The Push Man and Other Stories | Yoshihiro Tatsumi

The Push Man and Other Stories | Yoshihiro Tatsumi | awesome

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The Push Man and O...

	The Push Man and Other Stories Yoshihiro Tatsumi Drawn and Quarterly, 2005 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A collection of short stories from the grandfather of Japanese alternative comics.

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, Tatsumi created a library of literary comics that draws parallels with modern prose fiction and today's alternative comics.

Designed and edited by one of today's most popular cartoonists, Adrian Tomine, The Push Man and Other Stories is the debut volume in a groundbreaking new series that collects Tatsumi's short stories about Japanese urban life. Tatsumi's stories are simultaneously haunting, disturbing, and darkly humorous, commenting on the interplay between an overwhelming, bustling, crowded modern society and the troubled emotional and sexual life of the individual.

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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

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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.

Mind blowing short stories

This book was recommended to me by Amazon having bought some of editor Tomine's comics. But while his Shortcomings is a very good comic, The Push Man and Other Stories is simply amazing.
I am generally not a fan of manga or Japanese comics because I don't like the style of drawing the characters, but the artwork by Tatsumi immediately attracted me (a pleasant surprise because the "Look Inside" feature is not available for this item).
But, boy, did these stories blew me away! They are amazingly daring for the time (compared to most of the European comincs of the time), they are still strikingly relevant. There is a sort of existential quality about them and I was immediately reminded of the Palm-of-the-Hand Stories by Kawabata, which I'd recommend if you like this collection. They linger in your mind and form a sort of visual poetry only the best of comics achieve. This is recognised by Fantagraphics and this edition is quite splendid with an introduction and an interview with Tatsumi as a bonus.
I have a feeling I will read this collection more than once. In any case, after finishing the book, I immediately ordered Abandon the Old in Tokyo!

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What a treat :)

Around Christmas, I got a package in from a friend. Apparently she had picked a manga at random from my wishlist and sent it to me. This book had been an interest to me but I hadn't really planned on getting it.
I'm very glad she did send it to me. Each comic has a nice, subtle way of getting the message across. And believe me, there is a message in each of the short comics within the book.
This has been a very good read (I've read it several times now) and I intend to follow through with the other books in the series. :)

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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