Cheap Novelties
Ben Katchor’s collected strips following Julius Knipl, a real estate photographer who walks a city that is recognisably New York and entirely invented. The pleasure is in the signage and the trades: elevator inspectors, mustard fountains, cellar doors, day-old bread stores. Katchor draws the commercial residue of a century and gives it a melancholy that no other cartoonist has matched.
Recommended by 1 Person
Fran Lebowitz
It is not a mandarin sensibility, but it is piercingly intelligent and observant. If you read this book, or any of his books, you are going to get a view of New York that is not available anywhere else. Katchor might be galaxies away from Howard Moss or Jimmy McCourt or Dawn Powell or Dorothy Parker but there were and there are numerous authentic versions of New York.
Interview · September 2011
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