Jokes and the Unconscious: A Graphic Novel [Paperback]

Daphne Gottlieb (Author), Diane DiMassa (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 15, 2006

Heard the one about the dying father? In this savagely brilliant graphic novel by slam poet Daphne Gottlieb (Final Girl) and Hothead Paisan creator Diane DiMassa, a 19-year-old woman named Sasha loses her father to cancer and takes a job in the hospital where he had worked as a doctor. Moving from room to room with her clipboard of forms, Sasha encounters the insane, the suicidal, and the brave — then returns to her office to look up all her friends’ and enemies’ medical records.
Taking its title from Freud’s Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, Gottlieb and DiMassa’s first collaboration is both moving and darkly funny. Where comedy meets chemo, where mirth meets mortality, Jokes and the Unconscious explores the murky terrain of grief — a shadowland of memory, sexual escape, and morbid snickering.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This excellent graphic novel is a collection of shorts that tells the story of a young woman working at a hospital insurance job which her physician father obtained for her before he died of cancer—in that same hospital. Sasha is young, gay, opinionated and has a death-inflected sense of humor that's equal parts cringe and belly-laugh. Gottleib's protagonist tends to hilarity amid deep despondence and even the side characters have dimension and show serious attitude on the page. The art is a bit clumsy, but DiMassa's images—Sasha straddling a crocodile to tell a joke, turning into a blank-eyed hermaphroditic space alien to show how numb she is or slipping a tiki idol a drag from her cigarette—are so imaginative that it doesn't matter. The book includes adult content, including lesbian sex, but the nudity tends more toward old men in nursing homes exposing themselves by accident. The story scatters a bit at the end, but it's a sad yet deeply funny book that moves from gross to subtle in a heartbeat. (Sept.)
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Review

"Gottlieb's trenchant prose is beautifully supported by Diane DiMassa's art." -- The Advocate

"Grief is just the punchline in Daphne Gottlieb and Diane DiMassa's brilliant and unsettling graphic novel." -- Tikkun

"The words...are fierce and funny. The art...vivid and witty...The collaboration is as giddily surreal as it is artistically seamless." -- Book Marks, Richard Labonté

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Cleis Press; 1ST edition (August 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 157344250X
• ISBN-13: 978-1573442503
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #828,063 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

San Francisco-based Performance Poet Daphne Gottlieb stitches together the ivory tower and the gutter just using her tongue. She is the author and editor of nine books, most recently the poetry book 15 Ways to Stay Alive as well as co-editor (with Lisa Kester) of Dear Dawn: Aileen Wuornos in her Own Words.? She is the editor of F**king Daphne: Mostly True Stories and Fictions and Homewrecker: An Adultery Reader, as well as the author of the poetry books Kissing Dead Girls, Final Girl, Why Things Burn and Pelt, and as the graphic novel Jokes and the Unconscious with artist Diane DiMassa.

Final Girl was the winner of the Audre Lorde Award in Poetry for 2003 from Publishing Triangle. Additionally, Final Girl was named one of the The Village Voice's Favorite Books of 2003, and received rave reviews from Publisher's Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Village Voice. Why Things Burn was the winner of a 2001 Firecracker Alternative Book Award (Special Recognition -- Spoken Word) and was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for 2001. Her work has been translated into Turkish and Greek, and has inspired theatrical adaptations and DJ-remixes.

Recent press has praised her work as "fierce," "unapologetic," "scorching" and "deliriously gutsy." She has been widely published in journals including The Utne Reader, Tikkun, nerve.com, mcsweeney's.net, Exquisite Corpse and Instant City. Her work has appeared in a number of anthologies including Live Through This: The Art of Self-Destruction, Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders of the Spoken Word Revolution, Don't Forget to Write!, Half Life: Jew-ish Tales from Interfaith Homes, With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn and Short Fuse: A Contemporary Anthology of Global Performance Poetry. She is also the cover girl on San Francisco Noir (Akashic Books, 2005).

Besides anchoring three national performance poetry tours, featuring with Maggie Estep, Hal Sirowitz and Lydia Lunch, Gottlieb has also appeared across the country with the Slam America bus tour and with notorious all-girl wordsters Sister Spit. She has performed at festivals coast-to-coast, including South by Southwest, Bumbershoot, and Ladyfest Bay Area.

Until 2006, she served as the poetry editor of the online queer literary magazine Lodestar Quarterly. She also was the poetry editor of Other Magazine and a co-organizer of ForWord Girls, the first spoken word festival for anyone who is, has been or will be a girl, which was held in September 2002.

Gottlieb teaches graduate-level creative writing, and has also performed and taught creative writing workshops at all levels around the country. She received her MFA from Mills College.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not your average picture book..., October 16, 2006

By 

Sarah Dopp (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jokes and the Unconscious: A Graphic Novel (Paperback)

This book tried to kill me. Seriously. It reached out through vicious, honest words and wild artwork with arresting fingers and grabbed hold of something inside of me. I didn't think I would survive, its fingernails were digging in so fiercely. I had no choice but to read the book from start to finish without stopping to breathe. It had me hostage. It finally eased up on its grip when I got to the end, but it left behind deep claw marks that aren't going to fade anytime soon.

It's not my story, but it feels like my story. It's not my voice, but it feels like it's speaking for me. It's not my art, but it seems to be illustrating my life. It's not my jokes, but it's carrying my laughter.

This book now has a permanent place on my coffee table. Gottlieb and DiMassa are brilliant.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended, October 17, 2006

By 

Carolyn Turgeon (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jokes and the Unconscious: A Graphic Novel (Paperback)

I don't normally read graphic novels, but as a long-time fan of Gottlieb's searing poetry I was curious about this book and how her voice would translate. It works gorgeously. This is an interesting, stunning collaboration--deeply sad, deeply funny, deeply wise. Each page feels like some sort of revelation. The loose, changing format--coupled with DiMassa's ingenious art--give Gottlieb free rein to be as raw and transcendant as she is in her best poems. I definitely recommend this book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent new book!, October 16, 2006

By 

C. Emch "emchy" (san francisco) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jokes and the Unconscious: A Graphic Novel (Paperback)

I have been a fan of the graphic novel as something more than comic strip for a longtime. I also am a big lover of traditional non-graphic literature. This collaboration of DiMassa and Gottlieb couldn't have happened to a better book. They together created something amazing. A graphic rollercoaster walking through a young womans journey to finding herself while dealing with a father's terminal illness - never does the material feel overly sentimental or trite. The material is handled in a way that is sensitive, heart-wrenching, and giggle inducing - the way that life love and tradegy often play out in the real world. Surreal, funny and just... perfect. Fans of DiMassa's Hothead Paisan won't be disappointed - there is plenty of queer and rockin riot grrl feminism. Fans of Gottlieb's iconic poetry also will find what they need and more in this book, as she wrenches through the pain and personal discovery with deftness, and a razor sharp eye for detail. Those who are new to both artists, whether you are queer or straight - the humanity of this book - it's honesty - will touch the heart of anyone who has ever loved a parent. I cannot recommend more wholeheartedly. Don't wait for a used copy. Buy it and love it. I can't even tell you in words how good this is. I laughed and cried my way through it, and plan on treasuring this book for a good long time.