Tomine talks Tatsumi

The Village Voice ran an interview with Adrian Tomine today about Drawn and Quarterly's new new Yoshihiro Tatsumi collection The Push Man & Other Stories, for which Tomine wrote an introduction. Not an avid manga read myself (though I am a gluttonous consumer of Tomine's work), this is totally new exposure for me; but according to what he says, it sounds like a pretty astounding book. "Tatsumi's work was comprised of compact, elliptical short stories which, like the best modern prose fiction, were simultaneously satisfying and open-ended," Tomine states. Sounds a lot like a certain Optic Nerve author I know of.

"Among The Push Man's street-level protagonists are tongue-tied laborers who mutilate their prostitute girlfriends, a wife-abusing hit man with a weak stomach, a taciturn projectionist who traverses Japan to screen porn for corporate officers, and sewer workers who search for wayward treasures as they slog through underground streams clogged with rats, garbage, and aborted fetuses."

Granted, I've been known to be fascinated by stories of the disturbing, but Chip Kidd compares Tatsumi to another one of my favorite authors, Haruki Murakami. If I can find a copy in the near future, I'll immediately post a review. Until then, that's all I've got for you.