Borb

(Hardback)

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Description

Selected for The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2016

Borb by Jason Little (Shutterbug Follies, Motel Art Improvement Service) is the story of Borb, a severely alcoholic homeless man. Borb is a downtrodden urban Candide whose misfortunes pile up at an alarming rate. The narrative is presented as a series of daily newspaper strips as the author draws on the long and complex tradition of the comic strip slapstick vagabond archetype. At once hilarious, horrifying, and full or heart, Borb depicts the real horrors specific to present-day urban homelessness. Borb is Little's most complex and challenging work.

Jason Little studied photography at Oberlin College, and now resides in Brooklyn with writer Myla Goldberg and their daughter Zelie Goldberg-Little. He has been drawing cartoons since he was a child. In addition to acclaimed Shutterbug Follies and Motel Art Improvement Service, he also created the Xeric Awardwinning Jack's Luck Runs Out, as well as a number of short works for various cartoon anthologies.

Reviews

Selected for The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2016 "What makes Little's approach and execution so impactful is the way it subverts the wacky expectations of the medium. Chestnuts like pratfalls, farts and dentures flying out of mouths are coupled with their real-life spouses: gruesome compound fractures, life-threatening food poisoning, and gory, debilitating oral surgery. This dichotomy is most deftly rendered when the protagonist's frustrating loss of a belt leads to a series of trouser drops presented simultaneously with punch-line rhythm and a sense of heartbreaking hopelessness."--The Chicago Tribune "When we talk about something "being human" or a "universal experience," what we hope to mean is that there are things--emotions and feelings, regardless of how they're gotten to, that bind us through basic empathy: shared recognition and understanding of a thing lived or felt. The fundamental achievement of Jason Little's Borb is the manner in which he harnesses that attention, underpinning the trials and tribulations of his main character with equal amounts of mirth and despair."--The Onion A.V. Club "Little's elegant linework, minimal dialogue, and unwavering focus on the man's day-to-day struggles are powerful, giving us a gruesome, slapstick view of society's underbelly." -- Publishers Weekly "Borb is rich in the way that Little is able to present shocking and dark themes in short, light spurts to give the reader an overall greater depth. While Borb is a comic strip, its impact is novelistic in every sense."--Cleaver Magazine "[...] There is no way this book will not get a reaction out of you. It is an early contender for book of the year."--Mental Floss

Author Bio

Jason Little was born in 1970 and raised in Binghamton, New York. He studied photography at Oberlin College, and now resides in Brooklyn with writer Myla Goldberg and their daughter Zelie Goldberg-Little. He has been drawing cartoons since he was a child. In addition to Shutterbug Follies and Motel Art Improvement Service, he has also written and illustrated the Xeric Award-winning Jack's Luck Runs Out, as well as a number of short works for various cartoon anthologies.