I go to the bookstore once a week, whether I need books or not, which I really don’t. This week, I picked up a book I’ve already read, Lowry’s late-modernist classic Under the Volcano, simply because I hate the cover of the version I have (a bland movie tie-in). Anyway, I’ve been prowling for a version that includes an introduction by William Vollmann, but I saw this midcentury paperback with a nice minimal vibe and had to snap it up (also, it was a dollar, and “I’d buy that for a dollar!”):
I’m not a huge Paul Auster fan, but I do like artist David Mazzucchelli’s work (especially his novel Asterios Polyp), so when I saw a crisp used copy of the graphic novelization of City of Glass (with an intro by Art Spiegelman), I had to snap it up:
A splash page of a stark empty room which I’m sure is meaningful in some way:
Also, couldn’t help pick up a used copy of Gaddis’s late novel Carpenter’s Gothic, even though I know there’s no way I’ll get to it anytime soon.
That David Mazzucchelli version is fantastic. It captures the story perfectly.
And I was not thrilled with Carpenter’s Gothic. Its all the descriptive work and bleak people that were left out of JR.
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I completely agree. Mazzucchelli’s graphic novel made me like Auster.
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I think that Mazzucchelli’s work in City of Glass is really a precursor to Asterios Polyp, do I remember why I think this? No. But I had a firm grasp when I had the wonderful and fun experience of being invited back to my college by a former prof to give a lecture on City of Glass. He teaches the book regularly and the adaptation also, but realized that he knows nothing about comics, so wanted me to come in.
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is vollmann publishing anything soon? he’s way overdue
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