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Driven by Lemons
Up the stream of consciousness without a paddle. From the creator who brought you Skyscrapers of the Midwest comes a sketchbook replica of recent multimedia explorations in intuitive narrative. Won t you be his neighbor?
104 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2009
3 people are currently reading
151 people want to read
About the author
Joshua W. Cotter
17 books24 followersJoshua W. Cotter lives in rural Northwest Missouri with his wife, children, cats, and an acute sense of impending mortality. They keep him making comics.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
April 26, 2010
This is brilliant. Dense and tangled, the style-and-medium-jumping "stories" here push right to the edge of abstraction, but on closer inspection add up to a coherent and meaningful whole. Initial visceral joys at jumbled lines and blazes of red and blue ink give way to eerie semi-linear resonances between sections and motifs, sometimes bold, sometimes subtle (when the fox, chewing its oil-slicked paw, turns fractionally to stare directly at the reader, an uneasy moment of recognition). One of most original -- thrilling, even -- uses of the medium that I have run headlong into in quite some time.
I read it twice, and continue to return and pore through again. I am ordering Josh Cotter's older book, Skyscrapers of the Midwest, now, too. It seems essential to follow up on all I've just seen immediately.
I read it twice, and continue to return and pore through again. I am ordering Josh Cotter's older book, Skyscrapers of the Midwest, now, too. It seems essential to follow up on all I've just seen immediately.
November 28, 2012
Driven by Demons -- that's the title on the inside cover, except an "L" has been pasted over that final word. What seems like a whimsical gesture actually cuts to the heart of this deeply strange and heartbreaking graphic novel. It's designed as a facsimile of the author's notebook and at first glance, it reads just like that -- an intricate and accomplished sketchbook full of private musings and imagery. But that's a ruse. There's a story here, though you have wade into the text, past the seemingly benign images of bunnies, to discover it's an account of the narrator's psychotic attack, subsequent hospitalization, and slow recovery. It's a terrifying enactment of how your visual perceptions and language abilities can unravel, leaving you untethered and uncontrollably flitting in and out of layers of so-called reality. The story is necessarily incomplete and fractured, but its effects are studiously etched throughout. For what's undoubtably a very subjective experience, I was amazed how well Cotter used private symbols to signify something universal, to let you inhabit these altered states as purely as possible.
July 20, 2019
WINDED I CAN'T MOVE MY ARMS 3 LEVELS OF RINGING IN MY EARS OR MAYBE THAT'S NOT ME WIRES AND TUBING SPILL FROM MY FACE THERE'S NO WAY TO TELL HOW LONG I'VE BEEN HERE LIVING WITH THIS MACHINE BUT IT IS RUSTING AND DAMP AND I START TO WONDER IF I AM THE ONE KEEPING IT ALIVE AND NOT VICE VERSA AND MAYBE WE NEED EACH OTHER DESPITE OUR DISCOMFORT FEEDING FLUIDS AND BINARY PULSING CRAWLING ALONG WITHOUT A GOAL DOING MORE DAMAGE THAN GOOD ALONG THE WAY LEAVING DEPOSITS OF TANGLED WIRE AND BLINKING LIGHTS ALL WHILE HOPING NO ONE IS WATCHING ASHAMED OF OUR RAW CARNAL BEHAVIOUR SLINKING THROUGH PURPLE SHADOW CAST BY THE WHINING FLUORESCENT HELL WE BUILT FOR OURSELVES WE WERE SO PROUD.
January 14, 2010
When I sat down to read this, I couldn’t put it down. By the time I was done, one word came to mind: “mindfuck.” Yes, that’s extreme, but I’ve never been affected by printed matter like this. It triggered strong memories of my many hallucinatory experiences, including my near-death experience in the hospital. Josh has captured so perfectly something I’ve always longed to write about but could never figure out how. It definitely connects on a conscious level with stunning drawings and fascinating abstract storytelling, but he’s also exploring dark struggles with sanity and losing grip with the ability to piece together reality. The production on the book is immaculate, basically an exact reproduction of a sketchbook he drew it in, spine, cover and all.
March 24, 2023
I reviewed this under-appreciated great work at my blog. http://goodcomicsbykim.tumblr.com/pos...
February 10, 2023
A little too silly for my liking, but it's the form that counts.
June 3, 2025
This book changed my life.
My professor senior year of college had us read a part this his class. I was out traveling for a gig, missed that weeks class, so I didnt read it.
But later, he thought id like it and lent me a copy to look at. I couldnt get enough and still cant. Not only was this beautifully made. Incredible thought went into the details of the physical copy, i mean really. Check it out….
But the content was just incredible. I personally cant relate to all of it, but theres a lot of inner dialogue that i think EVERYONE can relate to.
Thank you for sharing this Mr. cotter. I cant wait for Nod Away vol 3 also.
My professor senior year of college had us read a part this his class. I was out traveling for a gig, missed that weeks class, so I didnt read it.
But later, he thought id like it and lent me a copy to look at. I couldnt get enough and still cant. Not only was this beautifully made. Incredible thought went into the details of the physical copy, i mean really. Check it out….
But the content was just incredible. I personally cant relate to all of it, but theres a lot of inner dialogue that i think EVERYONE can relate to.
Thank you for sharing this Mr. cotter. I cant wait for Nod Away vol 3 also.
December 11, 2017
I don't know who I would recommend this to other than myself. This is kind of a sketch piece hidden in a journal format. I really enjoy how mad the artist is and can appreciate his level of detail...I mean depression...I mean focus...or I mean sadness. I don't know what I mean, I just liked it.
August 30, 2019
if you’re drawn to psychedelic, spooky graphic novels, I’ve got something that will blow your mind. it’s not really my cup of tea but I would have really enjoyed it seven years ago I think. visually stunning. I don’t do these drugs anymore.
September 9, 2020
Exactly my shit in a lot of ways--densely drawn weird paper-medium-oriented comics about mental illness and institutionalization. Varyingly effective but I'm into it enough as something to learn and borrow from that I gotta give it that 4 stars.
November 7, 2022
Huh. Yeah,....no.
November 18, 2023
Really liked the look of this, although maybe a bit too much style over substance
February 6, 2016
http://morethansuperhumans.blogspot.c...
Providing a plot to this book probably does it a disservice, but I'll attempt to write one anyway: The protagonist (a rabbit) is in a terrible car crash. He ends up in a hospital. In the end he appears to be healed, but also transformed. In between these basic plot points there are sequences that can be interpreted any number of ways: fever dreams, spiritual awakenings/deepenings, hallucinations, philosophical tangents.
If Skyscrapers of the Midwest is Cotter's semiautobiographical novel, then Driven by Lemons is his book of poetry. I mean this not just in the sense of the written word, but also as visual poetry. Although the book begins traditionally enough (at least from an alt-comix perspective), it soon evolves into a series of abstract and semiabstract sequences that are equally beautiful and terrifying (just as the abstract expressionist works of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, et al., are capable of eliciting both reactions at once--at least in me).
In fact, I found the strictly visual sequences more interesting than those sequences paired with the book's many monologues. Stream of consciousness is a narrative mode I'm not generally interested in. I prefer my surreal texts to make a bit more sense (as in Huizenga's The Wild Kingdom). But I nonetheless found this book to be interesting and well worth my time.
Providing a plot to this book probably does it a disservice, but I'll attempt to write one anyway: The protagonist (a rabbit) is in a terrible car crash. He ends up in a hospital. In the end he appears to be healed, but also transformed. In between these basic plot points there are sequences that can be interpreted any number of ways: fever dreams, spiritual awakenings/deepenings, hallucinations, philosophical tangents.
If Skyscrapers of the Midwest is Cotter's semiautobiographical novel, then Driven by Lemons is his book of poetry. I mean this not just in the sense of the written word, but also as visual poetry. Although the book begins traditionally enough (at least from an alt-comix perspective), it soon evolves into a series of abstract and semiabstract sequences that are equally beautiful and terrifying (just as the abstract expressionist works of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, et al., are capable of eliciting both reactions at once--at least in me).
In fact, I found the strictly visual sequences more interesting than those sequences paired with the book's many monologues. Stream of consciousness is a narrative mode I'm not generally interested in. I prefer my surreal texts to make a bit more sense (as in Huizenga's The Wild Kingdom). But I nonetheless found this book to be interesting and well worth my time.
January 30, 2016
I love the concept and presentation of this as a journal instead of a published book.
The art is fascinating, sometimes beautiful, sometimes ugly and totally, mind blowingly confusing. I have no idea what is going on or if there is even a storyline or common thread running through this book, there are reoccurring images and concepts but nothing that feels truly cohesive but to be honest there doesn't need to be, the idea of this book alone is worth checking out and experiencing on it's own.
The art is fascinating, sometimes beautiful, sometimes ugly and totally, mind blowingly confusing. I have no idea what is going on or if there is even a storyline or common thread running through this book, there are reoccurring images and concepts but nothing that feels truly cohesive but to be honest there doesn't need to be, the idea of this book alone is worth checking out and experiencing on it's own.
February 14, 2010
This was kind of interesting in a very weird way. The 3 stories that I could make out could only be deciphered if I went back and looked in the forward for the title, and even then the scribbly artwork distracted me so much that I hardly cared what Cotter was trying to get across.A thin hardcover for $ 19.95 that I can't make much sense out of isn't going to rate high with me.
November 17, 2009
Really neat, honestly. Very well drawn. I have no clue what it means.
January 28, 2010
Um, this was weird. I'm not sure if it was nothing or everything. Yep, that's all I have for you on this one.
January 11, 2010
Review here-ish (scroll down):
http://blog.newsarama.com/2010/01/10/...
http://blog.newsarama.com/2010/01/10/...
May 9, 2010
Not sure what to make of this. Perhaps I need to read it again...and perhaps after/during a glass of wine...
October 18, 2010
Pure comics!
July 1, 2011
aye, aye.
May 18, 2012
Abstract and in large parts silent. Quite engrossing.
April 18, 2012
beautiful artwork. don't work too hard looking for a narrative.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews