You'll Never Know: Book One: A Good and Decent Man

AUTHOR: Tyler, C.

ARTIST: C. Tyler (illustrator)

PUBLISHER: Fantagraphics Books

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 2009-

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2009

Publication History

Following her collections of short stories The Job Thing (1993) and Late Bloomer (2005), You’ll Never Know is Carol Tyler’s (known professionally as C. Tyler) first stand-alone project that focuses on a continuous storyline. The first installment of the trilogy, You’ll Never Know, Book One: A Good and Decent Man, was published by Fantagraphics Books as a hardcover in 2009. In terms of book design, the choice of an oversized landscape format (12 × 10.5 inches) adds to the resemblance to a family photo album or scrapbook, and emphasizes the personal nature of the subject matter. Book One begins a trilogy that explores the life of the author’s father (Chuck Tyler) during and after World War II. The first volume works as an introduction and establishes the main characters and their backgrounds without delving extensively into the core of the story. The second volume, You’ll Never Know, Book Two: Collateral Damage, was published in 2010. The final installment, You’ll Never Know, Book Three: Soldier’s Heart, is set to be published in 2012.

Plot

The main narrative of You’ll Never Know revolves around the biography of the author’s father, Chuck Tyler, who worked as an army staff sergeant during World War II. Soon after entering the army, Chuck meets Hannah Yates, a striking beauty who works as a clerical secretary. Immediately, he falls head over heels for her and attempts to gain her attention by any means necessary. Luckily for him, his prankster ways work in his favor, winning Hannah’s heart and hand before he is sent to Europe.

Simultaneously, You’ll Never Know, Book One explores a second narrative in which the author recounts her daily life in Ohio, where she lives with her teenage daughter, Julia. In this story line, Tyler deals with the difficulties of single parenthood after her husband, cartoonist Justin Green, leaves her and her daughter for their former babysitter. Rather than resorting to finger pointing, the author concentrates on more significant issues at hand, such as the importance of father figures and the emotional toll caused by abandonment.

By becoming both the biographer of her father’s life and an autobiographer, Tyler is able to weave two family narratives that span several decades. After numerous unsuccessful attempts at uncovering her father’s secretive army past, Tyler receives an unexpected phone call from her father in which he suddenly recounts his wartime experiences. Overjoyed, she undertakes the role of historian and biographer, making a photo scrapbook of her father’s past. Yet in spite of her father’s sudden desire to share his personal history, Tyler still experiences difficulty in obtaining details about his dark times during the war. This is especially true in relation to an incident in Italy, a clear source of anguish and pain for Chuck. Narrative gaps, inaccuracy, and ambiguity in Chuck’s recollections emphasize the emotional difficulty that arises when dealing with a traumatic past.

Although Tyler focuses on heavy themes such as war trauma and abandonment, the author cleverly incorporates a touch of humor to her work through funny commentary, self-ridicule, and a play with the comics form. Consequently, this lightens the tone of the first installment of her trilogy, contextualizing the story in terms of character backgrounds and setting up the narrative for a deepening of the complex relationship between father and daughter and past and present.

Characters

•Charles William Tyler, a.k.a. Chuck, is the main protagonist of the story. He is a World War II veteran and father of the author, Carol Tyler. Chuck has a bald head, wears red suspenders, and smokes a pipe. He is a good problem solver and an excellent craftsman. He is quick-witted, resourceful, and pragmatic. As a young man in the army, he is portrayed as a trickster and troublemaker, constantly pulling stunts to gain attention. As a father, he is somewhat distant and short-tempered, making it difficult for Carol to gather information about his secretive past during World War II.

•Carol Tyler is a secondary protagonist. She is the author of You’ll Never Know and the daughter of Chuck Tyler. In the book, she undertakes the role of biographer and autobiographer and narrates both her father’s story and her own story. She is inquisitive, artistic, and devoted to her family.

•Hannah Yates, a secondary character, is Chuck’s wife and Carol’s mother. She usually wears glasses and a hat, and she goes by the nickname “Red” because of her hair color. Unlike Chuck, she is calm and patient and is portrayed as a quiet homemaker.

•Julia Green, a secondary character, is Carol’s teenage daughter. She has long auburn hair and is between the ages of twelve and fifteen. In terms of plot, she serves mainly to advance the story line that revolves around Carol and her ex-husband’s separation.

•Justin Green, a secondary character, is Carol’s former husband and Julia’s father. He is recognizable by his plaid shirts. He is present mainly within the narrative that recounts the difficulties that occurred after he left his family for another woman.

Artistic Style

You’ll Never Know is produced with a custom-made palette of fifty-three inks and watercolors, giving the work a stunning vibrancy and richness. Tyler, who holds a graduate degree in painting from Syracuse University, demonstrates a mastery of watercolor techniques through her skilled understanding of line fluidity, lush colors, and dynamic composition. The book often emulates the scrapbook format with the use of mounted photo corners and picture frames. Similarly, the reproduction of memorabilia such as letters, maps, sketches, and photographs calls attention to the importance of memory in the work, a theme that is central to the initial impetus behind the work. Visually, the art showcases a great attention to detail through the incorporation of ornamentation in the book. For example, Tyler frequently draws detailed floral patterns, spirals, and textures to enliven her settings and backgrounds.

Because You’ll Never Know is a graphic memoir, Tyler often plays with comics conventions, such as panel layouts and lettering. At times, she subtly leads readers to go against the usual reading direction and uses arrows to indicate a movement from the bottom of the page to the top. At other times, she drops the use of panels altogether and uses whole pages for single illustrations. In this way, Tyler clearly takes advantage of the dimensions of the book, amplifying the visual impact of her art through large and densely detailed illustrations. In terms of typography, Tyler uses three different lettering styles to reflect the various narratives in the book: cursive for her own narration, capital print letters for character dialogue, and regular print for her father’s army scrapbook.

Themes

One of the main themes in You’ll Never Know, Book One: A Good and Decent Man is seen in the legacy of trauma, where Chuck’s difficult experience in the war has a considerable impact on the rest of his family. Tyler calls attention to the notion that not all scars are visible or explicit, since trauma frequently manifests itself in an implicit and unspoken manner. Questions about what triggers certain memories and what causes others to be repressed are constantly brought up in the text. By extension, musings on the nature of trauma deepen the meaning of the book’s title, which comes to have a double meaning. On a surface level, You’ll Never Know recalls Chuck and Hannah’s early courtship by referencing a song by the same title that was popularized by Alice Faye in the 1940’s. On a deeper level, the title emphasizes the incredible difficulty of truly knowing a person’s private self, since Tyler’s desire to uncover truth is met with her father’s relentless desire to rid himself of his traumatic past by adopting a facade of stoic fortitude. Consequently, the work presents readers with an interesting tension between recollection and repression, a theme that is present throughout the trilogy.

Another important theme involves the complexity of memory. Throughout the story, memory is presented in a nonlinear and fragmented manner, as a process that is constantly under construction. The complex inner workings of memory are reflected in the narrative structure of the graphic memoir, which jumps between temporalities and character stories. Tyler frequently uses dialogue from one era to comment on another, where, for example, her father’s dialogue about the past is juxtaposed with illustrations of the present, serving as a type of interpretation or critique of the action at hand.

Impact

The publication of Tyler’s You’ll Never Know trilogy has had a tremendous impact on the career of the author, becoming one of her most popular works. In addition to media attention and positive reviews, the first installment of the trilogy was nominated for various awards, including two Eisners in 2010 for Best Writer/Artist of a Nonfiction Work and Best Painter/Multimedia Artist.

You’ll Never Know is a Modern Age comic, produced in an era in which the graphic memoir has been a popular subgenre. It should be noted that Tyler was producing seminal works for several decades prior to You’ll Never Know, contributing to major collections that are representative of the underground comics era, such as Weirdo (1981-1993), Wimmen’s Comix (1972-1992), and Twisted Sisters (1994). In relation to other seminal comics, You’ll Never Know is often likened to Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (1986, 1991) because of thematic similarities, including memory, family heritage, and World War II trauma. The story structures of the two works are also similar as both follow a parallel narrative that involves a complex relationship between a parent and a child. Although the two works possess many similarities, Tyler’s You’ll Never Know, Book One: A Good and Decent Man presents readers with a lighter tone and a more detailed and lively artistic style than Maus does.

Further Reading

Spiegelman, Art. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (1986, 1991).

Tyler, Carol. Late Bloomer (2005).

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Job Thing (1993).

Bibliography

Rosenkranz, Patrick. “The ABCs of Autobio Comix.” The Comics Journal (March 6, 2011). http://www.tcj.com/the-abcs-of-auto-bio-comix-2.

Tyler, Carol. “CR Sunday Interview: Carol Tyler.” Interview by Tom Spurgeon. The Comics Reporter, July 5, 2009. http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/cr‗sunday‗interview‗carol‗tyler.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “The Fine Arts of Comics: Carol Tyler Interview.” Interview by Mark Burbey. The Comics Journal 142 (June, 1991): 91-102.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Interview: C. Tyler Pt. 1 (of 4).” Interview by Brian Heater. The Daily Cross Hatch, December 23, 2009. http://thedailycrosshatch.com/2009/12/23/interview-c-tyler-pt-1-of-4.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “‘You’ll Never Know’ Carol Tyler.” Interview by Alex Dueben. Comic Book Resources (March 4, 2011). http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=31136.