Amazon.com Review
Typical of Ben Katchor's recursive, compact style,
The Beauty Supply District is actually the title of three distinct entities: this collection of over 80 installments of his 8-panel comic strip "Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer" (appearing in
The Forward and other weekly papers); a new, 24-page story with which Katchor concludes; and the subject of that final story, a commercial district on the edge of Julius Knipl's imaginary, melancholy Gotham. In the beauty supply district, the city's aesthetic needs are catered to by businesses like Synthetic A Priori Corp., Surface Meaning Refinishers Inc., and the Senseless Elaboration Parlor.
That might be a lot to digest for anyone new to Knipl's wistful, chiaroscuro world (the first two collections of this strip, Stories and Cheap Novelties, might prove more accessible). But Beauty Supply District captures Katchor's strip at the height of its form--from semi-professional gravediggers competing at the Cemetery of the Expired Coupon Redeemer to the chance discovery (at a drug store, naturally) of how production of cheap writing instruments has far outstripped the demands of poetic inspiration.
New York Times Review of Books critic Edward Sorel called Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer "perhaps the most original comic strip since ... 'Krazy Kat' more than 80 years ago." Enthusiastic and deserved praise, but all the more reason that--to understand and appreciate something this unique--you really ought to see it for yourself. --Paul Hughes
From Publishers Weekly
Katchor (The Jew of New York) creates whimsically poetic comic strips out of the observational found-verse he extracts from the petty commercial economy at the grungy low end of classic city life. Katchor transforms hustling salesmen, obscure municipal agencies, nonspecific ethnics and cheapo real estate brokers into wonderfully comic literary surrogates for the real world cast of smalltime urban capitalism. He's equally talented at recreating the brooding, sign-clotted, mix-matched architectural ambience of a charmingly dingy and mammoth city in his quirky but precisely rendered b&w pen-and-wash drawings. The guide to Katchor's unnamed city (it could only be New York) is Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer, also the name of the comic strip that Katchor has produced since 1988. This book collects strips published in weekly newspapers from 1994 to 1997, plus one original story. Knipl travels through a virtual Gotham that is both comically strange and completely familiar, visiting the oldest continually vacant storefront in America ("a rare combination of poor location and high rent"). He also stops by the Misspent Youth Center, frequented by a long line of remorseful individuals "in hope of reclaiming some part of their misspent youth." The title tale is an original, wittily metaphorical story lamenting the demise of Sensum's Symmetry Shop, in the heart of the city's beauty supply district. One of many cash-and-carry sweatshops in the district aligned with varying aesthetic theories, Sensum's offers "cumulative impressions" and quick turnarounds for commercial package design or anonymous advice to painters and composers. But the beauty supply district is soon overrun by trendy "Meaning" and "Context" vendors, and the shop goes out of business. This is a hands-down brilliant comics collection by one of America's most entertaining and intellectually satisfying cartoonists, a recent recipient of a MacArthur grant. (July)
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