The Push Man and Other Stories

by Yoshihiro Tatsumi

Book Overview

Thirty years before the advent of the literary graphic novel movement in the United States, Yoshihiro Tatsumi created a library of comics that draw parallels to modern prose fiction and today's alternative comics. The stories collected in The Push Man are simultaneously haunting, disturbing, and darkly humorous. A lone man travels the country, projecting pornographic films for private individuals while attempting to maintain a normal home life...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1770460764
• ISBN13: 9781770460768
• Release Date: April 2012
• Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.5" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

awesome

book arrived in perfect condition, gritty- every day life subject matter that everyone likes to keep secret brought out shamelessly into the open. loves it.

Bloody'ell!

Yoshihiro Tatsumi, The Push Man and Other Stories (Drawn and Quarterly, 2005) The Push Man is the kind of thing that's going to weird you out anyway, but it will do so even more when you realize that all of the little stories collected here were actually written thirty-five years before the book's publication. To say Tatsumi was ahead of his time is, perhaps, the understatement of the year. Because of the odd time differential, pretty much everything I could say about this book would need to be reversed, and would be less appropriate for the review. For example, Tatsumi doesn't show stylistic similarities to Charles Burns; Burns shows stylistic similarities to Tatsumi. (Either way round, it's a compliment.) Burns is an excellent point of comparison for those unfamiliar with Tatsumi; both are looking to get under society's skin and play around with the guts for a while before showing them to you like an eager-to-please six-year-old holding a dead badger out to you as a present and expecting you to exclaim with joy. Of course, the lives themselves are different-- Burns chronicles the stoner-era Pacific Northwest, while Tatsumi is looking at the sixties salaryman-- but looking at the two artists side-by-side, what's more apt to strike the reader is the universality of the darker human emotions. Pain, rage, confusion, hopelessness, and despair float through Tatsumi's characters as if they're breathing it straight from the air. Tatsumi captures these essences wonderfully. You have to wonder about the psyche of a person who's capable of defining characters so well with so few words and then doing such horrible things to them (or letting those things be done to them). I don't think it would be terribly much of a stretch to at least hazard the hypothesis that Tatsumi's work, when it first appeared in 1969, may have been the single biggest thing to ever happen to graphic literature. Tatsumi made people sit up and say "hey, maybe this is something we should take seriously." Translations of his work into English are long overdue (except, of course, for bootlegs), and very welcome. This is great stuff. Seek it out. **** ½

What a wonderful surprise!

I have no idea what pulled me to this book when I first heard about it, but I am glad it did. I have not, as many others have not, heard of Tatsumi and that is a shame. It is good to know, however, there is a plan to release more volumes of work (please hurry). Sixteen stories comprise the first volume and all are powerful. Angst ridden? You don't know the meaning of angst until you read this book. There is very little hope in this with tales of unrequited love, murder, abortion, prostitution and transvestism, peeping toms and suicide. The central character is always a man in some state of despair. The tales, though, some quite wordless, and the drawings, beautifully rendered, pull the reader quickly from one to the next. Despite being a potential downer (and some may cursorily say misogynistic), the stories are actually darkly comic and well told. I paid full price for this book because I didn't want to wait for it - I'm very happy I did. Buy this book!