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CBG SATELLITES
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Last Exit Before Toll
It's all rather mysterious. Who is he calling? What is he going to say?
Why doesn't he continue leaving his message? Why doesn't he simply get
his car towed to another town? Why doesn't he just leave his vehicle
behind and take a bus to his appointment? But we're left wondering. And
so it goes, throughout the book. Characters talk at each other in short,
choppy snippets, with seemingly little depth or content to their
conversations. We never really get to know Charles Pierce -
what's he all about? What makes him tick? Is there anything going on
below the surface?
As for his family back home, Charles's wife hardly seems to notice that
he's leaving, and his daughter is completely oblivious, both to him and
to her mother. As Charles prepares to go, his wife asks him, "Did you
take care of that thing with the state?" He hasn't, and he doesn't.
Or... does he? In a series of three very effective wordless panels we
see Charles from a distance, walking to his vehicle and then taking
several steps back toward his house, only to note that someone in the
house had already closed the door behind him without saying a word.
Charles leaves his house like a business traveller leaving behind an
empty hotel room.
Christopher Mitten's pencilling, while not striking the reader with an
immediate impact, is more than adequate for the task at hand. The bleak
design of his panels is well-suited to the nature of Neal Shaffer's
story; the plasticine look of the characters' faces gives the reader a
peculiar feeling of distance - watching from afar without being told
what is going on under the surface. At the same time, there is a
strength in his rendering of characters' eyes, especially Charles's,
which adds a real sense of emotion to the people we meet throughout the
story. And although there is little fluidity to his anatomy, his
depiction of characters' posture and movements is also very telling. The
pacing between panels, and the use of silence for several complete
pages, give the sense of a man alone, a man who may be incapable of
being anything else but alone. Page designs are simple - apart from the
introductory page, there are no grand vistas or full-page spreads.
There's just one panel after another in a simple six-panel-per page
grid, with the only variation being a single blank page before the final
'chapter'...
Last Exit Before Toll is a disconcerting work, a puzzling graphic
novel that rewards careful (and repeated) reading. It leaves many
questions unanswered, but it contains a depth that makes it a rich,
challenging, and ultimately enjoyable book to experience.
Grade: 4.5/5
-- Jim Witt
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Last Exit Before Toll is the tale of a man stranded. While
driving to an out-of-town job-related seminar, Charles Pierce's car
breaks down in a small, nameless town somewhere in the backwoods of
Virginia. The local garage doesn't have the parts needed to repair it,
so Charles is forced to stick around until the parts come in. There's no
reception for his cell phone, so he goes to a phone booth to call...
someone. A truck roars by, and he hangs up. And his unplanned stay in
small-town Virginia continues.
A quote from writer Ross McDonald introduces the book: "Democracy is as
much a language as it is a place. If a man has suffered under a society
of privilege, the American vernacular can serve him as a kind of
passport to freedom and equality." Charles Pierce is a man suffering
"under a society of privilege." He's never "gotten his hands dirty"; he
doesn't "know where his family is from." When he leaves a message for
someone from his motel room, he says, "I'm not even sure where I am."
And at the end of the book, I was left wondering if he was ever
sure where he was, even before ending up in this nameless small town.
Themes of alienation, time, and the meaning of home and family ties, run
through Last Exit Before Toll, and the names of the businesses in
the nameless town give us clues as to the message of the book. There's
the "Short Stop Cafe," Charles's new home away from home. He visits a
honky-tonk named "The Broken Wheel" and buys himself a coffee and a
fifteen year-old map in the "In-Time Convenience Store." Clocks appear
regularly - with hands in some panels, without in others - time shifts
in and out of focus, and the effect is disorienting. We never really get
to know Charles Pierce, but it seems to be by design. Charles Pierce
doesn't know Charles Pierce, so how could we?