I used to read a lot of comics years ago but I don’t think I’d ever read any of Julie Doucet’s, not even holed up in a comic shop, pretending it was a library. Her drawing style is pretty dense; it took awhile for me to adjust to it, and then I was surprised I never stumbled on her largely autobiographical work before now. This one opens with some back story in her early sexual and romantic experiences before delving into her time spent in New York, where she lived for about a year in the early 1990’s with a jealous artist boyfriend in Washington Heights. Eventually she left New York to go to Seattle and then Berlin before finally returning to Montreal.

She remains a fixture in the Montreal arts community but has recently (june 22, 2006) declared to the Montreal Mirror that she’ll never do comics again. (» wikipedia)

Her most recently works (Journal published in 2004 and J comme Je in 2006) were only published in French. Most of My New York Diary was originally published in Dirty Plotte.

Slices of Life (and Pie) from America’s Back Roads

A roadtrip centered around a pie quest, Le Draoulec and her travel partners stay off the interstates and hit mostly small towns, asking the locals, “Where do you go for pie around here?” Worth reading if anything for all the recipes. Maybe it’s because I know so many people who enjoy baking and cooking, but I found the direness of the homemade pie situation a bit overstated. I don’t think we are (yet) witnessing the death of pie, though it’s true our culture in general doesn’t leave time for learning the art of pie dough.

I heard mixed things about this book, so I approached it with what turned out to be an appropriate amount of expectation. It may also help that the themes of loss and the profound sense of absence in the aftermath of loss are things that have been on my mind lately.

While I haven’t read much literature centered around September 11th, most of what I can remember reading at the moment falls into the category of vague association: the sparest amount of words used to convey the point, almost with a little nudge and a headnod, that yes, that’s what I’m talking about. This book is perhaps the most direct work of fiction to take on the setting of that emotionally and politically charged event that I’ve encountered thus far—at the very least, I’m sure to remember it clearly when thinking about 9/11 literature. There are clearer references to specific events of the day and the aftermath.

I felt that Foer did a great job of developing his story around the potential minefields, though I wonder how much of its success depends on the reader having their own clear memories of the day (if only via television media) to respond to those references with a level of emotional attachment. Though, I also wonder about the longevity of novels when perhaps the ongoing relevance and accessibility of a story isn’t really much of a concern to most people. Mostly I just enjoy that—like Everything is Illuminated—Foer is adept at drawing parallels, developing multiple storylines that influence each other nicely. His use of photographs is a little odd, but perhaps I’m just not used to that kind of illustration in a novel. It just didn’t seem entirely necessary and largely inconsistent to boot.

For someone only a year older than me, I am impressed with the scope of his stories thus far. He certainly has a depth in his vision impressive for his age.