Ben Katchor's Books

The Cardboard Valise

By: Ben Katchor

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Ben Katchor (“The creator of the last great American comic strip.”—Michael Chabon) gives us his first book in more than ten years: the story of the fantastical nation of Outer Canthus and the three people who, in some way or another, inhabit its shores. Emile Delilah is a young xenophile (lover of foreign nations) so addicted to traveling to the exotic regions of Outer Canthus that the government pays him a monthly stipend just so he can continue his visits. Living in the same tenement as Emile are Boreal Rince, the exiled king of Outer Canthus, and Elijah Salamis, a supranationalist determined to erase the cultural and geographic boundaries that separate the citizens of the Earth. Although they rarely meet, their lives intertwine through the elaborate fictions they construct and inhabit: a vast panorama of humane hamburger stands, exquisitely ethereal ethnic restaurants, ancient restroom ruins, and wild tracts of land that fit neatly next to high-rise hotels. The Cardboard Valise is a graphic novel as travelogue; a canvas of semi-surrealism; and a poetic, whimsical, beguiling work of Ben Katchor’s dazzling imagination.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

130

Publisher

Pantheon

Published Date

ISBN 10

0375421149

ISBN 13

9780375421143

The Dairy Restaurant

By: Ben Katchor

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Dairy Restaurant

By: Ben Katchor

Ben Katchor retells the history of where we choose to eat—a history that starts with the first man who was allowed to enter a walled garden and encouraged by the garden's owner to enjoy its fruits. He examines the biblical milk-and-meat taboo, the first vegetarian practices, and the invention of the restaurant. Through text and drawings, Katchor illuminates the historical confluence of events and ideas that led to the development of a “milekhdike (dairy) personality” and the proliferation of dairy restaurants in America, and he recollects his own experiences in many of these iconic restaurants just before they disappeared. PART OF THE JEWISH ENCOUNTERS SERIES

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

498

Publisher

Schocken

Published Date

ISBN 10

0805242198

ISBN 13

9780805242195

Hand-Drying in America

And Other Stories

By: Ben Katchor

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Hand-Drying in America

And Other Stories

By: Ben Katchor

**Time Magazine's Best Books of the Year 2013** **NPR's Best Books of the Year 2013** WITH BEAUTIFUL FULL-COLOR ILLUSTRATIONS THROUGHOUT From one of the most original and imaginative American cartoonists at work today comes a collection of graphic narratives on the subjects of urban planning, product design, and architecture—a surrealist handbook for the rebuilding of society in the twenty-first century. Ben Katchor, a master at twisting mundane commodities into surreal objects of social significance, now takes on the many ways our property influences and reflects cultural values. Here are window-ledge pillows designed expressly for people-watching and a forest of artificial trees for sufferers of hay fever. The Brotherhood of Immaculate Consumption deals with the matter of products that outlive their owners; a school of dance is based upon the choreographic motion of paying with cash; high-visibility construction vests are marketed to lonely people as a method of getting noticed. With cutting wit Katchor reveals a world similar to our own—lives are defined by possessions, consumerism is a kind of spirituality—but also slightly, fabulously askew. Frequently and brilliantly bizarre, and always mesmerizing, Hand-Drying in America ensures that you will never look at a building, a bar of soap, or an ATM the same way.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

162

Publisher

Pantheon

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307906906

ISBN 13

9780307906908

The Jew of New York

By: Ben Katchor

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Jew of New York

By: Ben Katchor

In 1825, Mordecai Noah, a New York politician and amateur playwright possessed of a utopian vision, summoned all the lost tribes of Israel to an island near Buffalo in the hope of establishing a Jewish state. His failed plan, a mere footnote in Jewish-American history, is the starting point for Ben Katchor's brilliantly imagined epic that unfolds on the streets of New York a few years later. A disgraced kosher slaughterer, an importer of religious articles and women's hosiery, a pilgrim peddling soil from the Holy Land, a latter-day Kabbalist, a man with plans to carbonate Lake Erie--these are just some of the characters who move through Katchor's universe, their lives interwoven in a common struggle to settle into the New World even as it erupts into a financial frenzy that could as easily leave them bankrupt as carry them into the future.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

110

Publisher

Pantheon

Published Date

ISBN 10

0375700978

ISBN 13

9780375700972

Hand-Drying in America

And Other Stories

By: Ben Katchor

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Hand-Drying in America

And Other Stories

By: Ben Katchor

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

162

Publisher

Pantheon

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307906906

ISBN 13

9780307906908

Book's by Ben Katchor

The Cardboard Valise

The Cardboard Valise

The Dairy Restaurant

The Dairy Restaurant

Hand-Drying in America

Hand-Drying in America

The Jew of New York

The Jew of New York

Hand-Drying in America

Hand-Drying in America

Username

Password

Username

Password

Password again

Birthday

Email