Dead Memory

by Marc-Antoine Mathieu

A haunting and powerful look at modern society and our reliance on structures - both physical and suggested - Dead Memory represents some of the best published work of one of France's most highly acclaimed graphic novelists, Marc-Antoine Mathieu. Beautifully illustrated in high-contrast black and white, and published in an oversize, hardcover format, Dead Memory is both an allegorical study of a Kafka-esque society under the control of real-time information and a thoughtful treatise on cities, walls, languages, and other elements that both define and confine humanity.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Bande Dessinée, Science Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics

64 pages, Hardcover

First published April 13, 1999

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Darkly cerebral, European architectural comic in a large hardcover format, black and white, mostly black backgrounds, feels like--I don't know how to describe it without calling forth the cliche. . . Kafkaesque!! It's an allegory with very little story, as with Kafka, though even starker and leaner. The feeling of dread and foreboding is central here. This is about a big city, say Paris, as Mathieu is French, and mostly illustrates how walls of various kinds, structures of architecture and language, create us and confine us. They pop up everywhere and for unclear reasons. Foucault's panopticon comes to mind as a corollary vision. Institutions of inclusion/exclusion. A kind of nightmare of modern urban life, a Metropolis where humans matter little, and are merely numbers or ghosts to a City that has become its own monster. New? Nah. See The Jungle and other realists and naturalists of industrial waste and filth beginning in the nineteenth century? Relevant? I'd say so. Seems like an Occupy Comics political statement. The architectural drawing is particularly good.

Dead Memory presents a kind of conundrum: It presents a vision of the nightmare of the present bureaucratic present I think both calls forth Kafka as prophetic and is also is just not easy or entertaining to read. I agree with Mathieu and like Brecht, he is not out to entertain with little fun comics, he is frightened of the present and the future and castigating the world as it is. Mathieu makes a sci fi warning we heard 100 years ago in Verne and Wells. Maybe there are precursors in Swift's dark satires, too, critiques of the class society. But those folks, and even Kafka and Brecht, were also more entertaining than Mathieu. Maybe that's his point; time to stop laughing. A dark classic, maybe. Check it out.

[Diana Welsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a birthday gift from a friend, and I can definitely see why he thought to get it for me. It's very cerebral. I think I might have to read it again before I understand it in its entirety, and part of that is because I've been working so much that I read most of it a few pages at a time before I passed out in bed. This isn't a book where you can do that.

It's really hard to explain the plot because it's largely an allegory. It's about how people use technology to change society, for better or for worse, but you can't blame technology for this because humans are ultimately in control of it.

Very enjoyable, would definitely recommend to someone looking for an off-the-beaten-path graphic novel.

[Mark]

Sadly, very little of the work of the brilliant Marc Antoine Mathieu has been translated into English so far, but thankfully we do have the mesmerizing Dead End (Memoire Morte): a fascinating study of urban planning, language, history, technology, memory, communication, and social dysfunctionality.

Calling this book "Kafka-esque" is not inaccurate but it's also too limiting : this is the graphic novel to put on the shelf next to Jorge Luis Borges, Ítalo Calvino, Jose Saramago, Paul Auster, and Stanislaw Lem. And the powerful black and white illustrations – – so much ink – – are ingenious and beautiful to study.

[Miguel de Plante · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deux livres de Marc-Antoine Mathieu dans la même journée devrait être recommandé par les médecins.

Cette fois, le bédéiste philosophe nous présente une autre société méta empruntant les codes des meilleures oeuvres d'anticipation.

L'histoire prend place au sein d'une ville infinie, rectiligne. Ne pas connaître de limite à leur connaissance du monde donnent aux habitants une soif de connaissances et de questionnements, mais l'arrivée d'un mur en plein milieu d'une rue coupe court à cette liberté de pensée. Peu à peu, plusieurs autres murs apparaîtront dans la cité qui deviendra lentement un labyrinthe, dont l'archivage sera confié au personnage principal.

Encore une fois, Marc-Antoine Mathieu nous présente sans vraiment de subtilité une métaphore de l'intolérance, des barrières absurdes crées par l'homme, pour (contre) l'homme. De l'aveuglement et du mutisme engendré par ce genre de comportement social. On y présentera une vision de l'avenir effrayante, même si au final quand même classique, mais l'auteur utilise une fois de plus le médium visuel qu'est la bande-dessinée pour démontrer avec plus de force l'horreur d'une telle civilisation.

Moins éclaté que plusieurs autres oeuvres du même auteur, Mémoire Morte en vaut tout de même la peine.

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Where would we be without European architectural comics? Lots here I love -- an infinite city, the shape and extent of which is endlessly debated and inconclusive, mysterious walls and constructions appearing overnight, a language disease, an absent god/ruler, stark evocative black and white line-work. Narratively though, this feels a little incomplete: full of sharply defined signs that are presented full of meaning, but without the actual story development to give them weight behind their somewhat overloaded Big Meanings. S

[Abby · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dreamy dystopic comic about a strange futuristic city where walls begin mysteriously appearing in various neighborhoods and the residents start to lose their memories. The symbolism is a bit heavy-handed, but the starkly beautiful artwork skillfully evokes many complex ideas about time, history, power and knowledge. I should probably also mention that the artist is French -- the book reads like a French existentialist SF novel.

[steph · Rating 5 out of 5]

actually, the original title in french is much more accurate, memoire morte.

totally surreal and dadaistic reading experience, thought up in 2000, before facebook and the first smartphones, supported by great illustrations. just read it!

[StrictlySequential · Rating 4 out of 5]

Philosophically minded types will enjoy delving deeply into this very intelligently conceived and exhaustively thought provoking eventuality postulation that, by design, gets convoluted within starkly illustrated bizzarchitecture!

If you don't find yourself muttering questions to your own thought process out-loud then I believe that you somehow missed the point of this book- unless you weren't in the mood for a challenging game of brain strain.

I'm so glad that I realized, right before I finished reading it, that he appropriately made the entirety of the book's interior completely binary in the absolute fashion of a computer.

Even though we term these pages of art "black and white" they only contain one color used by the artist, which happens to be the most absolute pitch black (1) that is paired with the untouched nothingness of the white (0) page!

[Aurore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cette BD date un peu et malgré un thème qui a beaucoup évolué ces dernières années, l'histoire fonctionne super bien.
Bonus spécial pour les comités créés pour analyser les données, on voit bien le parallèle avec la communication dans notre société où on demande à des personnes d'analyser une situation pendant 5ans pour trouver une solution mais la société poursuit sont chemin et les problèmes s'entassent jusqu'à ce qu'on oublie le premier problème.

[Etienne Lessard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Exploite des thèmes intéressants comme l’importance de l’imaginaire dans la préservation d’une langue et une critique efficace des démocraties libérales et leur incapacité à répondre à de réels problèmes, et plus en seulement une cinquantaine de pages. Un format dystopique orwellien, la forme n’est pas super original selon moi.

[Joel Cuthbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A neat little SciFi with some noirish elements. It is quite ambitious and yet also quite short so it leaves a rather fragmented narrative that could have been more fleshed out but it's still a novel and effective tale.

[Ahmad · Rating 4 out of 5]

When a city looses its memory and crossing walls creating dead ends retrieve it back!

[Alex Fyffe · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Ève · Rating 3 out of 5]

puissant

[Diane MT · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meilleur BD-iste que j'ai pu lire, chacune de ses bd renforce cette impression.

[Nicolas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Très curieuse histoire ... on y croise des fonctionnaires fous, un urbanisme infini, et une espèce d'ordinateur curieusement éveillé à la conscience.

On y croise en fait surtout des archétypes et des idées, dont celles de la stagnation de la ville soumise aux urbanistes (par opposition à une espèce de nature anarchique et créatrice, j'imagine), mais aussi (voire surtout) de la dépendance technophile à une espèce de "smartphone" (je mets le mot entre guillemets, car je ne crois pas qu'il en existait avec Siri à l'époque de l'écriture de cette oeuvre) abrutissant les individus et les vidant de leur mémoire et de leur intelligence.

Là-dedans, le choix du noir et blanc ajoute encore une touche irréaliste à l'oeuvre pour nous faire comprendre qu'il s'agit en fait d'une critique d'un mode d evie connecté (enfin, j'imagine). C'est pas mal, mais pas fabuleux non plus.

[Kelvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me wish, for a scant second, that stealing French albums from the public library was cool.

I recommend this to people who are into black and white, post-apocalyptic, rapid-decline-of-society-through-language-fragmentation, and decay-of-social-memory-referents-via-the-use-of-external-mnemonics kind of books.

[Nate · Rating 3 out of 5]

the story is pretty weak and heavy-handed. but the art in this graphic novel was awesome, which is why i'm giving it three instead of one or two stars. high contrast black and white with trippy images makes this something worth flipping through.

[Sarahanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was haunting but confusing. It wanted to be profound & important. It didn't quite get there. The mood and feel of the drawings told the story better than the words. Not because they added clarity, but because they were ominous & rich & sombre.

[Michelle Hoogterp · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't really understand this story.

[George Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful art, constantly inventive, bulging with ideas. I recommend Mathieu to anyone who loves comics.