A Few Perfect Hours by Josh Neufeld
With gentle humor and a keen eye for revelatory detail, Neufeld explores religion and spirituality, politics and personalities, and the mysteries of everyday life. From the creator of A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge and the illustrator of the New York Times bestseller The Influencing Machine: Brook Gladstone On the Media.
In A Few Perfect Hours (and Other Stories from Southeast Asia and Central Europe), autobiographical cartoonist Josh Neufeld takes us on a dramatic tour of places as exotic and different as Thailand, Singapore, and the former Yugoslavia. Highlights include Neufeld and traveling companion Sari Wilson's stint as extras in a Chinese-language Singaporean soap opera, a train trip through war-torn Serbia, and a near-disastrous cave adventure in Thailand. With gentle humor and a keen eye for the revelatory detail, Neufeld explores religion and spirituality, politics and personalities, and the mysteries of everyday life. His stories reflect the backpacker's conflicted feelings: a yearning for adventure mixed with homesickness and a sense of disconnection, trapped in a reality constantly in flux. In the collection's title story, Neufeld illustrates how the tensions and fears involved in travel through a strange country are dispelled by a Thai monk's blessing. In On a Mission, Neufeld contrasts the viewpoints of American Baptist missionaries in northern Thailand with the traditions of a Buddhist festival. And the book's longest story, Cremations, Cubicles, and Cant, is a brand-new 20-page tale about the death of Neufeld's grandmother, which contrasts her Jewish funeral service with a Balinese cremation ceremony; it forms the emotional heart of the book. Evoking both Tintin-creator Herg and comics journalist Joe Sacco, Neufeld's stories operate on a very human level, and his art reflects that with its careful depictions of people from different cultures and backgrounds. iComics] Throughout the collection, Neufeld uses the comics form to experiment with narrative and point-of-view. The themes and conventions of the eight stories in A Few Perfect Hours will resonate with readers both within and outside the comics world. Comics Worth Reading observes that Neufeld's comics provide a street-level view of other cultures, with nothing whitewashed. . . . The stories often remind us of the point of travelling -- to experience and come to terms with the unknown.| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781891867798 |
| ISBN 10 | 1891867792 |
| Title | A Few Perfect Hours |
| Author | Josh Neufeld |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Alternative Comics |
| Year published | 2004-09-16 |
| Number of pages | 128 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |