Word: thompson
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...sensation of being transported to other places and cultures through the unique language of comix, look no further than Craig Thompson's "Carnet de Voyage" (Top Shelf; 224 pages; $15). Creator of the lauded and successful graphic novel "Blankets," Thompson's introductory insistence that "Carnet" is not his "next book," tries to disarm any critics, but he needn't have worried. Seemingly unedited, "Carnet" chronicles, in the form of an engrossing diary sketchbook, Thompson's European author tour, with a side trip to Morocco, during the spring of 2004. With all of its pages drawn from life, here at last...
...page from the Morocco section of Craig Thompson's "Carnet de Voyage...
...margins the text reveals an undercurrent of loneliness and anxiety. Slowly you catch on that the tour comes on the heels of a major breakup and that someone, presumably his ex-lover, has become seriously ill back in the States. (The details stay frustratingly obtuse.) In spite of this Thompson continues on to Marrakech, alone. His three weeks in North Africa result in complex portraits of both the place and of Thompson's state of mind. His impressive drawings reveal the beauty of the architecture, the bustle of the marketplace, and even the animals that carve out a life...
...Alps the author luxuriates in the pleasures of skiing and food, filing the pages with rich detail like the one about raclette, a cheese you melt and pour over sliced potatoes and ham. Bucolic vistas of snowy woods and mountains soon give way to sunbathers when, at the end, Thompson swings through the south of France and Barcelona. This final leg includes encounters with a number of other cartoonists, like Louis Trondheim and Charles Burns, who contribute cameo sketches of their own. In spite of all this, Thompson continues to struggle with the alienation of travel. Then, at last...
...element of Toback’s career. His directorial debut, 1978’s Fingers, was, as Toback describes it, “defiled, defamed and rejected except by a handful.” That “handful,” however, included famed critics David Thompson and Pauline Kael, and the film is now regarded as an American cinema classic...