Inklings [Hardcover]

Jeffrey Koterba (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 3, 2009

At age six, Jeffrey Koterba began drawing cartoons, creating with ink and white paper a clean, expansive refuge from the pandemonium surrounding him.

 

The Koterba household was filled floor-to-ceiling with second-hand TVs and garage-sale treasures his father, Art, fixed and sold for extra money. A hard-drinking ex-jazz drummer whose big dreams never panned out, Art was subject to violent facial and vocal tics—symptoms of Tourette’s Syndrome, a condition Jeffrey inherited—as well as explosions of temper and eccentricity that kept the Koterba family teetering on the brink of disaster.

 

From the canyons of busted electronics, the lightning strikes, screaming matches, and discouragements great and small emerged a young man determined to follow his creative spirit to grand heights. And much to his surprise, he found himself on a journey back to his family and the father he once longed to escape. Inklings is an exuberant, heart-felt memoir infused with a uniquely irresistible optimism.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Product Description
When Jeffrey Koterba was six, he started drawing his first cartoons, painstakingly copying from the Sunday Omaha World Herald'sfunny papers and making up his own characters. With a pen and a sheet of white paper, he was able to escape into a world that was clean, expansive, and comfortable--a refuge from the pandemonium surrounding him.

The tiny house Koterba grew up in was full-to-bursting with garage-sale treasures and televisions his father Art repaired and sold for extra money. A hard-drinking one-time jazz drummer whose big dreams never seemed to come true, Art was subject to violent facial and vocal tics--symptoms of Tourette's Syndrome, a condition Jeffrey inherited--as well as explosions of temper and eccentricity that kept the Koterba family teetering on the brink of disaster.

From the canyons of broken electronics, the lightning strikes, screaming matches, and discouragements great and small emerged a young man determined to follow his creative spirit to grand heights. And much to his surprise, he found himself on a journey back to his family and the father he once longed to escape. An exuberant, heart-felt memoir that calls to mind The Tender Bar and Fun Home, Inklings is infused with an irresistible optimism all its own.

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Amazon Exclusive: A Cartoon from author Jeffrey Koterba
(Click to Enlarge)

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From Publishers Weekly

In this honest memoir, Koterba, nationally syndicated political cartoonist and jazz musician, depicts a childhood burdened with both Tourette's syndrome and an eccentric, overbearing father. A failed musician, the older Koterba drank heavily and turned his frustrations on his family. He also had a part-time business repairing and selling televisions, which turned their Omaha, Neb., home into a Sanford and Son–style junkyard. Like his son, he suffered from Tourette's, which has a genetic component. The painfully shy Koterba struggled as a young man to escape the family chaos and follow his artistic inclinations. Koterba renders scenes of family dysfunction with an artist's feeling for nuance and detail. His psychic turmoil is portrayed with equal facility, and the junkyard house becomes a fearsome presence. However, the book lacks thematic unity. While Koterba offers a number of recurring themes—his Tourette's, the Apollo moonwalk, a journalist uncle killed in a plane crash—none of these receive enough focus to sustain the narrative. Yet Koterba's weakness is also his strength: the closeness to his material. (Nov.)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (November 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151014922
• ISBN-13: 978-0151014927
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,415,155 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jeffrey Koterba is an award-winning syndicated political cartoonist. He is also lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter for the Prairie Cats, a swing band. Inklings is his first book. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Talent and Determination, November 16, 2009

By 

Fillmoe (San Francisco, California) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Inklings (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

What a fascinating read INKLINGS is. Jeffrey Koterba is the offspring of a domineering, alcoholic father, who created chaos in what could have been a stable, working-class environment; and his mother, who, while trying to bring calm to her family, endured and perhaps enabled the tumultuous atmosphere in their home. In addition to a job with the Union Pacific Railroad, Dad frequents garage sales and drags home non-working televisions and other perfectly good items and fills every available space with these projects in order to "support his family" by repairing and re-selling the items. I did a bit of uncomfortable reminiscing while reading about Dad. My own father had a secondhand store, which was partitioned off to provide us a home at the rear. Among the treasures my father brought home was a crate of live chickens that broke open and allowed the chickens to run amok. I have no idea what he planned to do with live chickens. Koterba's father is a self-proclaimed victim, and rejects any suggestion that his behavior has created near poverty and turmoil for himself and his family.

Young Jeffrey used drawings to express himself, both his reality and his fantasy life, as soon as he could hold a pencil. Using drawings, he told his stories while avoiding the agony of talking while suppressing the tics that plagued him. He passed through early adolescence with few friends, but began to find the niche he needed at the high school newspaper. An indifferent student, except in art, he somehow managed to be admitted to the University of Nebraska where his talent for journalism, particularly editorial cartoons, blossomed.

The final section of INKLINGS is where Koterba is finally able to describe his considerable success at his chosen career and at mending much of what was broken in his family. He was not handed an easy path to follow, so his triumphs are particularly heartwarming. How fortunate we readers are that he chose to write about himself.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Humorous Memoir, October 3, 2009

By 

R. DelParto "Rose2" (Virginia Beach, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Inklings (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Political cartoonist and musician Jeffrey Koterba revisits his childhood with his humorous memoir INKLINGS. Having grown up during the 1960s and 1970s, Koterba was influenced by television culture and the Sunday funnies, which resonates with his impressionable renderings of cartoon strips that were inspired by Peanuts to The Wizard of Id that came with the Sunday edition of the Omaha World-Herald; coincidently, he would later become a cartoonist with the paper. Despite the reference of Koterba's family as being dysfunctional, which may be attributed to how his father never so-called sugarcoated the truth, picture Archie Bunker rather than Ward Cleaver. However, this did not deter Koterba as well as his brother Artie from overcoming obstacles and endless family squabbles that they encountered as children and later in adulthood.

Indeed, the book does not read as cut and dry as any typical memoir. His life has been a unique journey as highlighted within each page that vividly retells his momentous experiences as a young boy doodling, spending uncompromising times with relatives during the Christmas holidays, and playing in various rock and roll bands shrouded with Tourette's Syndrome; a condition he was not aware of until he was in his thirties. But the most interesting aspect of Koterba's memoir centers upon his father who worked as a bookkeeper for the Union Pacific Railroad and also repaired televisions at home; interestingly, having been a drummer in jazz bands and orchestras, and once playing with a young Johnny Carson, Koterba's father's passion for music left a lasting impression on him.

INKLINGS is an extremely comedic and sentimental narrative. The story could have easily been included within a Rolling Stone or New Yorker article, or it could possibly be a screenplay for a film or sitcom. There is no doubt that this book is worth reading more than once.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Slow start with a satisfying ending, October 14, 2009

By 

Mint910 (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Inklings (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Let me start off by telling you that Inklings is not a graphic novel memoir. I made the mistake of thinking it was due to something I read on an Amazon page, so don't make the same mistake. I think that disappointment might have soured my reading experience a bit.

Inklings is split up into three sections, Jeffrey's childhood, teen years, and adulthood. I could have done without 3/4 of the first section. For me the stories seemed rather repetitive in Jeffrey's childhood, almost always revolving around his father's antics. I really disliked his father until the last section of the book when he had mellowed out with age. He was just not easy to read about.

The book really gets going for me towards the end of the second section when Jeffrey is in college and his cartooning starts to become very important in his life. Don't get me wrong, from the very beginning we see Jeffrey drawing cartoons. But when he starts to pursue it professionally the book really takes off. I wish Jeffrey's cartooning was a larger focus in the book. I loved seeing him reach his dream, being a cartoonist at the newspaper he's read since he was a child. (Not a spoiler, it's in his bio!) It just felt really good to see him get something he worked so so hard for. I also liked reading about his family in the last part of the book. When they had all grown up and their parents had mellowed with age. They just all got along so much better.

Overall a slow start but with a satisfying ending.