these haunting stories are a notch above the first julius knipl book. one can only wonder where katchor is taking us with this series. his comic stories bounce around between the panels and the reader is forced to create other stories that are only hinted at on the page. it's totally beautiful. great book for anyone into old new york, american yiddishkeit, or gorgeous comics.

Ben Katchor's eerie cityscapes evoke the ruins of the kind of world that appeared to be happening in the background of 1950's films noir, and his fanciful industries, charities, and fraternal organizations hearken back to the same imagined time. Reading his work, one becomes nostalgic for a time that never existed. This form of humor is subtle. In fact, it is not the humor for which I buy Katchor's work as much as it is for that strange feeling of fictional nostalgia. You can get humor anywhere, but Katchor's world view is unique to the man himself. If you ever get jaded, remember this review: immersing yourself in a book of Katchor's is unlike anything you've ever felt before.

Julius Knipl: Real Estate Photographer Stories is a collection of Ben Katchor's comics about about middle-class guys in New York City. At first glance each comic (usually 4 or 8 panels) seems to have no point, and the tone tends to remind me of the Jim books (I Made Some Brownies, And They Were Pretty Good, etc.), but Katchor seems to have staked out some pretty bizarre literary territory with these little stories.

One of my favorites concerns a man who is nearly poked in the eye with an umbrella on a rainy day. He's telling a companion his story, when a bystander overhears and tells him that many city residents are actually suffering from eye injuries on a day like this. This eye-injury enthusiast takes our man to the hospital, to see him "offer condolences to the families of the injured."

Another story concerns a group of volunteers who man phone lines all night, just to take calls from concerned citizens who have heard fire engine or ambulance sirens. Lots of the stories are about businessmen with bizarre, pathetic, or just loopy invention ideas: a suitcase that turns into a wastebasket, a storefront which sells rock candy, but only wholesale...

The text is punctuated by hilarious proper names, such as:

Blood & Sawdust Brand Cirkus Straws

The Ascending Colon, with Horace Bismuth and Vivian Scybala

Citric Acid Council

Viosh Shirue's Natural Rainwater Cistern

Katchor doesn't look down at his characters or approach them with anything similar to condescension. If I am motivated to feel anything at all after reading this, it's a bit more humility and compassion for my fellow man. At times these little stories are laugh-aloud funny, but mostly they just bring a smile and a little chuckle.

I am glad I ran across this book.

ken32

And yes, these pieces were not created to be consumed en masse. If you find a few amusing or worthwhile, but they get tiresome after a bit, just put the book down, and read a few of them each day, as you would if your daily newspaper carried them.

A "knipl" is colloquial Yiddish for a secret stash, like money saved for a rainy day or some last relic of an old way of life. Those populating the unnamed city of Ben Katchor's extended graphic novel are essentially gripped by nostalgia for a way of life that probably never existed. In cartoon vignettes, they pine for the days when you could visit the famed "Pygmy Penitentiary" (attempted breakouts scheduled every hour) and pick up some of Virosh Sherue's bottled rain water on the way home. Many try to preserve their way of life, if only because they fear change ("Static Day" is an official holiday) and grab a hold on the present as if it were a lifeline (one man has dozens of items on lay-away in stores thruought the city, because the goods are kept perpetually new until he has to pick them up). And the city doesn't lack for opportunists - like street toughs who scavenge TV antennae from buildings that have gone cable; tour operators who bus tourists through the decayed parts of the city (the driver soon becomes the primaddona) or show biz operators who conceive of turning manual labor into public spectacle. For much of the city, it's business as usual as reporters for the vile evening combinator scour the city for tales of the dreams of its populace, or as bra-strap statisticians try to chart the rise and fall of the city's fortunes. The titular real estate photographer notes all dispassionately. Katchor parodies and mourns his citizens at the same time, yet he never condescends to them not tries to milk them for tears. Instead, Katchor, through the lens of his alter ego, a real estate photographer seems to have mastered the perfect balance of bittersweet, a quest that, for his charachters, seems one more casualty lost to the years.

It's like a hilarious dream that makes perfect sense but you can't explain it, and it permeates your whole day. You have to put the book down and stare into space every little chunk or so. It's rich. I can't explain it. There's probably a German word for it.