By now, you may be wrapping up your read of Adrian Tomine’s spare and unsentimental graphic novel Shortcomings, the California Book Club’s August selection. It’s a story that refuses to comfort the reader, providing the kind of nuance and ambiguity that make a fictional world feel lived-in.
Tomine’s minimalist visual storytelling style and skills are such that we feel as though these characters are real or that we might know them. He takes just the right number of panels, coming in for close-ups, to reveal how a character is feeling without relying on unrealistic dialogue to do that work. Although Ben Tanaka, the protagonist, is so negative that we may not want to relate to him, there’s a universality here: When Tomine writes and draws Ben’s highly specific situation, perhaps he is also depicting all of us complicated, flawed people. A series of carefully executed reveals bring us to the end of the book. Without giving too much away, when Ben arrives in New York City from Berkeley, we may not be expecting him to restart his romance with his former girlfriend Miko, but we’re also not expecting to find out that she’s kept certain things under wraps or that his best friend Alice’s move may not be temporary.
We’re delighted to introduce critic, author, and Alta Journal contributing editor David L. Ulin as our special guest to discuss Shortcomings with Tomine and CBC host John Freeman.
Ulin, a professor of English at the University of Southern California, is the author or editor of more than a dozen books. His various work includes an existential noir thriller, Thirteen Question Method, about a divorced man avoiding his past who is approached by a troubled neighbor who wants help with her inheritance battle; Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, which was short-listed for a PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay; and a lovely book that’s part memoir, part cultural criticism, part panegyric about contemplation, The Lost Art of Reading: Books and Resistance in a Troubled Time. Ulin also edited Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology.
Ulin has also written about Tomine’s other books. This work includes a feature in connection with Killing and Dying, one about Q&A, and another about The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist. For more about Ulin’s distinguished life in literature, read this profile by Lauren Markham.
If you’re looking for another read, check out one of Ulin’s or Tomine’s other books. Thursday’s CBC event is sure to be a standout, with brilliant insights into Shortcomings and Tomine’s career as a graphic novelist—don’t miss it.•
Join us on Thursday, August 21, at 5 p.m. Pacific time, when Tomine will sit down with CBC host Freeman and special guest Ulin to discuss Shortcomings. Register for the Zoom conversation here.
DEFYING EXPECTATIONS
Read John Freeman’s literary essay on Shortcomings. —Alta
SEARCHING FOR SOBER LIVING
Read Robert Ito’s profile of Shoshana Walter in connection with her book, Rehab: An American Scandal. —Alta
SLICES OF LIFE
Ivy Pochoda, Jonathan Lethem, and past CBC author Steph Cha imagine a future Los Angeles in a trio of stories. —Los Angeles Times
ENVIRONMENTAL POET
Check out an encore screening of director Colin Still’s documentary O Mother Gaia: The World of Gary Snyder, about the past CBC author and poet, between August 19 and August 21 by RSVPing at the link. —Library of America
Alta’s California Book Club email newsletter is published weekly. Sign up for free today.
