Hand-Drying in America: And Other Stories

It looks like a graphic novel. The Library of Congress catalogues it as a graphic novel, but it doesn't quack like a graphic novel. So just what is "Hand-Drying in America"? It is a royal quarto-sized (12 inches by 11 ½ inches) coffee table book that brings together fifteen years of Katchor's "graphic commentary" on today's city scape for "Metropolis" magazine. All told, 159 pieces (plus the covers, see below) consisting of anywhere from eight to 23 panels, with the norm somewhere in the middle. They appeared monthly from 1998 to 2012. Go to metropolismag.com to see the most recent piece. Typically, Katchor employs an oversized panel in each strip to highlight his subject. For example, the title piece, "Hand-Drying in America", begins with an enlarged panel showing the range of hand-dryers confronting a restaurant restroom patron.The editors of "Metropolis" made an inspired choice when they engaged Katchor to provide his monthly takes on the foibles and follies of urban design. As we know from his "Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer" series, he doesn't miss a thing. He has an unerring eye for the whacky and whimsical notions that find expression in our cities. From "The Symbolic Building" ("As the most dimwitted passerby can see, the building's form echoes that of a humble shoe-fitting bench") to the self-defeating urge to bring each square inch of buildable space to the bottom line, "Under the Bed" --"It was the last virgin floor space in our home", he doesn't miss a thing.There are three two-page pieces in the collection. The first, "What Bruno Yule Heard" picks up on the farfetched claims made by an apartment building developer to transform the lack of adequate soundproofing into a benefit: "The sound of human copulation is a touch of nature in untrammeled form." And trammeled nature, faux foliage, gets its ten seconds of fame in "The False Forest". "For the edification and pleasure of the nation's 40 million hay fever sufferers . . . a vast collection of artificial trees has been assembled in a six-acre tract in southern New Jersey." In a similar vein see "Peabold's Field Guide to Air Conditioners of North America."Katchor also takes on the costs of corrupt, over-zealous and ultimately self-defeating zoning and planning regulation. In "Rules and Regulations of the Necropolis" he makes fun of restrictions placed on cemetery monuments and in "Two Violations" he deals with the backlash from bribery that defeats enforcement of height restrictions - "two floors too many."Do not overlook the front and back covers and the accompanying endpapers, copyright and title page. Here we have Katchor telling a story dealing with the environmental and other excesses involved in publishing "luxurious `'art' books" like the one you are about to read. His narrator, one Josef Fuss, asks "Are these few moments of literary and visual pleasure we enjoy via books worth all the human suffering and environmental depredation?" Katchor raises similar questions in "The Tragic History of the Oversized Magazine", observing "Their destiny is linked to the Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham, the Porterhouse steak, the zoot suit and other material excesses of history."End note. In his back cover blurb, David Kunzle, the author of "The Early Comic Strip", describes Katchor as "a Rudolphe Topffer redivivus: meandering story line, satire of tourism and odd scientific language and claims, non sequiturs, bizarre translocations." In case you didn't know (I didn't) Topffer (1799-1846) is considered "an important precursor to the modern art form of comics." "Redivivus" means "come back to life". You may read my reviews of earlier Katchor work by clicking on "See all My Reviews" and paging back to those posted on September 9, 2012 ("The Cardboard Valise"); August 31, 2012 ("Cheap Novelties") and August 25, 2012 ("Julius Knipl Real Estate Photographer: Stories").

I realize that it's been 24 years since the original book from this artist, Cheap Novelties, but his art style has degraded in that time, especially in the second half of this book. Gone are the dreamlike ink washes of Cheap Novelties and The Beauty Supply District that drew you into a noir, rain-soaked and decaying New York. Instead, every page of this book is a riot of bright color that seriously detracts from the linework.Something also happened halfway through the book. The familiarity of the linework changed to a much thinner style that lost a lot of life. The stories changed from New York-centered "imaginary nostalgia" of absurd architecture, failed salesmen and middle-aged sorts with regret to much less interesting scenarios with characters of the "shallow fashionable young gay male crowd" types one finds in pop culture and scenarios in places such as Florida. The dark luncheonettes and subways are gone, it becomes all airy lofts and sparse spaces.The artist seems to have lost his way and lost his magic touch for the inkwashed nostalgic New York of his earlier works, and that's unfortunate. If someone is unfamiliar with Katchor, give them a copy of Cheap Novelties instead. This one would not get them hooked.

I really enjoyed these stories. I wasn't sure the color would work with Katchor's wry writing and dense drawing–his work seems nearly film noir. But I was pleasantly surprised at how the color really amplified the emotion and made the stories even more engaging.This is a large work and each story (generally just one story per page) is made even more enjoyable in this large format. I really enjoyed being able to relish the frenetic drawings in a size suitable to lengthy perusal. Many stories have a monochromatic feel with sparse color aded for drama. It is a pleasing effect, interspersed with higher chroma stories, and adds a lot of texture to the volume.The writing is classic Katchor. If you enjoyed any of his previous books you are sure to love this.

I'm savoring this with great restraint - allowing myself one or 2 pages a day.Wonderful subtle drawings attached to celebrations of minutiae and the wonders of humanity.I thought I had all Ben Katchor's books - what a thrill to find this.

I wish the local newspaper would carry him. The reader needs a particular background to "get" Katchor".

I am a long time fan of Ben Katchor's. I love the nostalgia and the style reminds me of 1940 films. Sometime I imagine them and black and white (and then I found The Beauty Supply District). Mr Katchor is one of my favorite artists and writers.

This book was boring, buy unoffensive.

Captures the place where we all live within our illusion of not having lint in our belly buttons. And does it with wonderful graphic comic/illustrations. My mind on normal rev.

Unique. Marvellous. Moving. Simply wonderful.

Once again Ben Katchor transports us to sublimely otherworldly mindscapes with his trademark warmth and wistfulness. Fresh, peripheral visions abound.

A compilation of years of graphic work Katchor produced for Metropolis Magazine. The book will definitely change the way you think about urban life, society, culture and architecture. A sometimes wry, sometime bawdy and sometime completely intellectual approach to humour you'll grow to love it and then never want to stop reading it. Recommended for thinkin' persons.