The Cardboard Valise
Book | Ben Katchor
Idiosyncratic graphic novel with a sharp bite.
The Cardboard Valise, Ben Katchor's latest graphic novel, brilliantly displays his idiosyncratic and wholly unique approach to storytelling while refining themes and ideas intrinsic to his work. Some of those themes—the erasure of one culture by a more rapacious and inferior one; the threat of homogeneity; the irreversible losses wrought by "progress"—have informed Katchor's work from the start of his career yet, in Valise, his critique has developed a welcome bite. Unlike the characters in his Julius Knipl series who often seemed little more than surreal urban types, many of his new characters are dimensional and heir to all-too-human weaknesses: love, lust, uncontrollable hatred, even suicidal impulses. The dreaminess of Katchor's world is intact—the diners, department stores, and museums with their inscrutable names still line his streets. And the tension he casts between image and text in his panels remains rich with poetry and contradiction. What's new is a sense of urgency and gravitas. Katchor seems to be saying that loss is inevitable but, with The Cardboard Valise, he's showing us how badly it hurts.
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