Is Chris Ware's Building Stories a Book? Anonymous College

Chris Ware’s box of fourteen printed works, Building Stories, follows the inhabitants of a brownstone apartment building in Chicago. Mainly following the building’s third floor resident, an unnamed woman with a prosthetic leg, Building Stories also follows the apartment building’s second floor residents, a middle-aged couple whose relationship lacks a sense of romance, and the building’s first floor resident, the apartment building’s elderly landlady. The reader, consequently, follows these characters through Ware’s unconventional collection of newspapers, bound books, pamphlets, magazines, and broadsheets. These fourteen assorted forms of printed works are all interrelated, however, they are not placed in a categorical manner. Instead, the reader is encouraged to read each item in an unsystematic or random order. Because, in Building Stories, everything is interrelated, it can be considered a story, however, because these written works aren’t bound together in a sequential order as decided by the author, Building Stories cannot be considered a book.

A story, according to American writer, Mark Twain, is a tale that “shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere” (Philip Martin). A story, therefore, follows a certain purpose...