Customer Reviews

My New York Diary

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In My New York Diary, Julie Doucet writes about her life after high school, including art school and her time in New York City. This slim volume details boring classes, bad boyfriends, her personal battle with seizures, a miscarriage, and more. Doucet does a good job with the English language, especially considering she is a native French speaker from Canada. Although the writing is honest and deals with many painful issues, it is very much one-sided (this is a diary, after all). I found myself wishing that Doucet had fleshed out the stories more instead of simply detailing her own points of view, like how possessive and psycho her boyfriend becomes over time. These plot lines are interesting enough to draw you through the book (no pun intended), but you end up feeling that there is much more here. This writing style is the mark of a young writer, perhaps.

A note about the artwork in this graphic novel. Doucet is a fine artist, but each and every frame and page are so incredibly jam-packed with clutter - bottles, cans, forks, records, dirty dishes, etc. etc. etc. - that I began to get claustrophobic just looking at it all. It made me wonder if the author is a serious hoarder bound for reality television fame, or if she just draws that way. Instead of giving the reader more information, the cluttered style actually distracts from the story. I wonder if the author tried to use her cluttered drawing style to make up for a thin and lopsided story.

If you are a fan of autobiographical graphic novels, especially by women artists, you might want to take a look at My New York Diary and support this increasingly interesting genera.

I have one small complaint. Although my volume just took a few hours to read, the binding came loose and the cover fell off. I am not sure if this is a widespread problem with Drawn & Quarterly books, but it is something you should be aware of if you collect graphic novels.

Julie Doucet really has her pen on the pulse of experiences, particularly hers. This volume focuses on her adventures while living in the heart of New York City, and indeed makes for entertainment. The wonderful illustrations only compliment the story line, and makes the reader want to gobble up the book.

So you're a confused young man and trying to figure out exactly what women want. Well, Mme Doucet won't help you out there. But she will show you what women HATE in men with brutal honesty. And the guys are utter jerks and crybabies.

I probably was like one of the characters in this book and knew someone like Julie when I was younger. I seem to recall sort of being like her roommate, the one always dreading World War III. Why are us guys so obtuse? Probably for phallogocentric reasons. We get wrapped up in upright behavior and lose out on all the fun we could have by being bent. We're also selfish sometimes in the wrong way. (Women do like selfish men, just not stupidly selfish men.)

It would be nice if Julie could follow this one up with a story of a successful relationship with some guy. Because we care for her and want her to succeed.

This book (in fact, everything I have ever read by Doucet) is purely one note. A dire, angry attack on the stereotypes she has formed about men (not to mention those she applies to the cliches she claims to have been involved with), this particular story goes on to prove more of the opposite-sided although far-more-eloquent bigotry of Dave Sim in his anti-woman rants in Cerebus than anything the idea of misogyny could hope to presume. Julie Doucet proves herself to have a purely emotional agenda that lacks even the basic notion of rationality and proves just how stupid single-minded and self-righteous intellectuals are capable of being.

Good for the laughs at taking things the wrong way and other forms of profound misunderstanding of human motivations. Absolute trash on the gutter point spectrum of the industry.