Customer Reviews

Inklings

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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.

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.

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.

Jeffrey Koterba writes with an eye for the telling detail that makes an editorial cartoon notable and a paragraph memorable. Midway through this memoir he describes his sensations on being struck by lightening in electrifying detail. It's a potent piece of writing, immersing the reader inside the sensation. Only after it is over does the realization dawn that this was lightening.

That sums up Koterba's style. We are immersed first in his childhood in the 60s and in his coming of age during moonwalks and Vietnam. His father fixes TVs, drinks too much and fights with his mom. The family fights over money, loves one another, stifles one another and ultimately dysfunctions together. It's a frustratingly slow start and Koterba doesn't reflect on what he now knows, i.e., that he inherited Tourette's Syndrome from his father.

On one hand, it's understandable. Koterba is writing about his life, not the label of his genetic condition. There's a lot of accomplishment crammed into this book: Koterba is a cartoonist and a musician and makes his living by living his creative dreams.

The book gains strength after Koterba moves out of his parents' house and begins his independent struggle. And life is a lot like a lightening strike sometimes, ripping up out of the ground when the storm still seems too far away to be a danger. As a young man, he struggles so hard to make his name as a cartoonist in order to support his family that he winds up divorced.

Ultimately, this book fails to make the meaningful connections that would hold a reader. Although this is splendidly written, it takes more than fine writing to make a book attractive to a reader. This book has telling details, but is structured as a series of episodes that are connected only by the fact that they happened to the narrator. What it needs is for the author to take a step back and to tell his story from the outside, to complete the connections that must arise in his own mind and give meaning to this densely textured tapestry of a Midwestern life. By the end the author is just starting sketch these connections in pencil. I'd really love to see the finished drawing made stronger in thick black ink!

I'd still recommend this to people who want to know what life in the Midwest was like.

So often, memoirs are written by people who have had tough upbringings or difficult lives. Their travails are what moves the book, with not much more material for a reader consider other than to shake his head and be pleased it was not his life.

Mr. Koterba's memoir seemingly starts the same way. He has undiagnosed Tourette's syndrome as does his father. His father is also a tad whacky, to put it mildly, filling his house, porch, yard and two garages with yard sale cast-offs, especially TV's that he repairs for resale. The first third or so of the book is tracking the difficulties Mr. Koterba has as a youth being the blackest sheep of a black sheep family.

However, as he grows older and begins to emancipate himself from the household, he comes to the realization that there is much more to his family than tinkering with scrap heap mechanical devices, yelling, drinking and paranoia. As he grows older, he grows to appreciate that there was depth in his family all along and maybe his life wasn't so so bad after all.

Eventually his Tourette's was diagnosed. His handling of that, although only cursorily explored, is very interesting. His father contends that they just have "nervous habits".

This book is far better than a run-of-the-mill memoir of a dysfunctional family and upbringing. Although it includes the over-coming the adversity of Tourette's and a dysfunctional family, Mr. Koterba is so adroit at just relating his life story without taking any credit that it is heart-warming rather than preachy. Highly recommended.

For many years, I have enjoyed Jeff Koterba's cartoons. I found we had more in common than I realized. He and I were in the same South Omaha church as children and I also was an editorial cartoonist for a weekly paper. His descriptions of his youth were so vivid that they made me feel like I was growing up in the same household when he described his impatient pack rat father who was not coping well with his own demons of a life he had not envisioned or planned for in his youth. He was obviously intelligent but as a square peg in a round hole he experienced frustrations and was not a supportive father for his children, and they suffered for it. Perhaps he was trying to protect them from unrealized dreams like he himself had because he seemed to mellow as he aged. He too suffered from the effects of Tourettes but it was not diagnosed or even widely known when he was younger. Jeff was fortunate in that he did not suffer from some of the more anti social behaviors that some Tourettes' sufferers exhibit and was able to channel his compulsive drawing into a career. Along the way we see him marry and have a son and somehow the marriage fails but he continues to have a more rewarding life with his parents and his own son who he obviously loves very much.

This is a touching memoir of a cartoonist and musician's early life. Jeff Koterba recounts in often painful detail, the chaotic, fractious family that spawned him and his creative compulsions. An outcast kid with undiagnosed and untreated Tourette's Syndrome, Koterba found refuge and a sense of control in cartooning. After years of struggling, he became a syndicated political and sports cartoonist.

The memoir is well written, and not overly sentimental. Koterba's parents are the center of the book. His father, a tinker and packrat, fills the house with junk that he regards as treasures of potential, hoping to invent a toy that will make his fortune. Meanwhile his mother despairs of having a normal life and a clean house. Koterba's father (who also has Tourette's) loses his job and drinks, trying to support his family by fixing TVs and working as a musician.

It seems every neighborhood has a family like this. The family with too much junk, too many kids, too many weeds in the yard. It's fascinating to get a glimpse of life inside the crazy house and see how fiercely this unusual group of people love one another.

Who doesn't like the story line of the young man who overcomes difficult circumstances to triumph in the end? This is the kind of story that great movies are made from. And it certainly would be a wonderful screen-worthy story. (Are you listening out there, Hollywood?)

I had never heard of Jeffrey Koterba but like many, I've seen his cartoons numerous times. His memoir definitely illustrates the adage, "That which does not kill us, makes us stronger." He grew up with a father who was a frustrated inventor, alcoholic, social outcast, garage sale addict, and who also had Tourette's syndrome. Koterba's mother was always supportive but often overwhelmed by her husband's excess ..and misdirected energy and ideas. She encouraged Jeffrey early on with a John Gnagy Learn to Draw book, hiding typing paper, and generally being there for him.

"It's hard to make the nervous habits stop, and nearly impossible when I'm frightened or worried about my family." Koterba had plenty to worry about. Living hand-to-mouth in a junk-filled home, he just kept putting one foot in front of the other. He didn't find out until he was a teen that the "liver pills" he'd been prescribed were really anti-depressants...presumably to control his Tourettes.

As a memoir, the book follows his life, ups and downs...and plenty of downs...to his final triumph. Drawing for the school paper. Working for the Omaha paper at age 16. Getting struck by lightning. National recognition.

Probably most symbolic of Koterba's life was his first car purchase, an old Chevy Impala for $200 which had a transmission that wouldn't go in reverse. Koterba could never go back...he could only go forward. And he did.

If you are a lover of memoirs and inspiring life stories, you'll love this book.

I ordered this book thinking that it was an artist's memoir in graphic novel format, so I was a bit disappointed that it is a narrative; however after reading a few pages, I was surprised and pleased to find out that Jeffrey Koterba is not only a highly successful cartoonist, but that he is also an excellent writer. "Inklings" is Korterba's first book, and I found it to be an engrossing and enjoyable read. His family life was dysfunctional and WEIRD--especially his pack-rat dad--but it didn't turn out to be a "boo,hoo, look at me, my life sucks" kind of thing. He writes about his life and his family members in an honest, yet sympathetic way. Throughout his life he suffers from "twitches", like his father, but is not diagnosed with Tourette's Syndrome until he is 30 years old. This syndrome, like the special creativity that often goes along with it, is hereditary. His dad has the same problem, but he just told Jeffrey that he has "nervous habits" like he does. The reader can clearly see how this "disability" has affected the author and those around him, yet the story certainly does not revolve around the Tourette's. In the course of the book mysteries of his family come to light, and as they grow older, they seem to understand and appreciate one another more. For example, his younger brother Artie is his dad's helper and favorite son, which puts a wedge between the two boys. In the last vignette, though, where Artie and Jeffrey meet and talk together, their obvious love and connection shines through.

I just stayed up most of the night reading this great book; hopefully I can write some more about it later!

Enjoy!

I got this book as an advanced reading copy through the Amazon Vine program. I have heard of Koterba before but wasn't very familiar with his work. I thought that a Memoir of a cartoonist would be fun to read and it was an okay read, but not fun.

Koterba tells his story of growing up in a poor and dysfunctional family with Tourettes syndrome. He finds refuge in music and drawing; and is constantly seeking approval from a father who never gives it. He shows us his path to become a full-time cartoonist.

There were some things I liked about the book and other things I didn't. Koterba does a good job of telling the story from the point of view he would have had at that age. For example when he talks about what happened when he was six, he does it from a six year old's perspective. The strange things his dad does are all he knows; so the story doesn't seek pity from the reader rather it tells the story in an unbiased way. This changes as he gets older and starts to compare his family to other families. Some of the looks into his life at various times are fascinating, and at points, this memoir is more a nostalgic journey back into the seventies than anything else.

The above being said I had a lot of trouble getting into this book. It starts out slowly. A lot of time is given to his childhood and then as he gets older the story becomes less detailed and more disjointed. To be honest some of the childhood stuff is interesting, but some of it really drags on. I was also a little disturbed that early on he spends a ton of time talking about his family, but then when he has a family of his own they are mentioned infrequently as if they are only an afterthought to the story of his career. This was confusing because you would think his children and wife would shape his life just as much as his own mother and father did. He spends so much time talking about all the clubs he played at and cartooning jobs he took, that as a reader I felt like his own family (wife and children) really didn't matter all that much. This made me kind of sad, because I had hoped he would learn something from his own experiences growing up in a dysfunctional house.

All in all this book doesn't really teach anything. The author doesn't really come to any deep realization about his life, he just states the facts and lets you draw your own conclusions. The story itself pretty much just ends in the middle of things. All in all I found it kind of a depressing read. Maybe I would be more excited about it if I was a Koterba fan or knew more about him. I was also very disappointed that despite this book being about his life as a cartoonist, none of his cartoons are in here. It would have been nice to have at least a few of his cartoons in here for people unfamiliar with his work. Especially since most of the end of the book revolves around different pieces of work that he did for magazines/newspapers.

Overall it was an okay read. Some of it is interesting, but the disjointed way the memoir is presented makes it difficult to get into at times. I was also disappointed by the lack of any of his cartoons in the book itself, this was the main reason I wanted to review the book. I probably won't be checking out any more works by Koterba.