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Monday, 30 January, 2012
What's this? Oh just Matt Forsythe getting interviewed at the Librairie this afternoon by the good people of Space TV. Expect to be seeing and hearing a lot about this talented Montrealer as he has a new D+Q graphic novel coming out in just a few weeks. Even better, he'll be launching it right here, so mark your calendars for Thursday February 16th at 7 pm at the Librairie D+Q, 211 Bernard O. Matt will be giving a short presentation, hosting a conversation about his work, and signing books.
Now, a little about the book in question, the lovely Jinchalo. Jinchalo is a companion of sorts to his first graphic novel with D+Q, Ojingogo, which won the Doug Wright Award and was a Quill & Quire book of the year. In Jinchalo, Voguchi, the little girl you see on the cover, gets mixed up with a mischievous shapeshifter named Jinchalo, and winds up having a series of surrealist adventures and misadventures. It's sweet but also surprisingly funny, and reminds me in some essential way of the work of Hayao Miyazake, perhaps in part because both have cross-generational appeal.
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| Voguchi is not a good cook! |
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| English lessons! |
More details and RSVP-ability on Facebook. Oh hey, and to sweeten the deal even more, for the month of February, we are going to be the luckiest bookstore in town. Matt has offered to let us display/sell original artwork from both (Librairie fave) My Name is Elizabeth and Jinchalo. Right here! On our walls! More info on that TBA. Hurray for books!
I was in San Francisco this past fall for APE, and I managed to sneak in a few extra days in the Bay Area, which I spent eating beautiful bread, drinking amazing coffee and going to museums. One such museum visit made me into a lifelong fan of Dieter Rams. Now, for those of you amongst the uninitiated, Dieter Rams is a genius of product design, and was chief of design for Braun for 35 years.
As the SFMOMA puts it, "Widely regarded as one of the most influential industrial designers of
our time, Dieter Rams produced iconic works and innovative ideas (in
particular his advocacy for "less but better" design) that have proved
seminal for our contemporary design culture." At this point, you may (very legitimately) be wondering why I'm telling you about a museum exhibit thousands of kilometres away, several months after I saw it. Well, take a gander at what waltzed into the Librairie this week:
YES, now you too can understand what made me walk around a giant museum room, delighted, as I realized the extent of the brilliance of the one, the only, Dieter Rams. Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible is a monograph of Rams's life and work (both for Braun and for the furniture company Vitsoe), and it includes extensive writing on the vital influence of his designs and his design ethos on such modern design luminaries as Apple and Muji.
But for now, let's focus on the pictures. These high quality reproductions give you a sense of the breath-taking beauty and timelessness of his work. Each chapter includes sketches, prototypes, finished products, and the marketing for those products, giving a complete picture of Rams's work and its contexts.
Now for the loveliness:
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| The RT 20,
above, was my personal favourite of all the pieces I saw at the MOMA. I
dragged my friend across the room to gawp at it in silence together. |
If you'll excuse me, I've got Ebay alerts to set up...
Sunday, 29 January, 2012
The latest instalment of the Phaidon
CREAM series, this time titled CREAMIER, has just made its way to the store! The concept
remains the same as always: ten top notch curators showcase their ten favourite emerging
artists of the last few years. In case the concept itself doesn’t win you over,
then the design and format of CREAMIER will surely do the trick. The large
broadsheet format, the high quality paper, and the custom-made box are clear
indicators of the care and precision that went into creating this marvellous volume.
Saturday, 28 January, 2012
Trois de mes éditeurs français préférés viennent de sortir du manga de type ovni/auteur, trois petites perles d’œuvres d'art tout à fait uniques, et des one-shots en plus...
Jintarô le caïd de Shinjuku ( George
Akiyama, Éditions Le Lézard Noir) est totalement drôle, provoquant et over-the-top; c'est l'histoire d'un prêteur sur gages misogyne et imprévisible dont les impulsions son dictées, d'un côté, par le désir de prouver que tout le monde peut-être acheté quand on a assez d'argent, et de l'autre, par un vide existentiel qui le démange de l'intérieur.
Dans La Petite Amie de Minami ( Shungiku Uchida, Éditions IMHO), la petite amie en question a rapetissé sans raison apparente, et elle tient
maintenant dans le creux de la main du Minami en question. Voilà le commencement de ce manga 'tranche-de-vie' qui semble au premier abord tout mignon, surtout avec des dessins aussi charmants, mais qui touche en réalité à quelque chose d'assez rugueux et qui effleure le malaise du doute, de manière à en faire une lecture remarquable - surtout avec un final aussi inattendu et au goût très amer.
Par ici, on ne se cache pas d'être en adoration totale devant le talent de Yuichi Yokoyama, maître avant-gardiste du manga puissance manga. Explorations (Éditions Matière) regroupe trois histoires ou les personnages sont muets, contrairement aux environnements qu'ils visitent, plus grands que nature et chargés d'onomatopées géantes qui y fusent de partout. Les planches sont coupées au couteau et font preuve d'un dynamisme effarant qu'on n'imagine possible que dans un futur lointain - du grand art, madame!
Last Thursday, Librairie Drawn & Quarterly was pleased
to launch FALLOW, a great little chapbook by Susannah Dainow. Braving the
winter cold, many came out to listen to the author read from her debut
collection of poetry. To top things off, Susannah hand-crafted pretty origami cranes to decorate her microphone stand, how sweet!
Friday, 27 January, 2012
Les premières sorties de 2012 sont arrivées, il y a des perles là dedans; à commencer par Quoi!,
une anthologie ayant pour thème l'histoire de L'Association et les
tensions récentes entre Jean-Christophe Menu et les autres fondateurs de
la maison d'édition. Les planches sont dessinés par des fondateurs, des
salariés, et des auteurs: David B. (dont L'Ascension du Haut Mal vient
juste de sortir en édition reliée!), Charles Berbérian, Jean-Louis
Capron, Jean-Yves Duhoo, Killoffer, Mokeit, Stanislas ( The Adventures of Hergé chez D+Q), Joann Sfar et Lewis Trondheim.
De leur côté, les éditions Misma viennent de sortir Dopututto Max #1, une anthologie de bandes dessinées qui succède à la revue Dopututto et qui se place sous le signe de l'expérimentation et de la liberté créative. Au sommaire de ce numéro : Anne Simon, Nylso, El don Guillermo, Singeon, Sandrine Martin, Amandine Meyer, Takayo Akiyama, Delphine Panique, Amandine Ciosi, Claude Cadi, Paul Paetzel, Franky Bartol et Estocafich.
Thursday, 26 January, 2012
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| Cover art by Nicole Aline Legault |
Susannah Dainow’s writing unsettles the familiar and draws grace from difficulty. Working in narrative and the abstract, her poems capture themes of family, space-time, and memory with a candidly fractured lens. Through unexpected juxtapositions, off-beat motifs, and a penchant for slant rhyme, her writing carves emotionally and artistically satisfying landscapes, in which the reader is invited to witness both the definitive and the forgotten. “Fallow,” is Dainow’s debut poetry collection; an earlier version was shortlisted in the 2011 Qaartsiluni Chapbook Contest.
This event will be held at the Librairie D+Q (211 Bernard Ouest) tonight, Thursday January 26th at 7pm.
Tuesday, 24 January, 2012
New from Fantagraphics, a decade spanning comics anthology from icon maker Bill Griffith. Griffith is surely best known as the creator of the polka-dot robe wearing daily strip character, Zippy the Pinhead, but Griffith's productivity reaches far beyond Zippy. Lost and Found is a collection of comics, handpicked by the artist, many rare and out of print, from 1969-2003 (but with the first third of that time period, the heyday of the underground, occupying the majority of the book). Though most of the comics in Lost and Found aren't about Zippy, there are some unique and important Zippy moments included, like the icon's first appearance, pictured below ("I Gave My Heart to a Pinhead and He Made a Fool Out of Me!"). For an introduction to Griffith, Zippy, and this collection, check out this article from The Atlantic.
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| Early Zippy. |
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| Mid Zippy. |
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| Late Zippy. |
Monday, 23 January, 2012
One of the readers I respect most recommended New York chef Gabrielle Hamilton's memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, as one of the most pleasurable reads of the past year. It is now available in paperback. Recommendation passed along.
Sunday, 22 January, 2012
I love when publishing houses decide to
reissue classic works of literature just to show off beautiful book designs. Surely you have seen a few of these at the store: there's the Penguin Classics Great Ideas series, the hand-sewn Penguin Classic Covers, and of course the gorgeous Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, illustrated by top notch comic artists and seen here:
And now, drum roll please, a new series to add to the list: the Melville House collection THE ART OF THE NOVELLA. Featuring over 42 novellas from literary masters, you will surely find something that will tickle your fancy. Personally speaking, I'm in luck, since they just published one of my all-time favorite novellas, Herman Melville's “Bartleby the
Scrivener.” Unlike the Johnathan Parker film adaptation that features Crispin Glover, this beautiful edition is in no way something that would prompt me to say "I prefer not to".
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copyright 2010 drawn &
quarterly
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