"Tokyo On Foot" by Florent Chavouet

I've been coming back and forth to and from Tokyo for the past 25 years, and it is without a doubt an amazing city on so many levels.  It has been said before, but Tokyo is sort of like numerous layers of an onion.  Each layer is a unique taste, and I often feel Tokyo is sort of a city with many dimensions - in sort of a Philip K. Dick way of looking at a landscape or even JG Ballard.  Also for the past 25 years I have been trying to write a long prose piece about the city, but it never came out good in my opinion.  I think my problem is that I am trying to locate a position to write from  - and Tokyo is very much like a devilishly tasty ice cream cone.  There are so many ways to eat that cone, all of it pleasant, but never the essential all-over experience.  After so many years, I am still acquiring new things about the city.

Florent Chavouet, is a French artist/illustrator who stayed in Tokyo for a bit, and this is his visual journal of sorts.  He wisely divides the book into different sections of the city, and gives a very subjective, yet I think the popular view of each area of the city.  Which means the iconic as well as something personal.    There have been a few books I have read by foreigners (either British or American) that strikes me as either just plain wrong or naive at its worst, but here Chavouet goes into each area and just draws various people and buildings, but he adds details either through his illustration or minimal text.   It's not a right or wrong approach to the city, but it is own approach and it is highly personal and quirky in a very good way.   Also his map drawings are very good.  You can use it if you wish to take this book with you.  On the other hand it is a large book, so it is not made for a tourist, but perhaps for someone who either lives in Tokyo, and is either a foreigner or a Tokyo-citizen who is curious how a Frenchman looks at his or her's culture.

My favorite little part is when he gets arrested for a stolen bike (he's innocent) and was taken to the local police station.  His observations are never mean - spirited, but also quite informative.  A wonderful book.

"So Long, Silver Screen" by Blutch

Published by Picturebox ISBN 978-0-9851595-1-1  $22.95

An odd graphic novel that is more reflective than narrative with respect to the tradition of cinema watching. "So Long, Silver Screen" has a sense of sadness that the artist/cartoonist Blutch attaches to the nature of films. Here he reflects on the image of Burt Landcaster and the great French actor Michel Piccoli (among others) through out their various roles. For the causal reader, they may need a footnote or two, but part of the fun is to go on the journey with Blutch regarding the subject of film history and the aesthetic of movie-watching.

Jacques Tardi's "New York Mon Amour"

Jacques Tardi is pure gold.  I almost want to say he's my favorite filmmaker, but he's not a filmmaker, he's a graphic novelist/artist. He has done everything from turn-of-the-century Paris noir to classic crime noir, to this book "New York Mon Amour," a snapshot of 1980's New York...that is noir.  One feature length story and three short one's - and what he captures is the foreigner's on their last legs looking at NYC as an exit to even maybe even a worst world out there. 

The first (and the most longish) narrative "Cockroach Killer" (written by Benjamin Legrand) is about a refugee from World War Two, who lives and works in NYC as a bug exterminator.  Which means he travels through out the city going for the dirt and the inner-lives of its citizens.  A sort of 'another take' on the William Burroughs exterminator character, but this character is not as tough, he's just surviving on the filth that was (or is) NYC.   On one of his jobs he visits the 13th floor of a Manhattan building, because normally there isn't a 13th floor - nevertheless he comes across a school of mysterious  assassins. For a brief moment his life is thrown into a world of a haunted and chased man.  The narrative being used to examine the inner-life of New York as it is being slowly destroyed.

What's left is two short stories by Dominique Grange, who is married to Tardi, that examines the life of a troubled assassin who couldn't complete his mission and the other on a woman from Vietnam who is tracking down someone from her past in Manhattan.  And again, both stories are snapshots taken from a foreigner's point-of-view of going through hell, and that state of mind is the landscape of New York.  

Tardi's own story "Manhattan" is nothing but that.  Probably the most ultimate alternative view of a tourist coming to NYC to ....  well you should just read it.  Nevertheless, Tardi has a master's touch in capturing the coldness in life and I really feel he's a master in his field.

Excerpt from "New York Mon Amour"

Jacques Tardi

Jean Boullet and Boris Vian

J'irai cracher sur vos Tombes (I Spit on Your Graves)

The above edition is very rare.  Maybe 1,000 copies were produced sometime around 1947 or 1948.  It's Boris Vian's "I Spit on Your Graves" with illustrations by Jean Boullet, a friend of Vian's, and whose work is a combination of Jean Cocteau meets Tom of Finland.  

 "Jean Marais" by Jean Boullet

Via TamTam Books I want to re-publish this edition with the illustrations as well as using a Boris Vian's introduction to his controversial novel.  I am asking out to anyone who either has a copy of this limited edition wonder of a book or have contact to the Jean Boullet estate.

"Barnum's Digest" art by Jean Boullet with comments by Boris Vian

Also I am looking for a copy of the above book as well.  Boullet did a book of drawings with commentary by Vian.   Also if anyone has any inside information about the relationship between Vian and Boullet.  Everyone knows that I am a mega-Vian fan, but I am also drawn towards Boullet's work.  I saw some of his illustrations/artwork at the Boris Vian exhibition that took place in Paris.

Jean Boullet

Jean Boullet

Jean Boullet

L'écume des jours (Foam of the Daze) by Benoît Preteseille (After Boris Vian)

L'écume des jours (Foam of the Daze)  by Boris Vian is such a multi-media type of structure - it works as a novel, an anime, a manga, a musical, a film, and also as a French comic or graphic novel by Benoît Preteseille.   Very minimal yet complexed, the drawings expressed the haunted characteristics of its main characters.  As things gets darker the drawings get more expressive.   Also Sartre as sort of a rock n' roll figure in the comic hits the right spot for me.  Essential of course.