My weekend trip to France - recontres and book porn
Mar 15, 2022 20:04:01 GMT
grubcubman, skoden, and 3 more like this
Post by teemcgee on Mar 15, 2022 20:04:01 GMT
Apologies for using this webforum as a proxy blog, but hopefully this will be of interest to some here - last weekend I went for a short (only one night, two if you count a sleeper ferry) to France, first to Caen in Normandy to attend an exhibition/signing of the French autobiographical graphic novelist Fabrice Neaud, then looping back home via Paris for some book shopping.
Arrived in Caen in the early morning and trooped around the city until the event in the evening - despite being a city of just 100k, Caen is able to sustain four comic book shops within a hundred metre stroll of each other, as well as a half dozen more generalist bookstores on top.
The event itself was in a small space in a former print workshop that had been reclaimed as studio spaces. I thought some of his new work might be on display, but it was actually previously published work - I don't really have the practitioner's apprectiation of comics originals but what was of note was i) how many corrections there were on the early pages versus the later work ii) that some of the diagrams/icons etc he includes in his work are actually pasted in rather than recreated by hand (Incidentally, if you want to buy an original page, the going price is 500 euro).
He was doing dedicace - illustrated signings - which involved sitting opposite him for ten minutes or so while he systematically drew a picture of a rugby player from the 1999 world cup off the back of a stick of promotional gum (he had a whole bag of them that you selected from at random). I have to confess, I was bricking it - my spoken French is awful and I wasn't sure how I would sustain a conversation for that long. As it turned out, Fabrice speaks functional English, so muddled our way through our combined language shortcomings.
whitecomics , I was given the lowdown on the works in progress: four volumes of Journal in the works (although they won't be called 'Journal' anymore as he doesn't care for that name), first to come out early next year. They will collectively exceed the length of the first four, the first is about the length of volume three. They will cover the years of his unrequited attraction to Antoine, the faceless interest in the short "Emilie", although they will also range more deeply into topics touched on in the early volumes, such as the relationship with his family, his response to the success of his books, etc. He said he was excited to present them to the world, as he feels his art has matured in the long haitus from the original books.
The turnout was modest, and when I made it clear that I had come from London tout expres for the event, I became somewhat of a supporting act/supplementary dancing ape for the main event, as the rather exuberant organiser of the event then went on to introduce everyone who subsequently came into the room as "the young man who has come all the way for tonight" and tried to exhort the room into breaking out into a round of applause for me. I think Fabrice was flattered by me making such a trip (to the extent that we are now Facebook friends!). The evening ended in food and me going into a trance as I downed four whole plates of cheese and charcuterie.
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Next day, Paris, and one of my favourite comic book shops (of which there are dozens, Paris probably has the highest concentration outside of Tokyo) - Aaapoum Bapoum. Every time I go I spend hours in this place. The range is catholic, from ero guro to American indie to pulp French westerns, and they mix new, second hand, signed and remaindered books all together, which means if you're of an obsessive bent like me you want to carefully trawl each and every shelf in search of the rareities.
(if people like these kinds of photos of books on display at larger size- I know I do, I used to spend hours trawling Christopher Butcher's Japan travelogues back in the day - I took dozens and can post more as a follow up)
The haul - some things I just have been meaning to pick up for a while to fill gaps, but specially chuffed to get Jaakko Pallasvuo's Pure Shores (10 euro secondhand, the French didn't know what they had!!), as well as a signed and illustrated copy of a Baudoin book. The Ruppert and Mulot is also interesting as usual format wise, it's a massive poster which I attempted to fold out for a pic but gave up as it was too big to snap without including my mess of a room in shot.
Finally, I stopped in on this Robert Crumb & family exhibit in the Marais. I didn't know it, but apparently Crumb has reached peak mental senescence and is a covid conspiracy theorist. Further cementing my ambivalence towards Crumb. I'm sorry, Robert, but your art is plastered across the walls of a pretentious high ceiling gallery in one of the most chi chi parts of Paris, you're no longer counter culture, you are the mainsteam, and the protective membrane between you and the hogs you satire looks pretty thin to me.
