These books command, not capture, your attention
The new Chris Ware book has sat beside my desk for weeks. It's been tough to miss. It's about a foot-and-a-half tall with a canary-yellow spine, and the cover image is signature Ware: Comic book hieroglyphics of domestic ennui, linked by thin schematic lines, flow charts of word balloons and worried portraits of the Oak Park, Ill., genius himself. It's like the blueprints for a bomb that leaves you melancholy. Even if I wanted to avoid it, I couldn't: My desk is only slightly larger than the book, yet "Monograph" ($60, Rizzoli), a survey of an artist who turns only 50 this month, is perfectly outsized, correctly singular.
No wonder I have found the book routinely moved around my desk by curious co-workers. One day an anonymous
