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The Lodger
After losing his girlfriend and hip Boston apartment, Karl Stevens moves into a spare room in his painting professor’s home, where his bohemian adventures in sex and boozing converge with the rituals of life with a family and an unruly beagle named Cookie. In a series of humorous, poignant, and gorgeously rendered stories, The Lodger chronicles a tumultuous year in the life of the author as he grows as an artist and a man. Combining comic strips originally published in The Phoenix, Boston’s leading alternative weekly, with exquisite watercolors and oil paintings, The Lodger follows the Xeric-winning and Ignatz-nominated artist's Guilty and Whatever as a penetrating and visually stunning depiction of love, loss, and the moving minutiae of everyday life. A Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist.
- GenresComicsGraphic Novels
96 pages, Paperback
First published September 14, 2010
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33 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 25, 2019
I just recently read Stevens' (2018) The Winner, the first book I have read from him, so I was intrigued and decided to read whatever else I could find from him, a decade or more after everyone else who knows him from alt comix fairs. The thing you need to know about Stevens is that he is an amazing artist, and also makes comics, I think mostly memoirs, serialized in strips. Both of these books are about booze. The Winner is post-booze, sort of, if you can ever get over the stuff, and The Lodger is still well into the cups. It's funny because I just made a note on a review about how all of Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder mysteries are really on every page about booze, about alcoholism, as all of Raymond Carver's stories are, and this is true for both of Stevens' books I have thus far read.
They also both feature an arrogant self-loathing art school drop-out--Stevens--and it's about painting vs. comics, what shall I do, with the hand-wringing, it's about women, but it's mainly about his drinking away his life as he does some art (and mostly drinking) as a lodger in a former art prof's house. Stevens knows the prof and his family know her drinks too much, but they are all very tolerant of Stevens, as are his friends/girlfriends. Everyone enables him. And then it's twenty-something cultural enabling, as everyone he knows is drunk all the time. Both books feature amazing portraits particularly of these women (some of them naked; could you still do this now, post naked pics of yr ex?).
Three things I have noticed:
1) Stevens is disaffected, but he is also brutally honest, self-deprecating. He's the anti-hero of his own stories.
2) The art is the true hero of this tale, something he can accomplish in spite of himself. The art rises above his squalid life.
3) Easterner Stevens gives a nod to Andrew Wyeth, whose work seems to influence his a great deal; both are creators of both portraits and landscapes. Wyeth only painted, his work is only about beauty; Stevens brings this beauty-sensibility to the ba, in a sense, in part, though he draws landscapes and lovely, wispy-haired, ethereal women, too.
4) I like how Stevens has dogs talk. Most of the time you sorta wanna shoot him for being such an asshole (I mean this figuratively, I'm a pacifist!), but he knows he is being an asshole and the dog helps us see that he knows this about himself.
I kind of have a love/hate thing for art school hipster Stevens (oh, trust me, he hates art school hipsters, would be swearing at me for calling him that if he even cared what I think about his art but he doesn't, trust me, I'm a writer, what the hell do I know about art and what makes me think I am an art critic!??). But here's the thing, I am now going to read another one by Stevens, so there's something there. A few great things. Even if you never read a word he writes, even if you just look at it, the art is there, just breathtakingly good. As with artists in general, you know, you don't have to admire the artist to admire the art.
They also both feature an arrogant self-loathing art school drop-out--Stevens--and it's about painting vs. comics, what shall I do, with the hand-wringing, it's about women, but it's mainly about his drinking away his life as he does some art (and mostly drinking) as a lodger in a former art prof's house. Stevens knows the prof and his family know her drinks too much, but they are all very tolerant of Stevens, as are his friends/girlfriends. Everyone enables him. And then it's twenty-something cultural enabling, as everyone he knows is drunk all the time. Both books feature amazing portraits particularly of these women (some of them naked; could you still do this now, post naked pics of yr ex?).
Three things I have noticed:
1) Stevens is disaffected, but he is also brutally honest, self-deprecating. He's the anti-hero of his own stories.
2) The art is the true hero of this tale, something he can accomplish in spite of himself. The art rises above his squalid life.
3) Easterner Stevens gives a nod to Andrew Wyeth, whose work seems to influence his a great deal; both are creators of both portraits and landscapes. Wyeth only painted, his work is only about beauty; Stevens brings this beauty-sensibility to the ba, in a sense, in part, though he draws landscapes and lovely, wispy-haired, ethereal women, too.
4) I like how Stevens has dogs talk. Most of the time you sorta wanna shoot him for being such an asshole (I mean this figuratively, I'm a pacifist!), but he knows he is being an asshole and the dog helps us see that he knows this about himself.
I kind of have a love/hate thing for art school hipster Stevens (oh, trust me, he hates art school hipsters, would be swearing at me for calling him that if he even cared what I think about his art but he doesn't, trust me, I'm a writer, what the hell do I know about art and what makes me think I am an art critic!??). But here's the thing, I am now going to read another one by Stevens, so there's something there. A few great things. Even if you never read a word he writes, even if you just look at it, the art is there, just breathtakingly good. As with artists in general, you know, you don't have to admire the artist to admire the art.
June 30, 2019
Yes, one more 20-something slice-of-life autobio comic, but very unlike any other I've encountered. The drawings/paintings are a joy throughout, the jokes (when they occur, which isn't all that frequently), are funny, and the plot/emotions are never self-pitying or solipsistic.
My two big complaints:
The book's production values seem low. Like cheap print-on-demand or something. The paper stock is glossy and floppy in a really unappealing way. And the color seems overly washed out.
The chronology is really confusing. It doesn't "ruin the story" or anything, but trying to make sense of what's current, what's a flashback, is really hard. I was often left wondering, is that the date the events took place or the date the page was drawn?
My two big complaints:
The book's production values seem low. Like cheap print-on-demand or something. The paper stock is glossy and floppy in a really unappealing way. And the color seems overly washed out.
The chronology is really confusing. It doesn't "ruin the story" or anything, but trying to make sense of what's current, what's a flashback, is really hard. I was often left wondering, is that the date the events took place or the date the page was drawn?
July 7, 2011
I thought the art in this book was quite impressive...a variety of styles, but all very well done. The storyline is episodic (is this an anthology of strips?) and skews towards navel gazing. Over all an enjoyable read...definitely worth at least a look through for the art.
September 2, 2021
Karl Stevens is a dedicated and skilled artist that for some reason uses his talents on comics that are subtle yet hilarious and highlight banalities of life. I could read his work forever.
February 12, 2017
One of the joys of this collection is reading it within the context of Stevens's other works. In many ways, this collection is similar to what you might find in the earlier Whatever collection. However, these stories are more overtly autobiographical -- or, at the very least, based on what appears to be Karl's own experiences, as opposed to those individuals and contexts surrounding him. Even more significantly, this collection reads more holistically and with an ongoing storyline. I wouldn't call it a "graphic novel" (and I dislike that designation, anyhow), but it does share what you'd consider its characteristics. Also, this is engaging story, and one that mixes both the realistic and the "fantastical."
January 14, 2014
Review from Amazon (since there isn't one provided for this book).
After losing his girlfriend and hip Boston apartment, Karl Stevens moves into a spare room in his painting professor s home, where his bohemian adventures in sex and boozing converge with the rituals of life with a family and an unruly beagle named Cookie. In a series of humorous, poignant, and gorgeously rendered stories, The Lodger chronicles a tumultuous year in the life of the author as he grows as an artist and a man. Combining comic strips originally published in The Phoenix, Boston's leading alternative weekly, with exquisite watercolors and oil paintings, The Lodger follows the Xeric-winning and Ignatz-nominated artist s Guilty and Whatever as a penetrating and visually stunning depiction of love, loss, and the moving minutiae of everyday life.
After losing his girlfriend and hip Boston apartment, Karl Stevens moves into a spare room in his painting professor s home, where his bohemian adventures in sex and boozing converge with the rituals of life with a family and an unruly beagle named Cookie. In a series of humorous, poignant, and gorgeously rendered stories, The Lodger chronicles a tumultuous year in the life of the author as he grows as an artist and a man. Combining comic strips originally published in The Phoenix, Boston's leading alternative weekly, with exquisite watercolors and oil paintings, The Lodger follows the Xeric-winning and Ignatz-nominated artist s Guilty and Whatever as a penetrating and visually stunning depiction of love, loss, and the moving minutiae of everyday life.
May 11, 2014
Not much of a plot but the artwork is pretty amazing.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews