My New York Diary - Hardcover

Doucet, Julie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1896597238 ISBN 13: 9781896597232

Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly Pubns

Synopsis

Julie Doucet is widely regarded as one of the most prominent cartoonists to emerge in the past decade. Now, Drawn & Quarterly is publishing Doucet's third book, her longest and most ambitious story collected for the first time in one beautifully produced softcover edition. The New York Diary documents in compelling and graphic detail the events in Doucet's life during a six-month period in 1991. At that time, she packed her bags and moved to New York and waiting for her in anticipation was her new boyfriend, an aspiring cartoonist himself who took Julie into his upper west side apartment. The excitement of this new beginning was short-lived; gradually, her boyfriend's over-bearing jealousy became more evident, and the confines of her surroundings slowly became more suffocating. Rounding up this new book are two more stories that complete the obsessive-boyfriend triptych: the sad and revealing "My First Time" and the 25-page "Julie in Junior College".

About this title

About the Author:

Julie Doucet is an artist who lives in Montreal. She recently was featured in the Quebec Triennial at the Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montreal.

From Kirkus Reviews:

paper 1-896597-24-6 Among the younger generation of alternative comix artists, Doucet (best known for her comic book, Dirty Plotte) stands out for her engaging combination of a cartoonish style and frank realism; her postfeminist autobiographical tales are tough and self- effacing, bitchy and sweet, and all peopled with her rubbery characters with goofy oversized heads. This beautifully produced volume collects two short stories, both set in Doucets native Montreal, and the long title piece, a tale of misbegotten bohemianism in latter-day Manhattan. The First Time records Doucets unromantic deflowering, soon after graduating from convent school, by an aging hippie. The great backgrounds, full of visual jokes, also contribute to Julie in Junior College, a hapless tale of her subsequent days in art school. The bulk of this b&w collection is made up of Doucets episodic New York diary, a memoir of her year in the city that begins in romantic bliss, builds to a messy breakup, and ends with her escape to Seattle. Endpaper photographs prove Doucets claim that her Washington Heights neighborhood is exceedingly grimy, not just in her deliberately messy drawings. If anything, her rich comedic style softens the scuzzinessthe endless cockroaches and garbage-strewn sidewalks seem funny in her heavily littered frames. With her new beau, Julie guzzles beer by the case, begins to worry about work, and longs to move closer to the action on the Lower East Side. As her career takes off (theres a RAW party scene with a cameo by Art Spiegelman), her lovers career goes nowhere, and he grows increasingly angry and needy, a pattern that culminates in a particularly awful scene on the subway. All of Doucets panels charm with their clutter and with her self-portrait as a sartorially challenged, scraggly haired waif (literally wide-eyed) whos not as weak as she first seems. The hand-lettering, with some misspellings (French is the artists first language), adds to the overall effect: spunky and smart, Doucet is the true voice of grrrrl power. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly Pubns
• ISBN 10: 1896597238
• ISBN 13: 9781896597232
• Binding: Hardcover