Saturday, April 30, 2011

One Night Only!

Yet another Public Service Announcement:

katchor 1 fig. a: Katchor in the wry 1

Tonight, one night only, the inimitable genius* of Ben Katchor, live and in-person, at Drawn & Quarterly!

Katchor, the man Michael Chabon once called "the creator of the last great American comic strip," will be presenting a slide lecture in support of his latest title, The Cardboard Valise. The last time I saw Katchor present a slide lecture here in Montreal, it was at the Cinémathèque, and his performance was a tour de force of deadpan surrealism of such magnitude that it easily made its way onto my list of top ten spoken-word engagements of all time.  It's been about ten years since then, and there it has remained.  So there.

No idea who or what I'm talking about? Here's an example of Katchor's work from Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer, the aforementioned "last great American comic strip."

katchor 2 fig. b: Katchor in the wry 2

What does this have to do with food? Apparently everything.

Ben Katchor @ Drawn & Quarterly (211 Bernard St. W., 279-2224), 7:00 PM, Saturday, April 30, 2011

You can find the event's Facebook page here.

aj

*I try not to use that term liberally, but, what can I say, the guy was a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.

4 comments:

andrea said...

Wish I could've been there. I was at that earlier performance too, on 5/14/00 (according to his signature in my copy of The Jew of New York, which he embellished with a drawing of Enoch Letushim, one of the book's characters.

aj kinik said...

Hi, Andrea,
Wow, thanks for reminding me of the details.

Another fine performance, this time to a much more receptive audience. An excursus on fortune cookies was just one of the many highlights.

michelle said...

How about the bagel/bialy ballyhoo during the Q & A? My favourite moment, though, admittedly, I had perhaps imbibed too liberally from my flask to be objective.

Leigh said...

Wow - I didn't know about this guy, but like his style. thanks for the headsup!