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The Push Man and Other Stories Yoshihiro Tatsumi Adrian Tomine 9781896597850 Books

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The Push Man and Other Stories Yoshihiro Tatsumi Adrian Tomine 9781896597850 Books

Tags : The Push Man and Other Stories [Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Adrian Tomine] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <div><b>A collection of short stories from the grandfather of Japanese alternative comics.</b> Legendary cartoonist Yoshihiro Tatsumi is the grandfather of alternative manga for the adult reader. Predating the advent of the literary graphic novel movement in the United States by thirty years,Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Adrian Tomine,The Push Man and Other Stories,Drawn and Quarterly,1896597858,Literary,Graphic novels.,1935-2015,Comics & Graphic Novels,Comics & Graphic Novels Literary,General,Graphic Novels,Tatsumi, Yoshihiro,,Translations into English,Literature: Classics

The Push Man and Other Stories Yoshihiro Tatsumi Adrian Tomine 9781896597850 Books Reviews

Most of the stories in this book aren't nice. After the first couple of stories, you start to feel the wincing in your face as you start a new one. They are very well illustrated and the storytelling is what makes you read every single one of them. It definitely makes me want to read his other work.
Gripping. Like potato chips you can't just have one. Savage, shocking, tender, at times morbidly hilarious. These are incredible short works by a master of story-telling. If you are even reading this review, that means you have gotten this far already. Buy this, borrow this, read these somehow. They will only enrich your life.
These are Yoshihiro Tatsumi's stories from 1969, part of a series promoted by another comics artist whose works I always read Adrian Tomaine. These stories could certainly be about real people, as we are all pretty weird under the skin. The stories are almost shocking in their twisted way, unless you've read some of Tatsumi's work before. Think of the most outrageous human behavior you can imagine, and it'll show up in one of Tatsumi's stories. If you're a fan of Yoshihiro Tatsumi or Adrian Tomaine, you won't want to pass this one up.
This first Drawn & Quaterly (lavish, beautiful hardcover) compilation of Yoshihiro Tatsumi's work, edited by Adrian Tomine, consists of 16 short stories, originally published in 1969. Most of them are very short, just 8 pages long, and appeared in a magazine called 'Gekiga-Young'. Two longer stories at the end of the volume are more in line with what we will find in the two later books of stories from 1970 ('Abandon the Old in Tokyo') and 1971-1972 ('Goodbye').

An alternative title for this book could be 'The worst jobs in the world'. This is a list of occupations of the protagonists of these stories (all men)
* Factory worker
* Porn movies projectionist (when porn was yet illegal)
* Garbage incinerator operator
* Massage parlor ad-man (i mean, the guy walking the street with a placard saying 'Massage Parlor / Open 10 AM - 5 PM')
* University lab intern / sperm donor
* Pimp
* Push man (one who pushes passengers into crowded rush-hour subway trains)
* Sewer maintenance worker
* Handicapped & unemployed peeping tom
* Contract killer
* Auto mechanic
* Office clerk
* Disinfector (one that cleans & disinfects phones)
* Factory worker
* Seal authentificator at an insurance company
* ... and we don't know the job of the man in the last story, 'My Hitler', if he has one.

Also, for the women, we get quite a few bar hostesses.

As you can see, Tatsumi's work depicts the underbelly of the affluent urban Japanese society of the economic boom of the 60s, dealing with themes of existential alienation and sexual frustration. His focus is always humanist, he's not a Marxist toting party line slogans about the woes of the proletariat. He is direct and physical, yet elliptical and poetic at the same time. I am heavily reminded of Shohei Imamura's movies of the same period, like Criterion's 'The Pornographers' and the box-set 'Pigs, Pimps, & Prostitutes'.

Now the bad news. Reading this book in one sitting can be a rather monotone affair. The stories, while good when taken on their own, tend to be very much alike when taken all together. I don't know to what extent this is Tatsumi's fault (being rather one-noted in the year 1969, certainly the 8-page limit didn't help either) or Adrian Tomine's fault (in not choosing two or three stories that diverged from the common pattern.) Certainly the stories in later volumes are more varied in setting, structure and subject matter, as well as having some women protagonists, too. We must also remember that the natural habitat for this stuff is a bi-weekly manga magazine, not a "graphic novel".

Another qualm is the "Westernized" left-to-right format, that plays havoc with the original page layout. Hey, publishers, I've been reading manga in the original Japanese format for years now, and my head have not exploded yet, it's a myth!

Despite these shortcoming this is a must read for all Gekiga aficionados, or adult (as in grown-up) comics readers in general. Or, even more in general, for readers of good literature.