Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: Stories

But the Julius Knipl graphic stories surely are. They are not remotely like anything else I've ever seen. If Franz Kafka had had a sense of humor, and had been able to draw, he might have created something like this. Not all of the strips will make you laugh; some will make you wonder, "What was that all about?" -- and then you'll want to read them again. A strange collection, and not for all tastes, but for those who find these stories compelling, it's a must-own item.

Great stuff, but Katchor's "Hand drying in America" is ever better

This is just about my favorite book. I read the review in the New York Times, which was a rave. I went out and bought it, struggled with the panels at first, but once I got the hang of how to read the narrative along with the inter-woven dialogue, I was simply entranced. Katchor's world is the world I imagine my father grew up in -- the big noisy depression-era city. Katchor has an almost surreal ability to see how unrelated events and moments are connected. Each page is a wonderfully crafted short story, and each panel drawing is packed with humor and nuance, almost as if it were itself drawn by one of Katchor's fallen characters.

I love his imagination and all the work. He is a great artist unlike most today. What detail!

Nice book, sometimes hard to understand, because I am a dutch guy. And humor is the hardest thing to understand...But I do like the humor from Ben. His hilarous surrealistic humor.

Item arrived in great shape. Thank you!

Winston Churchill said "We shape our buildings; thereafter, they shape us." This is especially apropos to the world of "Julius Knipl," where the oddly-named buildings and even odder small businesses play a larger role than the humans who inhabit and patronize them. Peopled by wistful, lonely middle-aged men whose personalities are subsumed to their surroundings, even the titular character often appears only peripherally as a glimpse of a man burdened with cameras, yet who never removes them from their cases, much less actually photographs any real estate.The city in which each story takes place is never named, but as Michael Chabon notes in the preface, is unmistakably New York, in an unspecified time period that seems to span the fifties to the seventies, even when "modern" references, like the internet, come up. There's also a vague Jewish undercurrent in the names of characters, buildings, and streets, in the tone of old MAD magazines, although Katchor doesn't sprinkle his dialog or descriptions with Yiddishisms as liberally as the MAD writers did.No description can do justice to these 8-panel vignettes, but imagine the following as small urban scenes, with "Gout's Ticket Service," a poster advertising "Don't miss it - Mulus, a joy!," a name card for "Val Upay," a man in a cheap suit on the phone as he gazes out a window, men unloading a truck. This is the world of "The Impresario of Human Drudgery." Descriptions in parentheses, dialog in quotes.(Upstairs, in the office of a temporary labor contractor...) "You need twenty-five men with clean hands, to break in the zippers on a truckload of men's slacks? 6 a.m. Sunday morning, rain or shine? No problem.""It is a thrilling sight. Twenty-five men appear out of nowhere, perform a set physical task, and then, just as suddenly, disappear." "Seventy men, with their own rubber boots, to excavate an abandoned tuna salad basin in mid-town.""Twelve men to swab the marquee and turn over the sidewalk in front of a psychiatric hospital." "Does the audience at a ballet worry about the dancers' health insurance and pension plan?""Admission's free! No ticket required!"(Downstairs at a ticket broker's stall...) "People spend their lunch hour watching men unload a truck of slacks. On their way home, they'll stop again to watch a gang of men divert a flood of coffee in the street.""Common laborers and a minimum wage by the day, no benefits, no records - cash! Add to that the cost of portable bleachers and advertising and your best seat would go for, tops, thirty-five dollars.""There's a vast untapped audience for this sort of spectacle...""But the impresario of human drudgery has not yet been born."Surrealistic realism (or realistic surrealism) and nostalgia for a time that probably never existed, yet is achingly familiar, "Julius Knipl" expands the limit of what the comic strip art form is capable of.

Ben Katchor's marvelous collection of eight-panel short stories, "Julius Knipl Real Estate Photographer", would surely have won the 1996 National Book Award for literary comic strip fiction if there had been such a prize. In his review, Edward Sorel, who the New York Times considers "one of America's foremost political satirists", called Katchor "the most poetic, deeply layered artist ever to draw a comic strip."Katchor's hero, the peripatetic free lance real estate photographer Julis Knipl, is a nose-to-the-lobby-directory observer of urban culture, a character without counterpart in American letters. For one thing, Knipl strides through time, glides is more like it, over the urban landscapes of the mid-20th Century, to focus on the details that we love and miss about the city past.Except for Michael Chabon's knowledgeable introduction, everything in this book, from the front and back covers and endpapers to the ninety marvelously telling black and white comic strip stories of Knipl's wanderings, flows from Katchor's hand and mind. Each strip evokes our hopelessly hopeful confidence in our ability to get by in one improbable way or another. Consider the text of the shop window and billboard advertisements that set the scene for Knipl's entrance. (See the accompanying front cover illustration.): "Mortal Coil Mattresses" on one wall sign, "Forget About It! Drink Oblivion Water" on the sidewalk fruit stand, and, on a building under construction, a sign announcing "On this Site CARFARE CITY Opening 2010."The characters that people Knipl's world are as familiar as they are absurd. For examples: Noel Kapish, "the famous double-talk artist of the 1950's and 60's," Al Mooner, the Pygmy Penitentiary impressario, and the two foot soldiers in the Consolation Army "That philanthropic organization, set up on military lines, to encourage flirtation, coition and common law marriage."A good deal of what the author is getting at is the slightly daffy nature of the work we do for a living. He introduces us to the "Hink Eradicator" who makes his rounds toward the "close of each business day . . offering to remove and expunge unwanted textual material" and to the five and ten cent store "demonstrator of [an] eyeglass defogger."If you pick up this book and put it down without wanting more, much more, I'll send you a month's supply of "Mother of Mercy Brand" aspirin from the "Hall of Pain" drug store you'll see on the back cover of the book.Endnote. Appreciation of Katchor's wonderful gifts started with Lawrence Weschler's New Yorker profile (August 9, 1993). Michael Chabon's introduction to this volume is equally lavish in its praise. Then there came Edward Sorel's review, quoted above, among others. His most recent book, "The Cardboard Valise" (March, 2011) takes Katchtor to foreign realms. I've ordered it and plan to review it one of these days. In the meantime, hoping to catch Knipl's eye, I spend my day replacing the worn out Bakelite tips on old shoe laces.

I bought this out of curiosity, and I can see why many people enjoy it.It is filled with many quaint stories about everyday life in a romanticised North American city.The things I normally appreciate in a comic (or graphic novel if you feel uneasy at using the perfectly adequate word 'comic') are character, tension and sense of place. Now although I think this book carries a fair deal of the latter, there was no real depth to much else.I give this three stars not to criticise the book for being what it is, but to indicate what an Alan Moore/Masamune Shirow fanboy like myself gets from it.

Simply wonderful

Perfect written and illustrated vignettes of a lonely, very observant New Yorker. I couldn't speak more highly of this book. But it's not everyone's taste.