Discipline + Blank Canvas

Discipline, Pham - I've been in a prose reading rut lately and checked out a few recently published books for some light reading. Discipline is a novel about Christine, a former painter, who writes a novel heavily inspired about her romantic and sexual relationship with her male mentor. She abandoned painting after her experiences at her MFA and "disappears" into her persona as a writer. While on tour for her novel, the mentor contacts her and invites her to his cabin in Maine. She goes, seeking—revenge? Closure? Affirmation? All of the above?

Naturally, this made me think of Blank Canvas: My So-Called Artist Journey, an autobiographical künstlerroman manga by Akiko Higashimura, a prolific shoujo manga artist most famous in the anglosphere for Princess Jellyfish. Higashimura details her childhood ambition to be a manga artist and her relationship with Hidaka, the man who ran an art school/cram school in her hometown. The mentor-mentee relationship is totally different here, along with the perspective, tone, and genre; on the other hand, it's hard to think of another work that's similarly preoccupied with painting, talent, fine arts, and not becoming the artist you thought you'd be despite your mentor's expectations. Putting these two works together really made me think about some of my dissatisfaction with contemporary novels from an aesthetic perspective…
 

( manga is amazing...... novels are okay )