Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: Stories

Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: Stories
by Ben Katchor

Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: Stories
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Book Summary Information

Author: Ben Katchor
Contributor: Michael Chabon
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1996-09-01
ISBN: 0316482943
Number of pages: 112
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Book Reviews of Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: Stories

Book Review: Julius Knipl, where are you now?
Summary: 4 Stars

Julius Knipl: Real Estate Photographer Stories is a collection of Ben Katchor's comics about about middle-class guys in New York City. At first glance each comic (usually 4 or 8 panels) seems to have no point, and the tone tends to remind me of the Jim books (I Made Some Brownies, And They Were Pretty Good, etc.), but Katchor seems to have staked out some pretty bizarre literary territory with these little stories.

One of my favorites concerns a man who is nearly poked in the eye with an umbrella on a rainy day. He's telling a companion his story, when a bystander overhears and tells him that many city residents are actually suffering from eye injuries on a day like this. This eye-injury enthusiast takes our man to the hospital, to see him "offer condolences to the families of the injured."

Another story concerns a group of volunteers who man phone lines all night, just to take calls from concerned citizens who have heard fire engine or ambulance sirens. Lots of the stories are about businessmen with bizarre, pathetic, or just loopy invention ideas: a suitcase that turns into a wastebasket, a storefront which sells rock candy, but only wholesale...

The text is punctuated by hilarious proper names, such as:

Blood & Sawdust Brand Cirkus Straws

The Ascending Colon, with Horace Bismuth and Vivian Scybala

Citric Acid Council

Viosh Shirue's Natural Rainwater Cistern

Katchor doesn't look down at his characters or approach them with anything similar to condescension. If I am motivated to feel anything at all after reading this, it's a bit more humility and compassion for my fellow man. At times these little stories are laugh-aloud funny, but mostly they just bring a smile and a little chuckle.

I am glad I ran across this book.

ken32

And yes, these pieces were not created to be consumed en masse. If you find a few amusing or worthwhile, but they get tiresome after a bit, just put the book down, and read a few of them each day, as you would if your daily newspaper carried them.

Summary of Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: Stories

Julius Knipl, the rumpled antihero of Ben Katchor's cult cartoon strip, comes alive in this all-new collection of strange and strangely absorbing urban adventures. The Knipl stories collected here resurrect a lost metropolis and its residents, summoning up half-forgotten yesterdays and celebrating the surreal substrate of the quotidien.
Ben Katchor's dreamscape is peopled by transistor radio listeners, door-knob triers, false eyebrow importers, and a late-night-perambulating real estate photographer named Julius Knipl. The vaguely melancholy stories in his eight-panel comic strips reflect a fondness for the forgotten, the obscure, and the merely overlooked. What happens to the city's wholesale calendar salesmen in February? Who buys last year's tinned seedless grapes? Katchor's shadowed line drawings of a gray metropolis evoke musty smells, the shuffling steps of retirees, and a proliferating autumnal chill. Readers who enjoy his work in their local weekly papers, as well as NPR listeners who have been held captive by the "Knipl Radio-Cartoons" will be glad to linger a little longer in the dream life of Katchor's world.

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