The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist

I hope it doesn't trivialize last week's New Book of the Week, Erica C. Barnett's memoir of alcoholic blackouts and self-destruction, to say that the humiliating confessions in this book are nearly as relentless and excruciating. Because the humiliations, in the case of this graphic memoir, are tiny: failed bookstore events, comicon party snubs, parenting meltdowns, extracted from a life of evident professional and personal success. But there's something about that ceaseless rhythm of minor abasement, presented, as always, in Tomine's pristine, deadpan lines, that is both hilarious—I laughed out loud more than I have for any book since The Dog of the South—and, finally, moving, as Tomine himself questions, and then resumes, his maniacal devotion to his career and craft.