work, it never spent too much time on any one plot which really left me wanting more.
There was a different review here that went IN on explaining what everything in the book could have meant and represented (what’s up little helicopter leaf that popped up throughout the whole book who tf are you?) and it did open up my mind to more complexity than I am capable of getting out of my leisurely reading times, so I appreciate that.
I’m gonna give this book 4 stars, even though there were times in this book I was lost, it never got dull or disinteresting because the art was just so impressive and the story aspects I did follow and keep track of we’re really good.
January 7, 2018
First of all, thank you Fantagraphics for publishing this comic! I read Asthma by him a couple years ago and absolutely loved it. I then tried to find the first ed self published version of Education but it was impossible to find. I’m so happy I finally get to read it!
It was as amazing and stunning as I expected it to be. The comics is three narratives that intertwine with one another: a man is visited by his father and they go to an old train station to visit it, an English teacher explains his grading methods and his experience reading students essays, and we see pen pal correspondences between two people. It is about all that but it feels like much more while reading it and yet I wouldn’t be able to say what more because this book is impossible to describe. It’s a meditation of time and space as well as relationships and intimacy. The intimacy in different types of relationships: either between family, between student and teacher, between strangers.
I think the best part of the book is the way that Hankiewicz shows his mastery of the comics form and his use of comics language (panels, speech bubbles, lines that indicate action and/or sound, etc.) He pushes boundaries, experiments with comics language and the English language. Many other people have pointed out that his work is in the comics-as-poetry realm since he has this underlying rhythm in his comics and he also manages visual rhymes. Some images as symbols that evolve in meaning as you continue reading (which I know many comics artists do but he just does it so well). This book is poetic but it’s a story/poem that can only be told in the comics medium. Any way, I love this book and I highly recommend it as well as Asthma.
It was as amazing and stunning as I expected it to be. The comics is three narratives that intertwine with one another: a man is visited by his father and they go to an old train station to visit it, an English teacher explains his grading methods and his experience reading students essays, and we see pen pal correspondences between two people. It is about all that but it feels like much more while reading it and yet I wouldn’t be able to say what more because this book is impossible to describe. It’s a meditation of time and space as well as relationships and intimacy. The intimacy in different types of relationships: either between family, between student and teacher, between strangers.
I think the best part of the book is the way that Hankiewicz shows his mastery of the comics form and his use of comics language (panels, speech bubbles, lines that indicate action and/or sound, etc.) He pushes boundaries, experiments with comics language and the English language. Many other people have pointed out that his work is in the comics-as-poetry realm since he has this underlying rhythm in his comics and he also manages visual rhymes. Some images as symbols that evolve in meaning as you continue reading (which I know many comics artists do but he just does it so well). This book is poetic but it’s a story/poem that can only be told in the comics medium. Any way, I love this book and I highly recommend it as well as Asthma.
July 11, 2019
Got to admit that this one went over my head. The images seemed to have little relation to the words and felt distracting. I could appreciate the words on their own or the drawings, but together, I couldn't make the connection.
March 27, 2025
I still remember in 4th grade looking out the classroom window and seeing what seemed like millions of samaras fluttering toward the ground.
June 20, 2018
don't write about, write for.
June 12, 2023
John Hankiewicz's Education contains three surrealist stories that don't connect narratively but loosely via the poetic/abstract prose style. The three stories are about a college professor going over his elaborate grading scheme to his students, a father & son road trip where they connect over railroad history and memorabilia and a guy corresponding with 3 female pen-pals, one whom sends increasingly seductive bits of erotica. The stories unfold in a stream-of-consciousness manner, with each story folding into the other with no real transition, creating for a somewhat fragmented storytelling style. Education is highly experimental, meant to be more thought provoking than engaging from a storytelling front. I enjoyed it for what this was, a play on surrealist fiction with no clear direction, rather just an oozing sense of meaninglessness that dripped from one page to the next. This won't be enjoyed by many, but I quite enjoyed it - particularly for Hankiewicz's stunning artwork.
May 27, 2018
An interesting experiment, with precise, controlled art. The abstraction and disconnect of the captions with the art makes for an intentional cognitive dissonance, connecting the threads of narrative in a way that demands attention be paid, though leaves it somewhat emotionally cold. I feel it would've been a stronger work had it been shorter.
October 24, 2018
Positively Lynchian.
December 8, 2021
There are some graphic novels that remind me of poetry, this is definitely one of them.
Read
March 17, 2022As a consequtive read to the referenced book Here (by Richard Mcguire), I couldnt relate; cannot rate. FREE beyond experimetal.
October 3, 2025
yes.
Can we have more books like this?
Thank you.
Can we have more books like this?
Thank you.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews