The Left Bank Gang
May 3rd, 2007
You never know what you’re going to find at Jim Hanley’s Universe, the comic book store on 33th street with one of the best selections of European graphic novels in the city. Yesterday, I picked up a book by a Belgian artist who simply goes by Jason. The Left Bank Gang reimagines Paris in the 20s as a haven for expat comic book writers in the shape of animals. Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Getrude Stein, James Joyce, Ezra Pound et al. get drunk, make plans for Pamplona, struggle with poverty and obnoxious tourists and discuss the finer points of narrative captions and where do all the erasers go? It’s very funny and endearing, and then the story spins into a fragmented noir. I’ll be looking for more of Jason’s deceptively simple work the next time I’m midtown. You can browse a few pages here.
Jason. The Left Bank Gang. Fantagraphics, 2006. ****
Chronicles
January 17th, 2005
The first part of Bob Dylan’s autobiography is pure greatness. Fearless, witty, grandiose, coy, grumpy, hilarous, Bob keeps assembling his own legend but hell, it still feels like he’s mumbling right into your ear. Fantastic anecdotes, great aphorisms, odd insights, quirky character sketches, nutso metaphors, and some shit for which they’d beat you out of writing class with a stick. He’s a mythological character, and this book works hard to sell the idea that he is one of the Great American Heroes, connecting him with everybody he namedrops–Robert Johnson, Woody Guthrie, Rimbaud, Kerouac, Whitman, F Scott Fitzgerald, and scores of others.
