The Cardboard Valise HCPublisher: Pantheon Books
Release Date: March 2011
Price: $25.95
Creator: Written and illustrated by Ben Katchor
Format: 128 pgs.; Black & White; Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-3754-2114-3
Age Rating: Teen+
ICv2 Rating: 3 Stars out of 5
If the literary works of Marcel Proust and James Joyce had produced a mutant offspring comic strip that went mad after viewing a Monty Python marathon, it might resemble this book.
It is very much not for everyone, with artificial languages designed to interfere with communications, the destruction of an entire country in a bizarre dry cleaning accident, two-dimensional food, and other peculiarities. Each page is a separate story, but most are woven into the overall tale. The difficulty is in caring what happens by the end of the book, as none of the characters is someone the reader would wish to know. The artwork is logical for the style of the New Yorker cartoonist he is, but with ink washes added. The result is dense in details, but not always attractive to the eye.
The author was given a MacArthur “genius award” several years ago, and gets included in those Best American Comics anthologies year after year, so his name will be familiar to at least some readers.
Written for adults. Teens and younger will find little of interest.
--Nick Smith: Librarian Technician, Community Services, for the Pasadena Public Library in California.
