By Noah Van Sciver (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-851-9
Here’s a grand little digest-sized poke at in the snoot of authorial pomposity and the Eternal Dreams of Idiots deliciously delivered by seemingly tireless and provably incisive cartoonist Noah Van Sciver, one of the most intriguing and unpredictable creators around.
Sciver has walked the walk since 2006; self-publishing stories in his stripzine Blammo (9½ issues so far) before finding a publisher (Kilgore Books & Comics) to handle the drudgework of production, generated a weekly newspaper strip (4 Questions in Denver’s Westword), won an Ignatz Award and gradually work in publications such as Mome, The Comics Journal, Best American Comics and Mad Magazine.
In 2012 his excellent first graphic novel The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln made plenty of critical waves, as did his surprising follow-up Saint Cole, a gruelling exploration of life on the minimum wage.
Now he’s turned his sharp eye and fascination with the Human Condition to a punishing comedy of delusional manners featuring “That Guy†whom we’ve all met: the desperate, delusory “Artiste†who’s a legend in his own mind and grows increasingly impatient with how long it’s taking the world to discover him…
Before he legally changed his name, Fante Bukowski had read all those life-changing books by John Fante & Charles Bukowski and knew he was going to write the next Great American Novel. That would show everybody they were wrong about him – especially his dad…
Now, living on secret handouts from Mom, he infests a dingy hotel room, clad either in dirty underwear or the traditional writer’s uniform of unruly beard, elbow-patched tweed jacket, baggy trousers and suppressed desperation; drinking too much and creating nothing…
He haunts bars and stalks agents, seeking “the Big Idea†that will start him writing his magnificent gift to the world, completely oblivious to the characters around him who could so easily populate and enrich the book he dreams of, but which is just not in him…
Constructed through a series of painfully illustrative vignettes such as ‘Struggling Writer’, ‘Fante Bukowski Stays Up’, ‘Fante Walks Home’, ‘Fante Needs Money’ and ‘Fante Has No Car’, with each illustrative moment haunted and mocked by aspirational quotes from all his literary forebears who actually could put word to paper, he shambles through life bemoaning the unfairness of it all.
He almost thinks he’s at last on the way when he scores with a conflicted young author struggling with writer’s block, but all her valuable contacts have seen his sort before…
He even tries to emulate Kerouac but doesn’t get far before realising how unpleasant The Great Outdoors is and just how scary are people who pick up hitch-hikers, but Fante does at least, at last, learn one unforgettable lesson…
Trenchant, brittle and mercilessly funny, this full-colour paperback novella also includes a selection of cruelly authorial pin-ups by guest-artists Zak Sally, John Porcellino, Jesse Jacobs, Joseph Remnant, Leslie Stein and Eric Reynolds.
Fante Bukowski © 2015, Noah Van Sciver. This edition © 2015 Fantagraphics Books, Inc.