Down the Street [Paperback]

Lynda Barry (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 123 pages
• Publisher: Harpercollins; 1st edition (September 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060963042
• ISBN-13: 978-0060963040
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,300,932 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lynda Barry has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator and teacher and found they are very much alike. She is the inimitable creator behind the seminal comic strip that was syndicated scross North America in alternative weeklies for two decades, Ernie Pook's Comeek featuring the incomparable Marlys and Freddy, as well as the books One! Hundred! Demons!, The! Greatest! of! Marlys!, Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel, Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies!, The Good Times are Killing Me which was adapted as an off-Broadway play and won the Washington State Governor's Award. Her bestselling and acclaimed creative writing-how to-graphic novel for Drawn & Quarterly, What It Is, won the Eisner Award for Best Reality Based Graphic Novel and R.R. Donnelly Award for highest literary achievement by a Wisconsin author. D+Q plans to publish a multivolume collection of Ernie Pook's Comeek, Barry's next prose novel, and the follow up and creative drawing companion to What It Is, November 2010's Picture This: The Near-Sighted Monkey Book.

Born in Wisconsin in 1956, Lynda studied at Evergreen State College.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful! Funny, sad, evocative., October 24, 1998

By 

Robert H. Lochow "rlochow" (Beacon, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Down the Street (Paperback)

Lynda Barry's messy, amateurish drawings evoke childhood better than just about anything else I've read. She risks overparticularity in describing the specific time and place when she grew up, but evades it consistently because she has such a great eye and ear for the things that make childhood experience universal. Anyone will find things to recognize and identify with (and laugh at, of course) in this and her other books.

Even her flaws -- the crude drawing style, her lapses of grammar and spelling -- help to get her point across. You couldn't call her stuff childlike -- it's too sophisticated for that -- but it is reminiscent of childhood, without ever being condescending or imitative.

While most of her work is clearly intended as humor (and much of it is indeed howlingly funny), there is a haunting, sweet sadness of tone about a great deal of it too. Barry's not afraid to tackle serious incidents of loss, parental indifference, failure in school, and getting in trouble, but the kids in her stories seem always to take the bad things that happen to them in stride, with aplomb -- as children so often really do.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars down the street, March 26, 2002

By 

James Pound (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Down the Street (Paperback)

this collection of cartoons is amazingly funny. i have read it over and over and am still amused. it offers a hilarious view of childhood from four main characters. buy two- one for yourself, and one for a friend

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing used condition!!, January 23, 2012

By 

Mark J. Novasel "Skabee" (Fresh Meadows, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Down the Street (Paperback)

Condition was better than advertised! Better than any reasonable expectation. It was over 25 years old and you could not expect a better looking copy, an old used book looked almost perfect. Amazing! And cheap, a really decent price. Arrived fast too. I'm a happy happy customer.