My Badly Drawn Life

by Gipi, Jamie Richards (Translator)

Overview

This coming-of-age graphic memoir is a relentless and exhilarating journey to the depths of the human condition, rendered with precision and verve by one of the world's greatest living cartoonists.

"You've always got to laugh at tragedy. That's why I laugh about my ailment. Ailments. About being a sexual spastic. About my perennial, cowardly, tantalizing desire to die. You can laugh about anything. Almost." Spoken by his self-depiction, these bitter words set the tone for Gipi's pitch-black humor in this unvarnished and uncompromising autobiographical tale. A young adult adrift in the world, Gipi's stand-in grapples with sexuality, insecurity, deception, depression, drug use, fading friendships, and the capricious cruelties of the world as he struggles to determine whether his life is worth living.
Drawn in Gipi's signature elegantly scribbled ink style and punctuated by vivid watercolor splashes, My Badly Drawn Life weaves through the past and present, through narratives both real and imagined, to create an impressionistic account of his complex inner life. In this kaleidoscopic journey into the depths of his psyche, Gipi processes the shadowy traumas of his upbringing; in doing so, he produces a gripping work of utter cartooning mastery.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781683965213
Publisher:	Fantagraphics Books
Publication date:	03/22/2022
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	7.40(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Gipi (Gianni Pacinotti) is an Italian cartoonist whose graphic novel Notes for a War Story won “Best Book” at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. He also teaches and has directed a film, 2011’s The Last Man on Earth. He lives in Pisa, Italy.


Jamie Richards is an Italian-to-English translator from Southern California currently based in Milan, Italy. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Oregon and an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa.

Editorial Reviews

01/31/2022

In this raw and bawdy graphic memoir, Italian cartoonist Gipi (Land of the Sons) anxiously reviews his messy life and varying maladies, and seeks some kind of peaceful balance. The fragmented biography opens with a depressed Gipi (“Nothing interests me anymore”) obsessing over illnesses, which may be in his head. He ties self-destructive loops back to youthful episodes of lashing out: a stint in a Germs-inspired punk band is drawn self-mockingly, suicide attempts are related in a blasé serio-comic manner, and drug-fueled breaks from reality are rendered in gothic, frenetic strokes (he worries that he had dosed too far and would “end up barking at closed storefronts all night”). The brisk, chaotic story is rendered in slashing hacks of scratchy black line art, which breaks only briefly for a running subplot of nightmare-fantasy—presented with oddly soothing washes of color—about a captured writer who staves off rape and murder by a shipload of depraved pirates by telling stories, Scheherazade-like. Once the narrator digs past his Rothian sexual manias, the conclusion delivers a surprisingly thoughtful and vulnerable coda to the self-battering anger that suffuses much of the work. Readers beloved of antiheroes will appreciate Gipi’s insights, though they do not come easy. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"Reading these pages is like being invited into someone’s private dream journal, all their worst fears vividly described. It’s not a life badly drawn, but the bad things drawn out of the life."

New York Review of Books

"The masterful work of an author whose talent no longer needs to be proved. Gipi leads us into the depths of the human soul through his own experience. A great autobiographical tale free of taboos, oscillating between cruelty and grace."

Krinein BD

"Gipi masters the accidents that have left a scar in his life with verve. And the drawings, as quick as they are precise, become an echo of this tormented journey that never forgets to be caustic in every page. My Badly Drawn Life is a precious work, as generous in disenchantment as it is in love."

Paris-Art - Emmanuel Posnic

"Dancing between disappointment and depression with an occasional unexpected humor that demonstrates the astonishing elegance of despair, Gipi scores with a magnificent, beautiful book."

Télérama

"The Italian graphic novelist who uses a combination of scratchy pen and splashy watercolor explores all the challenges of growing up, with detours into drugs and depression."

The New York Times

"Continually thought-provoking, beautifully illustrated in a variety of styles, and heartbreakingly revelatory."

Slings & Arrows Graphic Novel Guide