Customer Reviews

Shortcomings

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Written in 3 "chapters," which are more like 3 film Acts, Shortcomings tells the tale of cynical, lust-soaked Ben Tanaka, a 30-year-old movie house manager in Berkeley. Even though his girlfriend Miko is a gorgeous Japanese cultural activist with sensitivity and intelligence, Ben's wandering eye for Anglo girls and his surly attitude cause friction in his relationship with disastrous consequences. Ben finds solace in his only friend, Alice, a spunky, sharp lesbian who attends Mills College. In this context, Shortcomings explores with sadness and hilarity sexual and racial stereotypes and the painful search for an authentic identity. The characters are painfully realistic, beset by misguided desires, raging egos, and intense selfishness. But Tomine's brilliance as an artist is to give his characters complexity, believability, and, yes, our sympathy. I was sad after I finished the book in 90 minutes of reading because I loved the characters and wanted to spend more time with them and found myself fantasizing a long-running TV show about them or a series of more graphic novels so I could follow their lives in more depth. Such is the pang this great book left me.

Shortcomings tells the story of a 30 year old Japanese-American man who is in a relationship with a Japanese-American woman. Though they have been together for years, their relationship is now on the rock as the two people try to understand the role of their ethnicity in their lives and relationships. The main male character finds Caucasian women to be more attractive than Japanese women, which his girlfriend believes is racist. The couple decides to separate when Ben's girlfriend goes away to NYC. After some failed relationships and one-night stands, Ben decides to follow her only to find that she is hiding her own secret (though it is an extremely anti-climatic secret). Ben discusses all of her personal issues with his Korean best friend who is a lesbian with a revolving door of girlfriends.

Though issues surrounding identity and the role of ethnicity in a person's life are certainly worthy of exploration, this graphic novel does not handle the material as well as other novels (graphic and otherwise). The characters appear insipid and shallow. Ben's best friend is portrayed as a stereotypical lesbian character with a new girlfriend each night. Ben himself is depicted as a "typical" male who tries to find himself by sleeping with and drooling over other women besides his girlfriend. His girlfriend is also a two-dimensional character who flees the relationship by literally moving away. The graphics are interesting and all in sepia which adds a melancholic mood. Still, the pictures are not that interesting and do not add much to the text.

Overall, I was disappointed by this selection and found both the text and pictures to be lacking. The theme of the story was quite interesting and in a different context would be a thrilling read.

I'm probably not an objective reviewer. I'm a white woman married to an Asian man, and we lived in the Bay Area for many years, so the subject matter was a bit close to the bone for me. At several points in the novel, I felt as though someone had been eavesdropping on my conversations. Tomine also does a great job of conveying subtle emotions through facial expressions. I loved it, and not just for the local references and jokes about Asian identity politics.

I loved Tomine's early collections, 32 Stories and Sleepwalk, but his last one (Summer Blonde) was a bit of a disappointment, feeling like a rehash of earlier material. This latest book collects issues 9-11 of Optic Nerve into a single narrative arc following a single protagonist. Despite this move from short story to novella-length, Tomine largely fails to take advantage of the space afforded to move into new thematic territory.

His work has always focused on loneliness, and yet again the main character is a socially awkward semi-hipster who tends to alienate people. Ben Tanaka is a 30-year-old manager of an art house cinema in Berkeley (presumably the UC Theater, which like the one Ben manages, was forced to close to due seismic retrofitting regulations), living with his beautiful Japanese-American girlfriend Miko. The story follows Ben's dying relationship with Miko and subsequent rebound attempts with various cute Anglo girls. But Ben is so plagued by insecurity and bitter snobbishness, and is so grumpy and cynical that it becomes increasingly hard as the book progresses to understand what any woman would see in him.

The one new theme Tomine introduces to his work is the struggle to define identity and identity politics among Asian-Americans. Ben, Miko, and even Ben's moxie-laden Korean-American lesbian pal Alice (who tend to steal any scene she's in), all grapple with various stereotypes and self-imposed expectations. However, none of this seems particularly inventive or fresh, and some scenes, such as Alice taking Ben to a family wedding as her beard feel particularly recycled. Then again, I'm not Asian-American, so maybe it has more resonance for that audience.

As usual, Tomine's art is amazing -- his attention to framing, line, and composition are second to none. That said, sometimes his faces tend to drift into similarity -- in a story where race is so central, it's not a good thing when an Anglo guy key to the story looks Asian. As with his other work, those familiar with the East Bay will recognize a lot of the backgrounds (Rockridge, the Durant food court, Cody's, etc.).

On the whole, the book is a disappointment -- it's just way too similar in tone and subject matter to his previous work. Tomine clearly is comfortable in the Berkeley-to-Brooklyn world of 20-30something hipster creative singletons and their friendships and relationships. But that's a pretty insular world, and I'd love to see him break out of it and turn his sharp observational gaze elsewhere. He got married last year, so maybe that'll lead to new directions in his storytelling.

Shortcomings I just want to make sure that everyone understands that this is just a collection the the three issue story from Optic Nerve 9, 10 and 11. It never really says that anywhere, in fact they seem to be implying that this is something entirely new. I was even flipping through it at a local store and it doesn't even say it's a collection in the book itself. A little misleading if you ask me, but still a good read.

This is mandatory reading for all human inhabitants of planet Earth. It should be discussed in school, used in therapy sessions for couples, discussed in marriage counseling. The writing is brilliant, the drawings expressive.

Without knowing much about Tomine, it turned me into a fan, although i prefer the more sarcastic work of Clowes and the more experimental work of Chris Ware. Some complain that it's emo. Well it's actually the opposite, with characters desperately trying to desensitize and getting rid of emotions in order to achieve through cynical justification what they momentarily think is "a higher purpose"

Surprising and rare treat. The combination of art and dialogue make for a richly detailed story and character development. Funny and sad, Tomine highlights the hypocricy, sadness, fear, loneliness and beauty of a relationship where both individuals are looking for something "more".

Shortcomings is a typical book for this generation of young readers. The main character is a miserably unhappy fellow, in his early 20's, who has an awful job and terrible relationships. He alienates his girlfriend and irritates most of the other people in his life. He bungles through his daily life, never feeling joy or even small moments of contentment. The book ends (and this will surprise no one who reads books of this type) with our fellow returning to his pathetic life, sans girlfriend, minus his one friend, hoping that somehow things have changed for the better. Yeah, right.

Having just finished Ginger Pye, a book from the middle of the last century, to Shortcomings, I have some questions: Have people really gone from having lovely lives to living every day on the edge of suicide? Where are all the Ginger Pye books of 2008? Are people really Shortcomings-miserable?

with simple, elegant linework Tomine creates scene with a sort of minimalistic verisimilitude. a modern take on love as seen through the mind of a judgmental anti-hero asian pseudo playboy...lesbians, stereotypes, sexploration, infidelity, Tomine packs this slim volume with a story to which many of Generation Me can relate.

check it for summin different

This is adrian tomine's first full-length work, if you accept the fact that this is just a fusing of three short works. This book has literally been created from the three installments of the optic nerve series in which Tomine took part.

The story is okay... the art is really what is interesting here. Jonathan Lethem compares tomine's "mise-en-scene" to Eric Rohmer's, but it would be more accurate to compare his style to Bresson's, since Tomine's art is so focused on gestures... especially HAND gestures. Its really interesting to see what Tomine chooses to take out. This is also an interesting point of comparison between him and Bresson/Rhomer: the lack of certain objects--what's left in and whats taken out.

I don't know a whole lot about graphic novels, but this guy is really interesting and although i find his characters a bit underdeveloped (but the characters themselves really don't matter) and his story a bit cliche, he's worth checking out because his drawing is so careful and imaginative.

For those of you drawn into the orientalism masking for cultural and personal reflection of Satrapi, I wouldn't tell you to go out and buy this book. If you are interested in quiet, faultless visuals that reflect on physical human subjects as much as on than their psychological qualities, Tomine is your hipster shaman.