Books!

Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!

Art Spiegelman

Jokes

Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!  is a reissue of a 1978 collection of
assorted Art Spiegelman strips from the 70s when Art was still trying to figure out how to make a
living drawing comics.  There is plenty of adolescent self-examination and some truly dark and uncomfortable stuff about his mothers suicide here.  Amidst this he managed to craft his vision for Maus from his father's stories of Auschwitz: his parents portrayed as mice, the Nazis by cats, Poles as pigs, Americans as dogs…

(Please click to embiggen comics.)
 

Insult

Narrative

When Breakdowns was reissued recently I decided that I should read both parts of Maus again. Maus: A Survivor's Tale was published in two parts: My Father Bleeds History (1986) and And Here My Troubles Began (1991).   Maus won an Eisner Award and a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992.

Maus, p123

You may also want to take a look at Slate's nice slideshow of Speigelman's work.

Vox Hunt: What I’m Reading

Daddy's Girl H/C

Debbie Drechsler

Show us the book you're reading right now.
Submitted by Strive2Be.

Well, since it's Strive2Be that wants to know…

This is a dark little comic that broke my heart to read.  Daddy's Girl is the semi-autobiographical story of Debbie Dreschler's painful formative years, complete with sexually abusive father and worthless mother.  She is conflicted and insecure and driven by her pain to express herself in her art.

Oh, wait… That's the plot of nearly every graphic novel!    Daddy's Girl reminds me a lot of the work of Lynda Barry but is much more painful than something like The Good Times Are Killing Me or Cruddy.

Oh, well.  Here are some images to enjoy:

Daddy_27

Daddy_36

Daddy_61

Daddy_86

Weekend Book Roundup

I am a couple of weeks behind on my weekend book roundup, so this will be a chunky one.

First up, Will Eisner. Here are three of his graphic novels based on his old neighborhood, Dropsie Avenue in the Bronx.  Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories (1978) is widely accepted as the first "graphic novel."  Contract, along with Life on Dropsie Avenue and Life Force
all releate stories from Eisner's days growing up in the Bronx.  Over
time the area changes from rural to suburban to urban then transmutes through
the influx of various groups of people: WASPs, Irish, Jews, Italians,
African-Americans, Puerto Ricans, hippies and so on. I have Fagin the Jew and Will Eisner's New York: Life In The Big City on my list to read next.

Next up are a few books (graphic novels) by Marjane Satrapi. 
Satrapi grew up in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war and then went to
Vienna for school and to escape the conditions in Iran under the
Ayatollah Khomeini's regime.  Persepolis and Persepolis 2 tell her story during these years.  Embroideries is about the lives of women in Iranian culture and it draws on the uncomfortable justaposition of sewing and sex.  Chicken With Plums
is the tale of the last days of  Marjane's uncle Nasser Ali Khan who,
in 1958, out of despair decided to lay down and die.  If you are interested in her,
there is great interview with her over @ bookslut.

The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel in Two Semesters

Chip Kidd

Then there was The Cheese Monkeys, a novel by Chip Kidd.  Kidd is widely known as they guy who changed the way people make book jackets.  In the spirit of "write what you know" Cheese Monkeys
is set in a 1958 university (Penn State) art department graphic design class.  It is
a period piece, a coming of age story, and a design manifesto.  The
cover of CMs is truly worthy of
Kidd (cover design by TK).  The cover seen here is a concealed by a slipcover that had to be
slid on by hand and the copyright information is printed across the
endpapers.  Kidd's publisher, Scribner, was choking on these special
features UNTIL Kidd renegotiated his royalty.  Wow.  A guy who would
reduce his cut to assure that the packaging is just so. 

True Stories of Law & Order: The Real Crimes Behind the Best Episodes of the Hit TV Show

Kevin Dwyer

In an interview I read Kidd comments that he watches lots of Law & Order.  He suggests that the show should be renamed "How to Construct a Plot."  Which reminds me that I never wrote up True Stories of Law & Order.  I was familiar with most of the stories in the book:  murdering transvestite millionaire Robert Durst, the repressed memory case of George Franklin,  and Norman Mailer's protege, Jack Abbott. 
But I have one particular favorite.  Every time I hear this story it is
so bizarre that it's like hearing it all over again:  two lawyers in
San Francisco who were keeping a Presa Canario for an Aryan Nation dude in prison when the dog attacked and killed their neighbor (Diane Whipple). 

Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge

Last for now, Fast Forward I,
a sci-fi anthology edited by Lou Anders.  There are a couple of Robyn
Hitchcock poems, which is sad because they don't hold a candle to his
short stories.  For me the highlights were Paul Di Filippo's
"Wikiworld" and Ken MacLeod's "Jesus Christ Reanimator."  The rest was
the regular sci-fi short story fare.

OK.  That covers it for now.  Except for the Sush book!  But I'm reading another sushi book and a book on the future of food, so I'll save those for one roundup.

Here are the weekend books.

After Dark

After Dark by Haruki Murakami  (NY:  Knopf, 2007) tells the story of what happens to sisters Mari and Eri Asai one night between midnight and 7am.  This is the first of Markami's
titles I have read, so I don't have anything to compare it with.  I
plan to start Norwegian Wood this evening.  So far I appreciate his un-florid prose and the open ending.  I don't have  much else to say, but I'd like to share the following quotations:  

In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else.  It’s important to combine the two in just the right amount.  (pp.150-60)

"Korogi
says, 'I don’t really know what’s going on, of course, but it seems to
me your sister must have some big problem she’s trying to deal with,
something she can’t solve on her own.  So all she wants to do is go to bed and sleep, to get away from the flesh-and-blood world for a while.  I think I know how she feels.  Or should I say, I know exactly how she feels.'" (p. 155)

Blankets3

Blankets

I was also not familiar with Craig Thompson before this weekend.  Blankets (Marietta, Georgia:  Top
Shelf Productions, 2004) is an autobiographical graphic novel rendered
in black and white.  Craig had it rough, perhaps rougher than most: 
ultra-religious parents, unpopular in school, unable to stand up for
his little brother.  As a young adult he endures pressure from pastor
and church folks to enter the ministry.  Though he and his younger
brother Phil had once shared the joy of drawing together, they grow
somewhat estranged over the years.  His first girlfriend, Raina, is his
artistic muse. Blankets are strewn throughout the book: blankets on
the bed he shared with his brother,
the quilt that Raina made for him, the thick blanket of snow, and the
fragile sheet of ice.  Here are a quote and some images to help you
catch the flavor:

Blankets1

Blankets2

"As a kid, I thought that life was the most horrible world anyone could ever live in and that there HAD to be something better.  Every night I would scheme of running away.  I’d go though the motions:  sneaking
some snacks from the kitchen cupboard. stuffing my backpack with
clothes, and feigning a casual interest in geography, as I consulted my
parent’s atlas.  But even then I knew I was
powerless to enact such a maneuver, that the real world could only
deliver threats, and that I should be grateful for the security I did
have.  Anyway, I’d discovered a much easier means of escape.  I was trying to dream."

I thought it serendipitous
that both these books treat sleep as a respite from the unbearable
misery of waking life.  Needless to say, I took a couple of naps this
weekend. =]

Blankets4

Vox Hunt: Comical

Book: Show us a great comic book.

Epileptic

David B.

I hope you aren't expecting me to split hairs between graphic novels and comic books.

Autobiography of Bigfoot

Koko

In Me Own Words: The Autobiography of Bigfoot

Graham Roumieu

I have to reccommend this short graphic novel to anyone who has eyeballs.  Rush right out to your library or bookstore.  No kidding.

Poignant AND hilarious:

"Puberty hard for Bigfoot. 
Start get curly hair in place where no curly before.  Start mark territory and kill rival
males.  Hard make friend."