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Product Description
Review
Praise for Daniel Clowes:
“A bona-fide cult hero.” —The New Yorker
“[Clowes has] explored the tedium and mystery of contemporary American life with more wit and insight than most novelists or filmmakers.” —A.O. SCOTT, The New York Times
“Clowes is the country’s premier underground cartoonist.” —Newsweek
“A bona-fide cult hero.” —The New Yorker
“[Clowes has] explored the tedium and mystery of contemporary American life with more wit and insight than most novelists or filmmakers.” —A.O. SCOTT, The New York Times
“Clowes is the country’s premier underground cartoonist.” —Newsweek
Book Description
Meet Wilson, an opinionated middle-aged loner who loves his dog and quite possibly no one else. In an ongoing quest to find human connection, he badgers friend and stranger alike into a series of one-sided conversations, punctuating his own lofty discursions with a brutally honest, selfnegating sense of humor. After his father dies, Wilson, now irrevocably alone, sets out to find his ex-wife with the hope of rekindling their long-dead relationship, and discovers he has a teenage daughter, born after the marriage ended and given up for adoption. Wilson eventually forces all three to reconnect as a family - a doomed mission that will surely, inevitably backfire. In his first all-new graphic novel, one of the leading cartoonists of our time, Daniel Clowes, creates a thoroughly engaging, complex and fascinating character study of the modern egotist-outspoken and oblivious to the world around him. Working in a single-page-gag format and drawing in a spectrum of styles, the cartoonist of GHOST WORLD, ICE HAVEN, and DAVID BORING gives us his funniest and most deeply affecting novel to date.
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sad and funny and true,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Wilson (Hardcover)
I am a fan of graphic novels, and feel they are a valuable art form. I grew up in the age of comic books and loved many of them, from Little Lulu, up to and including all the horror comics with their gruesome and marvelous drawings as well as the classic comics. As a young teen I loved Mad Magazine. I devoured Jules Fieffer and treasure my copies of Maus.Wilson is a comic for grown ups but is just as satisfying. This book is distilled Updike, and to my mind, tells the same story better. Wilson is a cynic, an empty vessel who wants to feel something but when he does he finds it doesn't really make a difference. He is a mundane and disconnected man with regrets. I recognized myself in Wilson and so will most readers. He is the glimpse of ourselves in the mirror that makes us deny and look away.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.7 out of 5 stars (35 customer reviews) 10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clowes proves himself a master of the comics form,
By Michael Tolento - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Wilson (Hardcover)
What a fun read! Each page of this slim oversize book is designed as a self contained comic strip. The effect is an episodic revelation of Wilson's story in phases like the peeling of an onion. Once Clowes has defined Wilson's irrepressible personality, the vignettes evolve from the slice-of-life non sequitur of the opening pages, and begin to relate to one another in development of the plot. Clowes varies his drawing style from one strip to the next. The art goes from Schultz-esque cartoon abstractions to representational warts-and-all realism in service of the narrative.This is Clowes most mature and emotionally satisfying work to date, yet his dark acerbic humor remains, manifesting itself in the cranky eccentric voice of the title character. Wilson is a brilliant graphic novel, sure to be cited as one of the best in the same breath as Ware's Jimmy Corrigan or Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp. It is a celebration of the sort of storytelling one can only experience through the misunderstood medium of comics. 14 of 17 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An epic in miniature,
By Tim Idsole - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Wilson (Hardcover)
Daniel Clowes assigned himself an unusual formal constraint in this book; it consists of a sequence of seventy full-page comics, each with six or seven frames, each a complete vignette, most with the familiar rhythm and concluding punchline of a Sunday newspaper gag cartoon like "Nancy" or "Peanuts." (Be forewarned, though, the tone of the writing has little in common with those strips, and Wilson's "punchlines" often traffic in cruelty and humiliation.) Each page is recognizably in the hand of Clowes, but the styles differ from one strip to the next, from big-nose cartoons to quite naturalistic renderings, with many different color schemes. Every page features the musings and adventures of Wilson, a self-defeating, socially inept and exceedingly unlikeable protagonist. We get glimpses of Wilson's dialogues with himself and his interaction with others, including his father, his ex-wife and his beloved dog Pepper, across a considerable span of years. Rather astonishingly, through the accumulation of single-page strips that if taken independently may seem glib, slight or superficial, Clowes builds up a moving book that lingers in the mind as much more than the sum of its parts. It gives rise to thoughts about the need for human interaction, the nature of memory and the possibility of wisdom. The most resonant contents of the book emerge from the relationships between the individual strips, much the way action can be implied by the blank "gutter" between the panels of a comic strip. Easy to read, but I'm sure there's much I missed the first time through: I expect to enjoy reading this several times.
13 of 17 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Phoned In,
By Kafkarama - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Wilson (Hardcover)
Long time Clowes fan. My issue here is not that this isn't funny, plenty of his best stuff is more drama (like the story Caricature in Eightball).My problem is that Wilson is just not surprising or that rich. This territory is already well trod in David Boring, Ghostworld, Ray Gun, Ice Haven and this doesn't bring much new to the party. I feel like Clowes is trying to hold himself back because he thinks it is subtle and literary, but instead it is coming off slight. He needs to write his heart out. |
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