Everything is Its Own Reward: An All Over Coffee Collection

by Paul Madonna

Beginning with his hometown of San Francisco and traveling to cities such as Paris, Rome, Buenos Aires, and Tokyo, Paul Madonna delivers his second body of drawings and writings. This stunning new collection, a testament to an artist and storyteller's careful observation of both the external and internal worlds, outdoes the masterful performance of his first book All Over Coffee, offering an even richer catalog of pen and ink cityscapes, short stories, conversations, and thoughts. Entertaining and moving, gorgeous to look at, Madonna's work remains unique and unclassifiable. This full color, hardbound edition comes complete with a removable poster.

Genres: Art, Graphic Novels, Comics, Nonfiction, Adult, Cultural, Design

240 pages, Hardcover

First published April 19, 2011

About the author

Paul Madonna is an award-winning artist and author whose unique blend of drawing and storytelling has been heralded as an “all new art form.” He is the creator of the series All Over Coffee, which ran in the San Francisco Chronicle for twelve years, and the author of seven books,  All Over Coffee ,  Everything is its own reward (winner of the 2011 NCBA Award for best book),  On to the Next Dream , You Know Exactly (finalist for the 2022 Golden Poppy Book Awards), and the Emit Hopper Mystery Series, Close Enough for the Angels , Come to Light , and The Commissions . Paul also collaborated with award-winning author Gary Kamiya on the best-selling book Spirits of San Francisco .

Paul's drawings and stories have appeared internationally in numerous publications such as the Believer and zyzzyva, as well as in galleries and museums, including the Oakland Museum of California, the San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum, The San Francisco International airport, and the William Blake Association in France. Paul was a founding editor for therumpus.net, has taught drawing at the University of San Francisco, and frequently lectures on creative practice. He holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and was the first (ever!) Art Intern at MAD magazine.

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul Madonna is my hero. In the face of naysayers who say that words, narrative, realism and craft have no place in contemporary art practice, Paul soldiers on and brilliantly so. Madonna's lush, evocative drawings coupled with honest, longing prose provide ink-washed spaces of existential reflection that feel all the more necessary in our hyper-connected culture. If we could all be so thoughtful (and disciplined!) in our creative practices...

[David Schwan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful companion to the first book but unlike the first book has much more text accompanying the drawings. Not a quick read, much more a book where you read a few pages at a time. The author has gone beyond drawing of just San Francisco with some drawings from Europe and South America.

[Krzysztof · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always had a thing for unpeopled urban landscapes and nameless gritty buildings. The stories I told as a kid focused on the atmospherics of some run-down structure in my run-down neighborhood, and Edward Hopper and Tales from the Crypt have never not mesmerized me.

I also enjoy getting a peek at someone's notebook, so this book jumped out at me in the library. What first stood out were the lists of daily activities, sentence fragments, and small epiphanies incorporated into highly rendered sketches. When I got the book home and found that some pages included flash fiction, I was less excited. Most of the fictional bits didn't work for me and I'm not entirely buying Madonna's method of juxtaposing unrelated images and text. I do, however, support the exercise, and I also think he's right about illustration being redundant when it does match a text (but I'm going to do it anyway).

So, I was going to give this three stars. But then I was driving down Mass Ave in Cambridge yesterday, stuck in traffic of course, and with nothing else to do while waiting at lights, I started focusing on the architecture. For probably the same reasons I like to peer into notebooks, I became fixated by this apartment building, wondering who lived behind the curtains on the creepy upper floor:




If I were moving into the neighborhood and had to choose between this place and the building across the street, I would move across the street so that I could always look out and wonder about these apartments.



Then a mile or so down the road, I came to the Metropolitan Storage Warehouse. From the angle where I was stopped, it read: METROPOLITAN RAGE WAREHOUSE, IRE PROOF:



I wished I were able to sketch; I think this is the sort of subtle detail Madonna might work into a narrative without explicitly drawing attention to it.



When I got to the poster in the back of the book, my voyeurism kicked into high gear and I decided to give this four stars. Not because the art for this one was so compelling, but because he's imaging fragments of the the lives of the occupants of an apartment building, and that's something I can't get enough of.



Another reviewer has said that the lack of people in these illustrations gets lonely after a while. I think that's what works for me, though. I've never been as interested in people themselves as I am in what people might be. Looking at a person straight on, you have a good enough sense of what they're doing. Viewing them through a window, or having them entirely out of sight, you imagine a whole host of scenarios. Near as I can tell, this collection features exactly one person, and that person's face is obscured as they peer over a balcony. A penny for your thoughts, grab bags, the ocean, what's behind door number three, a masquerade. We want what we cannot have.

[Johanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

came for the drawing, stayed for the interstices.

the drawing is terrific, funny, tender and attentive, lively lines and sensitive sepia washes. madonna begins in thrall to architectural details (san francisco is a good town for him) and gradually opens up to the spaces between walls and hills. this is some of the most sculptural drawing i've seen.

the text juxtaposed over these drawings is uneven, sometimes interesting, often banally profound and "poignant." but here's the things: the cliches slowly build on the streetscapes to make a very real picture of everyday life.
the point of graphic novels is to say something that words or pictures alone can't convey. it's pretty much impossible to read and look at the same time, and even harder not to privilege one over the other, but exercising both halves of the brain almost simultaneously is a big part of the pleasure of reading comics. you can aim for a seamless marriage, an action movie on paper, or you can exploit the tension for humor or drama, but the core of graphic novels is the intersection of the two narrative modes. what happens between the right brain and the left brain is what compels me as a reader/viewer and opens up space for the sublime, what makes it art.

the story here in all over coffee happens between the words and pictures, just as the city is what is between buildings.

[Rebecca Schwarz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I dipped in and out of this one. The artwork is amazing if a little lonely - all architecture and landscapes with not a living thing to be found. I can accept that as a statement but this is a hefty book and the emptiness feels a little oppressive after a while. There are also handwritten vignettes, some work better than others. This is truly a good coffee table book, made for perusing not reading straight through.

[Andie Liu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve always liked street/architecture in pen, and this one really resonated with my increased SF appreciation from the past two summers. The lack of people in the frames is eerie. Skimmed the whole thing in City Lights Bookstore on a rainy SF day with Jackie. Reading the very last panel, I felt like it was articulating my jumbled, drawn-out musings on the worthwhileness of things from the past few months, guiding me to the conclusion I was unconsciously (or consciously) drifting towards. Although some of the one-word writing feels like it’s obviously trying to be deep. Will put on my coffee table when I get one

[Chelsea Martinez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful drawings, many of San Francisco, coupled with aphorisms or short flash fiction stories. I'll admit that my favorite one is totally biased towards Los Angeles and my own personal habits; the story of a tryst in one of the apartments that suffers from excess heat reflected from the oddball curves of the Disney Concert Hall, and a jumbled list of "things I can remember right now" (music, books, stuff I did, stuff I need to do) which is something I do every few days that is completely pointless.
Other favorites: p. 3, p. 26, p. 55, p. 60, p. 171.

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Madonna has effectively created his own way to combine images and text. The cityscapes are beautiful. Quiet, detailed and personal. The textual inserts defy summary. Some made me laugh out loud. Some tell stories and some are in the category of the profound. The connection between text and image is elusive. I believe that the total here is greater than the sum of its text and image parts. But I couldn't really say how. I believe this book is worth having around and looking at occasionally. I hope the audience for this work continues to grow.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the first coffee shops I worked at had one on the counter. I read the whole thing in the quiet hours over a couple of weeks. Took me years to find it again.

Made me want to start sketching buildings. I bought pencils and everything.

Turns out its really difficult and takes *ages*.

Beautiful prose. One to keep. Good gift for a friend who's lost.

[Madeline · Rating 5 out of 5]

I slowly fell in love with this book and will forever hold this one dear. The illustrations are haunting and beautiful with sparse bursts of muted color. The narrative cuts deep to familiar emotions. I can see myself revisiting this book by opening it up to a random page and going from there.

[kristy · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVE

[Lynne Reeves Griffin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This graphic short story collection is genius. Loved every vignette and drawing.

[Duncan Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

what a beautiful book. Poignant, warm, expansive. Reading felt like meeting someone for the first time and getting the feeling that you'd been close friends for years.

[Shashikant · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting concept

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspiring & lovely.

[City Lights Booksellers & Publishers · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In this exquisite second collection from his long-running weekly San Francisco Chronicle series All Over Coffee, Madonna captures snapshots in time as he explores the relationship between image and text . . . With pieces depicting San Francisco, New York, Barcelona, and Tokyo, Madonna's work is something to savor."
-- Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"In Everything is its Own Reward, Paul Madonna has not only pressed graphic fiction way beyond its present boundaries, he has created a new and stunning art form where the stand-alone brilliant visuals and the hauntingly human words synthesize into a pure and irreducible aesthetic vision. This book taught me something fundamental and true and beautiful about the ineffable thereness and thingness of life. Everything is its Own Reward is a work of genius."
-- Robert Olen Butler, author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, among other books

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked up this interesting blend of drawing and text at the library and really enjoyed it. Love the art and enjoyed the quirky and melancholy reflection that goes with it. Need to check out more from this artist.

[Hexwolfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book reads like a love letter to the San Francisco that once was. The one I first came to almost 20 years ago. The beautiful drawings of SF buildings and streets will leave a longtime resident like myself trying to figure out exactly what building *that* one is, and then *that* other one too.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully rendered drawings of streets and cities paired with elliptical little stories that stick in your mind. Broken fences, telephone wires, and shadows shadows shadows. The book object is a gorgeous thing itself.

[Maureen · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting and beautiful tribute to time and place. Madonna's ink drawings of urban environments, hillsides, houses, and thousands and thousands of buildings are captivating. The text can be a little melodramatic, but never boring. A pretty quick and good read.

[cat! · Rating 5 out of 5]

a collection of micro-stories and fine line drawings of public spaces and architectural element primarily in SF. not actually a graphic novel - there is no linear or coherent narrative - but does convey a stronger sense of place and character than most actual novels i've read. stunning work.

[Rick Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Madonna's sketches of San Francisco are stunning AND simple, and paired with overheard dialogue, literary scraps and private musings make Everything is Its Own Reward is a beautiful labor of exploration.

[Paula Mckinley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This books successfully meets words and images that by themselves would stand alone as two entirely different subjects. However when paired together create a though provoking contrast. Beautifully illustrated and well written. I haven't seen anything like this before.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book of comic strips without the 'comic'. Wonderful architectural pen and ink drawings with ink washes, plus a story line.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeous!

[Lizzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Does the smell of the air today remind you of another time?

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wonderful art. Many poignant and thought-provoking remarks or (extremely short) stories. It's magic for a while, but the effect wears off after a while.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

love this art of the 'in between places' of San Francisco

[Peggy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful pen and ink drawings, mostly in muted tones, mostly urban. Often unrelated stories, insights.  Actually a compilation of comics from the San Francisco Chronicle.

[Austin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe it's just because it's the 2nd one but I didn't enjoy this as much as the 1st.