{"id":87686,"date":"2015-07-20T11:16:12","date_gmt":"2015-07-20T15:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=87686"},"modified":"2015-07-20T11:18:52","modified_gmt":"2015-07-20T15:18:52","slug":"thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinking Through Images: An Interview with Nick Sousanis"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"First<\/a>

First idea map for Unflattening<\/em>, April 14, 2011.<\/p><\/div>\n

Everything about <\/em>Unflattening<\/a> is odd, from its ungainly title and unfashionable subject matter (Rudolf Arnheim art theory meets Herbert Marcuse radicalism meets Scott McCloud comics boosterism) to its provenance: Nick Sousanis initially wrote and drew this full-length comics essay as his graduate-school dissertation. (He was earning his doctorate in education at Teachers College Columbia University, studying under the philosopher and social activist Maxine Greene.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Sousanis\u2019s career might be considered a little odd, too. He followed up an undergraduate degree in mathematics with a brief stint as a professional tennis player, then cofounded and edited a cultural magazine in Detroit, while also working as an artist. This isn\u2019t the typical career path for a cartoonist\u2014though to be fair, that profession doesn\u2019t provide many followable emblematic models in that regard. Wild enthusiasm and plunge-taking fearlessness aside, Sousanis seems like a solid citizen; while his ideas are radically utopian, their flavor is resolutely wholesome. He is reminiscent of the kind of small-town high school teacher who\u2019s popular with students because they believe he tells the truth and is unafraid to veer away from the curriculum-assigned script.<\/em><\/p>\n

The script Sousanis is veering away from in this case is the age-old Western bias against visual imagery (and in favor of the Word), which he traces back to Plato\u2019s cave. Sousanis believes that verbal language alone is a poor vehicle for capturing the multidimensional, many-layered fullness of human experience, the equivalent of Edwin Abbott\u2019s two-dimensional flatworms trying to explain a sphere. It\u2019s not so much that a picture is worth a thousand words, but rather that a picture is worth concepts that can\u2019t even be put into words. And in an attempt to prove his case, he drew it.<\/em><\/p>\n

What does \u201cunflattening\u201d mean?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It would be easier to tell you what the book\u2019s about than to tell you what \u201cunflattening\u201d is. Actually, I\u2019ve thinking about that lately because there\u2019s a French translation in the works, and they can\u2019t use that word because it doesn\u2019t mean anything.<\/p>\n

How could it not mean anything?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I don\u2019t think it means the right <\/i>thing. It doesn\u2019t mean anything in English\u2014it\u2019s not a word people use. The book is very much an argument that we make sense of the world in ways beyond text\u2014teaching and learning shouldn\u2019t be restricted to that narrow band. So rather than talking about visual thinking and multimodal stuff\u2014from Howard Gardner to Rudolf Arnheim, people have been talking about it\u2014comics just let me do it.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what the book is about, if it\u2019s about<\/i> anything. Unflattening<\/i>\u2014both the book and the concept\u2014is talking about multimodality, about interdisciplinarity, about image-text, it\u2019s both public and scholarly. It\u2019s saying that we need to dimensionalize the kinds of conversations we have rather than coming at them head-on.<\/p>\n

Did you have many formal models to look to for what you were trying to accomplish?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Scott McCloud\u2019s Understanding Comics<\/i> has been a big influence on me. It showed that comics can be lots of things, including educational. My first comics look very McCloudian, where I\u2019m just sitting there doing stuff. A number of educational comics have copied what he did in terms of style but haven\u2019t really played with form\u2014just Professor So-and-So talking about whatever. Studying Alan Moore helped me with this problem. He did a six-page comic with his wife Melinda Gebbie called \u201cThis Is Information,\u201d but it\u2019s all visual-verbal metaphor. There\u2019s a narrative, but it\u2019s not a story\u2014it\u2019s the text telling the image what to do, and form matters more than anything else.<\/p>\n

In terms of noncomics, there was Ulysses<\/i> but also Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance<\/i> and Doug Hofstadter\u2019s G\u00f6del, Escher, Bach<\/i> and James Burke\u2019s The Pinball Effect <\/i>and Connections.<\/i> Burke takes an enormous view of history. In Unflattening<\/i>, I didn\u2019t do as many interludes as I thought I would, but I think my favorite parts in G\u00f6del, Escher, Bach<\/i> are the interludes with the tortoise and the hare or with Achilles\u2014all those parts where he\u2019s talking philosophy but you can read it. Whereas with the other part, you need a discussion group to read it.<\/p>\n

\"sousanis<\/a>Since Understanding Comics <\/i>was published, in 1993, there haven\u2019t been many other theoretical nonfiction books using the comics form in innovative ways. As you said, there are a lot of talking-head books. Why do you think there aren\u2019t more formally innovative comics essays?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a maker, I can tell you that it\u2019s easier to go the talking-head route because you don\u2019t have to come up with something new to draw all the time. But I\u2019m more interested in how you can embody an idea on the page rather than talk about it. Talking about it is easier, and maybe it takes somebody who\u2019s a maker\u2014a serious maker\u2014to get invested in it. David Mazzucchelli is someone who does that kind of work, but he\u2019s not interested, at least at this point, in doing nonfiction.<\/p>\n

In one of the endnotes to your book, you say that Deleuze and Guattari\u2019s A Thousand Plateaus<\/i> would be perfect for adaptation into comics form. Do you have plans to do that yourself?<\/strong><\/p>\n

To be honest, I\u2019ve probably read forty pages of A Thousand Plateaus<\/i>. My point in that footnote is that Deleuze and Guattari are trying to make so many nonlinear connections, and that doesn\u2019t work in text alone\u2014you need layers. In DJing, you can add layers of music on top of one another, but it doesn\u2019t work the same way in text. Or, at least, it didn\u2019t work for Deleuze and Guattari, because it\u2019s not readable\u2014no offense to them.<\/p>\n

But that kind of nonlinearity is perfect for comics. I actually wrote to Bruno Latour when I was in the middle of this, and I said, I\u2019m going to try tackling one of your things in comics, and he said, Yes, I think it would be good. I couldn\u2019t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. Latour talks about actor-network theory, where you really need to see layers this way. It includes objects, animals, and other nonhuman actors alongside the human as part of the network of actors in a social-network system. What was key to me\u2014and how it relates to the way that comics handle nonlinearity and a kind of seeing from the fourth dimension\u2014is actor-network theory\u2019s focus on tracing associations. So you\u2019re looking at all these connections\u2014strings, or really vectors\u2014acting on one another. And it\u2019s not just actors and objects. Each element is an actor exerting some sort of pull on the others, and you need to account for all of them.<\/p>\n

What kind of reactions did you get while you were working on the book?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m often asked if I had to fight to make the book this way, and I really didn\u2019t. The only pushback I had\u2014and it wasn\u2019t really pushback\u2014was in the proposal hearing, where the cohort said, Don\u2019t you think you should hedge and have a text section to explain it? And if I had any hesitation, that was the last time, because I said, No, it\u2019s either its own thing, or it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

While I was making it, I\u2019d print up short comics and give them away at conferences or to anybody I met. I would just say, This is the comic I made. I really liked doing that because that was the point\u2014making comics, making scholarship for people. I lived up in Spanish Harlem, and there were guys\u2014I don\u2019t know where they lived, but they hung out on my stoop all day\u2014and I gave them my comics. I asked one of them what he thought, and he said, Yeah, it\u2019s all about how we perceive<\/i> things. I don\u2019t know if he\u2019s been to school\u2014I have no idea, I mean, these guys, I know how they make their money, and it\u2019s not going to school\u2014but he got it. And I was so excited\u2014that\u2019s the reader I want. It\u2019s a great if a college-educated person can read it, too, but if this guy can read it and realize that he\u2019s smarter than he realized, that\u2019s pretty cool.<\/p>\n

\"sousanis<\/a>A big part of the book is about visual literacy and visual language and visual perception. Everyone seems to agree that visual literacy is becoming more important in our culture, yet why is it that we don\u2019t seem to study it much or talk about it as much as you might expect, given the widespread agreement about its significance?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think we have a hard time thinking through images. I think we have a hard time thinking about how to think through images. We know how to illustrate what we say\u2014comics artists and artists in general do amazing things with ideas\u2014but when we think about visual ideas in terms of education, there\u2019s a stumbling block. I was deeply influenced by Picture This<\/i>, Molly Bang\u2019s book of cutouts about how pictures work. <\/i>She took Arnheim\u2019s theories but made them super-readable. For instance, if you make Little Red Riding Hood a red triangle, then what does the mother look like? Well, if you make the mother a big red triangle, you understand that they\u2019re related, but she\u2019s too visually dominant. We want Little Red Riding Hood to be our protagonist, and if the mother is in the same scene and looks the same only much larger, then Red Riding Hood shrinks almost to the background. So what if we make the mother a pear shape? Okay, now she\u2019s sort of soft, and she\u2019s related to the small red triangle, but she\u2019s still too dominant. When we start thinking about those kinds of spatial relationships and how our fundamental ideas are grounded in that way of thinking, when we have that kind of training, it might change how we write and how we are able to communicate.<\/p>\n

What can comics achieve, what effects can they have on a reader, that prose text alone can\u2019t?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lynda Barry speaks to it a lot more, and so does Susan Langer, but it has to do with the emotional content of images. We tend to think images are emotional things, irrational, because the scaffolding of language doesn\u2019t fit them very well. Not because they\u2019re actually irrational, but because we don\u2019t have the ways to hold them in. Our language can\u2019t fully contain them.<\/p>\n

I think the comics I make are a lot smarter than I am, because I can make connections through them that I wouldn\u2019t make in my writing. Chris Ware demonstrates this idea beautifully\u2014the nonlinear, tangential ways our thinking moves. That sideways thinking doesn\u2019t fit very neatly into text, and it doesn\u2019t fit very neatly into film. But comics let us go sideways even while we\u2019re plowing forward. That\u2019s less about images and more about space. My own interests tend to be more about the spatial ideas of comics rather than the emotional quality of a line, which is a whole other area that should be talked about.<\/p>\n

Can you think of an example of a connection you made by creating comics that you wouldn\u2019t have made otherwise?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I could probably give you an example on each page.<\/p>\n


Here\u2019s one at random.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"sousanisThe kaleidoscopic one. My Deleuze and Guattari page. It\u2019s the concept of rhizome, which is what their unreadable book is about, but I think right there, you see it<\/i>. There are all these little people looking through periscopes, and you can see through the panels that they\u2019re all connected but that they all have different viewpoints. The whole idea is right there on the page. I could say, \u201cWell, rhizomes are this thing where everything\u2019s connected, and each one is a point of view,\u201d but it\u2019s more of a visceral concept, rather than an intellectual one, or a visceral concept that can then become an intellectual one.<\/p>\n

I think about my daughter learning to use her fingers. She looks at her hand and rotates it, and she\u2019s clearly thinking, This is what my hand does. There\u2019s a lot we can do in comics and through visuals that gets at how our bodies work and how we think through those ideas better than removing it a step and having to describe it.<\/p>\n

Another major topic in the book is how language trains us to think and how the culture we\u2019re born into shapes the way we think and act, almost like strings on a puppet. You write that there\u2019s a way not exactly to achieve true freedom but to recognize the structures that bind us, and possibly to gain control of them through that recognition.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A big thing that they teach in visual-culture classes is how visual advertising works. When you can start to see the cues of how advertising works, it\u2019s still there\u2014there are still strings trying to pull you\u2014but you know that\u2019s what\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n

College is another good example. Why is college the thing you do? Well, it\u2019s the thing you do because that\u2019s what people have been doing\u2014that\u2019s the way the funnel works. That doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s bad or good, but we should understand that it\u2019s something someone made up once upon a time and other people accepted and walked down that path. We should at least be aware enough to know that it\u2019s not how it is<\/i>, it\u2019s something we invented<\/i>. Accepting that means you have some chance to change its course. It\u2019s hard. I don\u2019t know how we change these things for real, but I believe strongly in education, and I think education has the potential to foster the same kind of thinking.<\/p>\n

\"sousanis<\/a>My daughter was born three weeks before I finished the book. She didn\u2019t then exist, but she\u2019s in my notes three years before she was born and she\u2019s in my book. I always knew I would end the book with a child\u2019s eyes looking upward and outward, with the idea of seeing as if for the first time. When that first spark of her showed up on an ultrasound, I became intensely aware of how her anticipated arrival would coincide in a cosmically weird way with my finishing this book. When I finally went to draw that scene, she was actually there and, in fact, served as the model.<\/p>\n

I watched my daughter those first weeks and months as she would stretch her hands, exploring how they worked and her ability to consciously control them. That experience of seeing new is something I wanted Unflattening<\/i> to remind us of. Obviously, this could be a problem\u2014if you had to figure out how your hands work each day, you couldn\u2019t do anything. But if you can find ways to keep your eyes open in that same way, while retaining the experience of knowing how to use your hands and not having to learn that all over again\u2014that\u2019s what I wanted to get at. To see new, but acknowledge that we have experience and it\u2019s necessary to have experience in order to do something. You want your children to be very \u201cunflat,\u201d to recognize the circumstances they are born into and that they acquire but also able to see with open eyes so as to make their own way.<\/p>\n

Timothy Hodler is coeditor of <\/em>The\u00a0Comics Journal<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Images courtesy Harvard University Press.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everything about Unflattening is odd, from its ungainly title and unfashionable subject matter (Rudolf Arnheim art theory meets Herbert Marcuse radicalism meets Scott McCloud comics boosterism) to its provenance: Nick Sousanis initially wrote and drew this full-length comics essay as his graduate-school dissertation. (He was earning his doctorate in education at Teachers College Columbia University, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":855,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[907],"tags":[8887,35,1719,18746,2546,131,18745,18751,18754,17967,17968,18753,18752,1459,18749,18750,18755,7403,18748,18744,18747,946,18756],"class_list":["post-87686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-work","tag-alan-moore","tag-art","tag-bach","tag-bruno-latour","tag-chris-ware","tag-comics","tag-david-mazzucchelli","tag-doug-hofstadter","tag-escher","tag-felix-guattari","tag-gilles-deleuze","tag-godel","tag-james-burke","tag-lynda-barry","tag-maxine-greene","tag-melinda-gebbie","tag-molly-bang","tag-philosophy","tag-rudolph-arnheim","tag-scott-mccloud","tag-susan-langer","tag-ulysses","tag-visual-literacy"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNick Sousanis on How Comics Help Us Make Connections<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In an interview, the author discusses his book \u201cUnflattening,\u201d a kind of dissertation in and of comics.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Thinking Through Images: An Interview with Nick Sousanis by Timothy Hodler\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"July 20, 2015 \u2013 Everything about Unflattening is odd, from its ungainly title and unfashionable subject matter (Rudolf Arnheim art theory meets Herbert Marcuse radicalism\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-07-20T15:16:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-07-20T15:18:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/sousanis-194-e1437169536987.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1399\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1112\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Timothy Hodler\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Timothy Hodler\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"13 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Timothy Hodler\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/b6a22deb9764039ad45248542e88b776\"},\"headline\":\"Thinking Through Images: An Interview with Nick Sousanis\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-07-20T15:16:12+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-07-20T15:18:52+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/\"},\"wordCount\":2690,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/sousanis-194-e1437169536987-1024x814.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Alan Moore\",\"art\",\"Bach\",\"bruno latour\",\"Chris Ware\",\"comics\",\"david mazzucchelli\",\"Doug hofstadter\",\"escher\",\"F\u00e9lix Guattari\",\"Gilles Deleuze\",\"Godel\",\"james burke\",\"Lynda Barry\",\"maxine greene\",\"Melinda gebbie\",\"molly bang\",\"philosophy\",\"Rudolph arnheim\",\"scott mccloud\",\"susan langer\",\"Ulysses\",\"visual literacy\"],\"articleSection\":[\"At Work\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/\",\"name\":\"Nick Sousanis on How Comics Help Us Make Connections\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/sousanis-194-e1437169536987-1024x814.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-07-20T15:16:12+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-07-20T15:18:52+00:00\",\"description\":\"In an interview, the author discusses his book \u201cUnflattening,\u201d a kind of dissertation in and of comics.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/sousanis-194-e1437169536987.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/sousanis-194-e1437169536987.jpg\",\"width\":1399,\"height\":1112,\"caption\":\"First idea map for Unflattening, April 14, 2011.\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Thinking Through Images: An Interview with Nick Sousanis\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/b6a22deb9764039ad45248542e88b776\",\"name\":\"Timothy Hodler\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/26820d91987c406a25580f567423e7fd4781f54653a9fac76f68ae3dfd27fef1?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/26820d91987c406a25580f567423e7fd4781f54653a9fac76f68ae3dfd27fef1?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Timothy Hodler\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/thodler\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Nick Sousanis on How Comics Help Us Make Connections","description":"In an interview, the author discusses his book \u201cUnflattening,\u201d a kind of dissertation in and of comics.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Thinking Through Images: An Interview with Nick Sousanis by Timothy Hodler","og_description":"July 20, 2015 \u2013 Everything about Unflattening is odd, from its ungainly title and unfashionable subject matter (Rudolf Arnheim art theory meets Herbert Marcuse radicalism","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2015-07-20T15:16:12+00:00","article_modified_time":"2015-07-20T15:18:52+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1399,"height":1112,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/sousanis-194-e1437169536987.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Timothy Hodler","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Timothy Hodler","Est. reading time":"13 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/"},"author":{"name":"Timothy Hodler","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/b6a22deb9764039ad45248542e88b776"},"headline":"Thinking Through Images: An Interview with Nick Sousanis","datePublished":"2015-07-20T15:16:12+00:00","dateModified":"2015-07-20T15:18:52+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/"},"wordCount":2690,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/sousanis-194-e1437169536987-1024x814.jpg","keywords":["Alan Moore","art","Bach","bruno latour","Chris Ware","comics","david mazzucchelli","Doug hofstadter","escher","F\u00e9lix Guattari","Gilles Deleuze","Godel","james burke","Lynda Barry","maxine greene","Melinda gebbie","molly bang","philosophy","Rudolph arnheim","scott mccloud","susan langer","Ulysses","visual literacy"],"articleSection":["At Work"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/","name":"Nick Sousanis on How Comics Help Us Make Connections","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/sousanis-194-e1437169536987-1024x814.jpg","datePublished":"2015-07-20T15:16:12+00:00","dateModified":"2015-07-20T15:18:52+00:00","description":"In an interview, the author discusses his book \u201cUnflattening,\u201d a kind of dissertation in and of comics.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/sousanis-194-e1437169536987.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/sousanis-194-e1437169536987.jpg","width":1399,"height":1112,"caption":"First idea map for Unflattening, April 14, 2011."},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/20\/thinking-through-images-an-interview-with-nick-sousanis\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Thinking Through Images: An Interview with Nick Sousanis"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/b6a22deb9764039ad45248542e88b776","name":"Timothy Hodler","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/26820d91987c406a25580f567423e7fd4781f54653a9fac76f68ae3dfd27fef1?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/26820d91987c406a25580f567423e7fd4781f54653a9fac76f68ae3dfd27fef1?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Timothy Hodler"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/thodler\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/855"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87686"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87959,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87686\/revisions\/87959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}