Happy: taking last Friday off work, and finding the New Yorker’s annual Cartoon Issue in the letterbox. Studying closely the beautiful cover by R. Crumb and wondering whether he might be the first New Yorker cover artist ever to insinuate a picture of himself into a cover drawing (he’s the beardy old guy with the cloth cap, on the right-hand side of the cover); opening up a seemingly innocuous fold-out Johnny Walker ad, only to find four pages of new work by Seth lovingly wrapped inside its covers (marred only by that horrible word “advertisement” at the top of each page); noticing that Dave Mazzucchelli and Paul Auster’s comic-book adaptation of Auster’s “City of Glass” has been reissued by Picador. If any book is able to demonstrate the utility of the phrase “graphic novel”, this would have to be it.
Sad: going into a bookshop yesterday morning and reading “Michael Rosen’s Sad Book”, written by Michael Rosen and drawn by Quentin Blake. I had heard a bit about this book, made by two of the kings of British children’s books. But I wasn’t expecting to be reduced to silent tears on the floor of Paperchain Books in Manuka. I had to take myself off to a nearby cafe for a while to compose myself. I knew I had to go back in and buy the book, so that I could take it home with me and have a really good cry. (Which I did.) This is the saddest book I have ever read. (It is also very beautiful. Quentin Blake draws the best eyes.) I can’t even begin to imagine Rosen’s own sadness - to lose your 18-year-old son: I “only” lost my father when I was 25 years old (and with him my entire life’s fabric and history) - but Rosen’s evocation of his own grief in this book cuts so close to the bone of my own sadness that, like a dog with a snake, I am torn between being too frightened to read the thing because of what it is likely to set off inside me, and yet being unable to leave it alone. If it’s possible for someone else’s writing to talk to you, “Michael Rosen’s Sad Book” is talking to me.
