Auto-Phobia (Spiegelman)

Auto-Phobia
Art Spiegelman (2008)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was found in a Little Free Library in Bushwick, Brooklyn, on Bainbridge Street near Howard Ave. I haven't decided whether I should return it there or to the next one I see while walking. (It depends on which neighborhood I walk into next once the weather warms up, I suppose.)

This is meant to look like an actual art journal that Spiegelman kept to help combat writer's block back in 2007, and there are regular updates of whatever comes to mind. It's a little out there sometimes, but he carries on. Since he makes an R. Crumb reference, I'm guessing that Crumb is one of his inspirations. I honestly don't know much about Crumb except for a book I read many years back that I won at Lunacon. He was someone my older brothers probably read.

Anyway, Spiegelman's name rings a bell but I don't recognize his style in these pages, so I don't know where I might know the name from.

This was a short quick read. Yes, art books count as reading -- there are words on almost all the pages, and the pictures themselves tell stories if you follow them. Which I did.

And, yes, the book is going into my bag to go to another free library. Just not the one in front of the grammar school.

So this is one real, solid, paper book for the year. And I'm counting it as nonfiction because it's a journal, so even the "fiction" in it is editorialized to represent something. I don't think this book checks any boxes on my Reading Challenge list.

If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs.