Neither Either nor Or

by Joey Dubuc

Inspired by Edward Packard's Choose Your Own Adventure Books, Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch, artist Joey Dubuc has created the genre-defying literary debut Neither Either Nor Or. Follow along while trying to avoid the pitfalls of his winding narrative as it leads (or loses) you through caverns, forests, rivers, or along a cliff¹s edge. At surface what seems to be a simple rumination on death becomes a metaphysical quest guided by existential choices, glimpsed through the lens of nostalgia.

"From the layout to the typeface to the illustrations, this is a flawless evocation of the golden age of 1980s young adult literature... Being one who is rarely nostalgic the design of this book, with its Todd Haynes intensity and aesthetic referencing, consumed me like a virus. Taking a lowbrow form of literature, and a very specific one at that, and using it to expand the limits of what a book can be is no cheap trick. More a disorientation generator than a story, it fulfills the promise of adventure, albiet with a ruckus filled with existential crisis after crisis." - Broken Pencil

Genres: Fiction

104 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2003

Reviews

[livvie · Rating 5 out of 5]

woah. i found this book laying on a table in a laundry room and i feel like it was meant to be. i just read this at work and the writing was intrinsic, totally a book for people with bad attention spans. Reading it made me feel like i was in a liminal space. Woahhhhh it was so good.

[Meg Birch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Smart, fun, and unpretentious reinterpretation of the classic "Choose your own adventure" story style. Loved it.

[John Esse · Rating 5 out of 5]

More people meed to be talking about this. Dubuc's writing style is IMPECCABLE, and the deaths are so much fun that you never mind starting over again.

[Gv · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting idea

[B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This strange gem from Conundrum press is a clunkily-written masterpiece of slap-stick comedy, existential angst and conceptual mimesis. The author himself supplies dozens of ink drawings that root this book in the sense of childhood wonder I still associate with the Packard or even the Hardy Boys. An artbook that is also very fun to read.