Edmund and Rosemary Go to Hell: A Story We All Really Need Now More Than Ever - Hardcover

Kaplan, Bruce Eric

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1416545492 ISBN 13: 9781416545491

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2007

Synopsis

A modern fable follows Edmund and Rosemary as they confront the increasing unpleasantness of their everyday lives.

About this title

About the Author

Bruce Eric Kaplan, known for his distinctive, off-beat single-panel cartoons, has been a New Yorker cartoonist for over ten years. He is also a television writer, and was an executive producer for the acclaimed HBO series Six Feet Under, as well as a writer on Seinfeld (funnily enough, one of his most well-known episodes is one where Elaine becomes increasingly frustrated over what she takes to be an utterly nonsensical New Yorker cartoon).

 

He has authored and illustrated six adult titles for Simon & Schuster: the cult classic The Cat That Changed My Life; the collections, I Love You, I Hate You, I'm Hungry, No One You Know and This is a Bad Time; and Every Person on the Planet and Edmund and Rosemary Go to Hell, both featuring the wonderfully neurotic Brooklyn couple, Edmund & Rosemary. Bruce is also the author and illustrator of two picture books: Monsters Eat Whiny Children and Cousin Irv from Mars. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

From Booklist

Rendered in the Thurberesque outline manner of Kaplan's New Yorker cartoons, Edmund and Rosemary are a stolid, childless Brooklyn couple. One Sunday, after a walk around the neighborhood marred by loud cell-phoners and a multiplex full of unappealing movies, Rosemary goes on a tear anent the disappointments and worse of contemporary existence; Edmund can't help but concur, and they conclude that they are in hell. Subsequent outings to the computer store, to Edmund's Uncle Donald's in New Jersey, and to Washington, D.C., only confirm the deduction. But an anonymous, high-ranking official gives them a winning lottery ticket. With the $342 million jackpot, they counter their malaise with various self-improvement schemes--exercise, therapy, religion, travel. Eventually, they go home and forget about being in hell. Of course, killjoys (do-gooders, global thinkers, Sally Field) may carp; they still have their unspent lottery swag. But they're content, and meanwhile Kaplan has aired all the standard affluent urbanites' complaints, picture-book rather than graphic-novel style, with consummately urbane drollery. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1416545492
• ISBN 13: 9781416545491
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 114