The Amazing, Enlightening And Absolutely True Adventures of Katherine Whaley - Hardcover

Deitch, Kim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1606996312 ISBN 13: 9781606996317

Publisher: Fantagraphics Books, 2013

Synopsis

The Amazing, Enlightening and Absolutely True Adventures of Katherine Whaley is a story about a girl born at the beginning of the 20th century. She grows up in a small river town in upstate New York. One day the mysterious Charles Varnay, an eccentric who dresses in the style of an 18th century dandy, comes to town, his sole companion a remarkably intelligent dog named Rousseau. Varnay wants to star Katherine in a movie serial he plans to make, called The Goddess of Enlightenment. Katherine is rather put off when she discovers that he expects her to appear nude in this film. But even more strange is the film’s subject matter: It has to do with 12 metal cylinders that Varnay claims are actual recordings of the voice of Jesus Christ which, he says, contain an urgent message that the modern world needs to hear! Varnay also claims that his dog, Rousseau, is the product of experiments he has been making in advanced selective breeding. He’s eager to continue these experiments with human subjects; Katherine realizes that he’s expecting her to be a part of this, and it worries her...

About this title

About the Author

Kim Deitch lives in New York, NY, with his wife, the artist Pamela Butler. His books include The Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Shadowland, Alias the Cat, and The Search for Smilin' Ed!

Reviews

Starred Review. Underground legend Deitch has crafted his first full-length graphic novel, using material related to characters who figured into his earlier work The Sunshine Girl, resulting in one of the weirdest, funniest, and best books of the year. In this alternative history of American popular culture, a young woman named Ellie conveys to Deitch&'s fictive doppelganger the story of her Aunt Kate, who lived through the entire 20th century and saw many of its innovations and eccentricities up close. As a young woman, she enjoys a brief spell as an accidental silent film star, until she meets the shadowy Charles Andreas Varnay and his dog, Rousseau. Varnay quickly enlists Kate to be his loyal aide in his ambitious plot to reveal to the world a secret that will bring about true human enlightenment. Meanwhile, Kate&'s life becomes a parade of 20th century American philosophical fads, particularly those rooted in the entertainment business, pseudoscience, commercialized spiritualism, and general quackery. The story is earnestly told from Kate&'s wide-eyed perspective and achieves a tone that emphasizes the multifaceted nature of human experience. The text-heavy book is formatted more like an illustrated novel than a comic, but it never plods, aided by a fast, incident-filled pace and Deitch&'s humorous, detailed, black-and-white illustrations. (Aug.)

*Starred Review* In 1913, in an upstate New York boomtown gone bust, Katherine Whaley teaches school and plays piano in the sole thriving business, a movie theater. She enjoys the adventurous movie serials starring Pearl White, Ruth Roland, Grace Cunard—and Molly O’Dare (see Deitch’s Shadowland, 2006), for whom Katherine stands in when the drunken star comes to town, drawing the attention of the man who soon changes her life, Charles Varnay. Rich, eccentric Varnay recruits Katherine to star in a serial he will make based on her resemblance (in the nude, no less) to the ancient statue of an original follower of Jesus that he found along with first-century recordings of the Messiah’s voice that make his teachings much clearer than the Gospels do. The yarn Deitch spins around that outrageous premise includes surprisingly less of the supernatural and many more words than usual, which wrap around the panels and are carefully chosen to project the heroine’s personality—that of a smart but unpretentious woman who once had an utterly fantastic adventure. Even more riveting than Deitch’s other spellbinders. --Ray Olson

Edition details

• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1606996312
• ISBN 13: 9781606996317
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 176