Inspired by a 16th-century Zen monk s painting of a hundred demons chasing each other across a long scroll, acclaimed cartoonist Lynda Barry confronts various demons from her life in seventeen full colour vignettes. In Barry s hand, demons are the life moments that haunt you, form you and stay with you: your worst boyfriend; kickball games on a warm summer night; watching your baby brother dance; the smell of various houses in the neighbourhood you grew up in; or the day you realize your childhood is long behind you and you are officially a teenager. As a cartoonist, Lynda Barry has the innate ability to zero in on the essence of truth, a magical quality that has made her book One! Hundred! Demons! an enduring classic of the early 21st century. In the book s intro, however, Barry throws the idea of truth out of the window by asking the reader to decide if fiction can have truth and if autobiography can have a fiction, a hybrid that Barry coins autobiofictionalography. As readers get to know Barry s demons, they realize that the actual truth no longer matters because the universality of Barry s comics, true or untrue reigns supreme.
Lynda Barry has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator, and teacher and found that they are very much alike. She is assistant professor of art and Discovery Fellow at University of Wisconsin-Madison; the author of acclaimed graphic novel One! Hundred! Demons!, the cartoonist behind the long-running Ernie Pook's Comeek, and the author of creative how-to memoir comic books What It Is and Picture This.
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