- Paperback: 176 pages
- Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly; 1 edition (July 1 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 189659770X
- ISBN-13: 978-1896597706
- Product Dimensions: 23 x 15.4 x 1.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 395 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
#218,861 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #100 in Books > Comics & Graphic Novels > Publishers > Drawn and Quarterly
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
If you only read Seth's It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken once, you could be excused for thinking it's simply a personal essay on comics history. It's a Good Life tells the story of Seth's quest to track down the elusive artist Kalo, who drew a handful of cartoons for magazines in the '40s and '50s before disappearing, and along the way it pays homage to past comic artists like Peter Arno and Charles Schulz. Read It's a Good Life again--which you will--and you'll discover deeper issues as Seth's journey leads him into his own past and a quiet meditation on his relationship with the world around him.
This is a story of discontent with modern culture. Seth avoids the present as much as he can, spending his days in museums and old neighbourhoods, but he can never fully escape into the past. Teenagers make fun of his anachronistic appearance, and young, hip couples invade his cherished haunts. Seth renders the tension between times elegantly, evoking Arno and his contemporaries in the simple, clean panels he uses to depict the present. One particular panel of a grand, noble train station overshadowed by a soulless skyscraper sums up the entire comic beautifully. Seth takes care not to let It's a Good Life lapse into nostalgia, though. Instead, his obsession with the past is really a symptom of his inability to find fulfillment in the present, in a society that is indifferent or even hostile to the notions of art or individuality. Think of it less as a coming-of-age story and more as a profound and moving coming-to-terms-with-the-age tale. --Peter Darbyshire
Review
"[Seth] invites the reader to linger cozily in his ruminative, patient stories, each of which grows from Seth's obsession with the past." --The Village Voice
"Rich, evocative...characterized by small moments revealing the author's sharp eye for detail" --The Globe and Mail
"Rich, evocative...characterized by small moments revealing the author's sharp eye for detail" --The Globe and Mail
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
Cartoons have always been a big part of my life. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Cartoons have always been a big part of my life. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A moving, understated short novel,
By SPM "scott_maykrantz" (Eugene, Oregon) - See all my reviews
This review is from: It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken (Paperback)
In the 1990s, many non-superhero comics were autobiographical. Cartoonists told their own stories, revealing the details of their mundane habits, obsessions, love lives, and their work. Seth did it, too, in the second half of the decade, and his story is one of the most elegant and honest.Taking his obsession with gag cartoons and newspaper strips as a jumping-off point, Seth tells his story about looking for meaning in a rapidly changing world. You get the sense that he's worried about being pretentious (or boring), so he spices things up with conversations with his friend Chester, dating a cute brunette, visiting his mother and brother, ice skating, and smoking lots of cigarettes. There's some travel and a little detective work, too. The images are not always tied to Seth's thoughtful narration. At times, he gives you landscapes to look at while he writes about his life. This could be disorienting, but it works very well. The words and images create an emotional effect that wouldn't exist if he narrated what you were looking at. His style is a personal variation on gag cartoons from the middle of the century, which turns out to be the perfect style for Canadian cities and suburbs. If you're looking for something special --- maybe you want to read non-superhero comics, or you want a short novel with a twist to it --- try this book. It's perfectly suited for adults who feel a little out of place in the world.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Travelogue with excellent strokes,
By Hiromichi Hosoma (Shiga Japan) - See all my reviews
This review is from: It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken (Hardcover)
If you have read Joe Matt's incredible confession "Peep Show", you might remember his friend Seth's words "I'm working on an autobiographical comic book, but it's not finished yet...". Now here comes the comic, but in a very different style from Joe's (so Joe had no need to feel like part of some insidious TREND). The story traces the life of an old cartoonist Kalo, and it wraps over Seth's own life. The drawing touch of the cartoons in good old era also wrap over Seth's style. We can see the trace of Kalo and old cartoonists not only in the story, but on Seth's joyful drawing touch on rain, trains, trees, hairs, wires, a kite, a bog roll, and even the smoke of cigarette. This comic is about how our thoughts move when we draw lines. Don't stick at a single frame or single sentiment in the depressed monologue. Feel how the sequence of frames and lines are traveling with the sentiment traveling, and you can notice here is a new way of travelogue.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Deeply involving,
By A Customer
This review is from: It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken (Hardcover)
Seth is one of my favorite comic artists today. He manages to combine a distinctly personal drawing style with an involving and timely storyline, in this series about a man (based on himself, presumably) who loathes the post-modern and seeks out the past through a 1950s New Yorker cartoon artist, whose work is an inspiration and source of joy. That's the basic plotline, but the story also involves the reader in the main character's personal thoughts and his relationships, how they sometimes lead to a life lived by his convictions, but often alone.
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