One Hundred Demons (Alex Awards) [Hardcover]

Lynda Barry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 13, 2002

Buddhism teaches that each person must overcome 100 demons in a lifetime. In One Hundred Demons, a collection of 20 autobiographical comic strip stories from Salon’s popular “Mothers Who Think” section, Lynda Barry wrestles with some of hers in her signature quirky, irrepressible voice. From “Dancing” and “Hate” to “Dogs” and “Magic,” the tales included here are at once hilarious and heartbreaking. As she delves into the delights and sorrows of adolescence, family, identity, and love, Barry’s ear for dialogue, dead-on delivery, and painterly style showcase her considerable genius.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As anyone who's read her comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek or novel Cruddy knows, Barry has a pitch-perfect sense of the way kids talk and think. Childhood's cruelties and pleasures, remembered in luminous, unsparing detail, have become the central topic of her work. The semi-autobiographical vignettes of this new work, originally serialized in Salon, follow the same basic format as the strip: blocks of enthusiastic first-person commentary at the top of each panel, squiggly, childlike-but stylized-drawings and dizzy word-balloon dialogue between the characters. Here, though, Barry gets a chance to stretch out, drawing out her memories and impressions into long, lively, sometimes sweet and sometimes painful narrative sequences on a seemingly endless list of curiously compelling topics: the scents of people's houses (one is "a combination of mint, tangerines, and library books"), dropping acid at 16 with a grocery bagger, the colors of head lice and the art of domesticating abused shelter dogs. The structure of the book is a drawing exercise that allows a hundred demons to flow out of the artist's pen onto paper. Barry's demons are the personal objects and effects that remind her of the in-between emotional states from her early life. The result is simultaneously poignant and hilarious-never one at the expense of the other-and so are her loopy, sure-lined drawings, which make both the kids and the adults look as awkward and scrunched-up as they feel.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Barry uses an Asian painting exercise called "One Hundred Demons" to organize and connect 17 "autobifictionalographic" stories in which she meditates on a variety of demons that include pretentious boyfriends, lost childhood friends, family relationships, and even the 2000 presidential election. The author's keen observation and honesty draw readers to these sometimes painful, often poignant moments. In "Dancing," she explains that almost everyone in her family danced with great pleasure. Then a casually cruel comment from an admired neighbor made her self-conscious enough to stop. "Resilience" explores the mistaken belief of some adults that young children who have experienced a trauma will somehow forget and move past it. Here Barry allows speech balloons to fill in the gaps to which she alludes in her main text, with heart-wrenching effect. A more lighthearted story deals with the unique smells that permeate homes. Most of each story is told in text blocks at the top of the panel, while speech balloons convey specific details and characterizations. Barry's artwork is almost childlike, and the awkwardness of her drawings works well with the emotional tone her tales evoke. In the last few pages, she demonstrates the technique used for the original exercise and encourages readers to draw from their own experiences. This is an amazing collection, and those who connect with it will come away with a deep appreciation for Barry.
Jody Sharp, Harford County Public Library, MD
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Sasquatch Books (August 13, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570613370
• ISBN-13: 978-1570613371
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #327,977 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lynda Barry has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator and teacher and found they are very much alike. She is the inimitable creator behind the seminal comic strip that was syndicated scross North America in alternative weeklies for two decades, Ernie Pook's Comeek featuring the incomparable Marlys and Freddy, as well as the books One! Hundred! Demons!, The! Greatest! of! Marlys!, Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel, Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies!, The Good Times are Killing Me which was adapted as an off-Broadway play and won the Washington State Governor's Award. Her bestselling and acclaimed creative writing-how to-graphic novel for Drawn & Quarterly, What It Is, won the Eisner Award for Best Reality Based Graphic Novel and R.R. Donnelly Award for highest literary achievement by a Wisconsin author. D+Q plans to publish a multivolume collection of Ernie Pook's Comeek, Barry's next prose novel, and the follow up and creative drawing companion to What It Is, November 2010's Picture This: The Near-Sighted Monkey Book.

Born in Wisconsin in 1956, Lynda studied at Evergreen State College.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Maybe Barry's best yet!, August 22, 2002

By 

QTeacher "qteacher" (Oakland, CA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: One Hundred Demons (Alex Awards) (Hardcover)

This "autobifictionalography" collects Barry's brilliant salon.com sketches of the demons we all face in our lives. It is exactly that universality that makes for magical reading. The intense specificity of childhood's horrors made me feel like I was reading my own life, not Barry's. Barry's artistry is in telling and illustrating these stories with incredible humor as well as unlimited heart. Particularly haunting of the eighteen stories are the lost friendship in "Magic" and "Resilience" which gives the lie to adult fantsies of childhood innocence. It's increasingly clear that Lynda Barry is our finest writer of the emotional lives of damaged children. She gives voice to kids that few people ever listened to. Having been one of those kids, it's an amazing feeling to realize that you are understood and you were not alone.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just Lynda Barry's usually awesome, trippy stuff, July 24, 2003

By 

Catherine S. Vodrey (East Liverpool, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: One Hundred Demons (Alex Awards) (Hardcover)

Lynda Barry's "One! Hundred! Demons!" is just another astonishingly wonderful book in a long line of astonishingly wonderful books. Using Japanese inks and brushes, she categorizes the demons of her childhood. We see everything from resilience to hate to common scents, from magic to "girlness" to dogs to cicadas.

Among the many pleasures of the book--Barry's extremely simple yet enormously evocative illustrations, the awesome ear she has for the way children speak to each other, the cheerful colors belying much of the sadness inherent in her work--is the section entitled "Magic." This regards Barry's rejection, at age thirteen, of her two-years-younger best friend. It's easy to tell that even more than thirty years later, Barry feels shame over this episode. She so deftly sketches the psyche of her thirteen-year old self that we are left alternating between complete understanding of her actions and rueful sorrow that she couldn't ignore the age difference.

This is a funky, trippy book that's simultaneously a quick read and something you want to linger over the second (and third, and fourth) time you read it. Long may Lynda Barry rule!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow, March 5, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: One Hundred Demons (Alex Awards) (Hardcover)

I stayed up late into the night to read this book, frequently crying. Lynda Barry has clearly made an effort to be as honest as possible, and as a result, these stories just really ring true. This book is a rare combination of funny and sad and smart. She handles some pretty lofty themes--memory, abuse of power, family--with an insistence on staying in reality. It's a provocative book, and a pleasure to read. I'm buying copies for several of my friends.