Get a Life [Hardcover]

Philippe Dupuy (Author), Charles Berberian (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 11, 2006

A celebration of the sophistication, wit and charm found only in the singular collaboration of French cartooning team

 

For twenty years, French cartoonists Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian have collaborated on every aspect--sharing both the writing and drawing--of their highly acclaimed Mr. Jean short stories, creating one of the most endearing, clever, and readable series in contemporary French comics. Their award-winning, critically acclaimed series has sold more than 120,000 copies in France and has won one of comics' most coveted awards, the prestigious Angoulême Alph-Art
Award for the Best Book of the Year.

Get a Life is a collection of the early Mr. Jean stories where the reader is introduced to the life of the titular character, a laconic, single Parisian male struggling through the usual calamities of life: bachelorhood in his twenties and early thirties and the impending responsibilities of marriage, kids, and deadlines for his publisher. Mr. Jean is a typical everyman--a scholar who fancies himself a man of letters, a nostalgist whose memories carry a weight few can understand, a lover whose heart knows the greatest of burdens. Melancholic yet joyful reflections on past loves, favorite authors, marriage, and fatherhood are laid out in a breezy, comic style.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Only a few of French cartoonists Dupuy and Berberian's delightful Monsieur Jean stories have previously appeared in English, but this volume collects translations of the earliest ones, originally published in the mid-'80s. Jean is a smalltime literary figure—a novelist, translator and jazz collector—on the cusp of 30, realizing that life is moving faster than he is. He's got an apartment too cheap to leave, with a landlady he can't stand; his old friends are getting married, having children, casually revealing long-ago betrayals and inflicting their own life disasters on him. He's fine at attracting women, but can't sustain a serious relationship for long. By the end of the book, he's repeatedly playing daddy to other people's babies and recalling the days when the life of an artist and culture-vulture seemed a lot easier. Dupuy and Berberian play Jean's not-quite-midlife crises as whimsy, though, with occasional goofy fantasy sequences in which he imagines himself guarding the castle of his bachelorhood. The book's artwork is breezy, simple and very European (everyone's got gigantic, near-abstract noses, and the landscapes of Paris and Lisbon are lovingly caricatured); its smooth playfulness helps to alleviate the sting of its well-aimed darts toward the moments when the bohemian life begins to curdle. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

For more than 15 years, fans of bandes dessinees--French for comics--have followed the life in Paris of young novelist M. Jean as he, a flawed but sympathetic everyman, traded footloose bachelorhood for marriage and fatherhood. Although individual stories have appeared in American anthologies, this is the first American collection of M. Jean stories, including the earliest in the series. Mr. Jean, as he's styled here, is a surrogate for Dupuy and Berberian, who each contribute to both the writing and the art, and who have, like their signature character, experienced the satisfactions and challenges of domesticity during the past decades. While the setting may seem exotic to stateside readers, Jean's bittersweet struggles with friends, lovers, and employers, depicted in a cartoonish style chockablock with place-realizing details, are recognizable and familiar; indeed, few American comics characters possess even a modicum of Jean's unassuming normalcy. The appearance of the initial installments of his saga raises hopes that readers this side of the pond will henceforth be able to follow his changes.

Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly; 1st edition (July 11, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1896597793
• ISBN-13: 978-1896597799
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #768,756 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Passing Pleasant-Enough Time with Jean, November 25, 2008

By 

Imez - See all my reviews

This review is from: Get a Life (Hardcover)

I'm new to the graphic novel genre, as I have only recently discovered they are not all about Japanese vampires battling evil and sexual tension.

Get A Life is something else all together. It has humor but it is small, gentle humor. It doesn't have thick plots, no deep pains or truths to exorcise.

It's just a French guy living a French life flanked by interchangeable attractive women and so-so friends. In fact, all the characters are so-so people, no heroes and few villains, very real in that respect.

Compelling, not boring, but no deep shakes. Another book I liked even though I sense I (American female a generation behind Jean) am not the intended audience. If I were the intended, I might think it was genius.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Making the Mundane Meaningful, December 6, 2006

By 

K. Nishikawa (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Get a Life (Hardcover)

An engaging and bittersweet set of comics detailing the rather ordinary life of Monsieur Jean, a kind of late-twentysomething Everyman. Dupuy and Berberian, who collaborated on all aspects of this comics' writing and illustration, create a meaningful storyline for Jean without sacrificing humor or imagination. Jean's misadventures in love are nicely tempered by more lighthearted scenes, including Jean's endless standoff with the apartment building's concierge as well as the running gag of the telephone ringing every time Jean settles into a warm bath.

Dupuy and Berberian's strength resides in their mastery of quotidian observation. This extends not only to their writing but also to their illustrations, which reflect a fine sense of detail for apartment clutter, youth culture, and the vagaries of life in the city, among other things. Their lines and coloring are pleasant to the eye, and the artistry of Jean's dream sequences is especially notable.

Credit to the Montreal-based publishing collective Drawn & Quarterly for bringing Dupuy and Berberian across the Atlantic in a superb English translation. Some of the best graphic novels are being published by independent houses these days. Available in a lovely hardcover edition, this book deserves the highest praise for its literary, graphic, and book-design quality.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dupuy & Berberian Are Geniuses, October 5, 2008

By 

Cozy Wozerson - See all my reviews

This review is from: Get a Life (Hardcover)

I have A LOT of graphic novels and I am constantly updating my collection, but Get A Life remains one of my favorite books EVER. Wonderful, seemingly effortless art supports a witty story that never gets old even after a hundred reads. Get A Life lives among the best comics ever produced, along with Craig Thompson's Blankets, Graham Annable's Grickle, and Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes.