This book was just okay for me. It was interesting to read about what was happening in Japan right after WWII. Besides that, what author described of making a new 'genre' of manga seemed a little dramatic and exaggerated. It even sounded trivial what he was trying to accomplish. ( )

Very interesting and honest look at the life of an artist. I also enjoyed the information about what had happened during that time in Japan. ( )

Very interesting and honest look at the life of an artist. I also enjoyed the information about what had happened during that time in Japan. ( )

We need a new word: künstler-comic?

Well, maybe not.

Yoshihiro Tatsumi's account of his journey from schoolboy cartoons to the center of the Japanese manga industry during its heyday is a fascinating account of the artist as a young man. In it, with the consummate artistry we have come to expect, thanks to Drawn & Quarterly's ongoing edition of his work, Tatsumi lets us know what it was like to work as a manga-ka in the 1950s and 60s, and also how his country and the world changed during that time. The young artist who is Tatsumi's stand-in often voices his frustration at being unable, due to economic constraints, to work on long-form comics. In A Drifting Life Tatsumi, over 834 pages, is able to stretch out and do just that. Having turned the last of those many pages one is hungry for more. "I've drifted along, demanding an endless dream from gekiga," Tatsumi concludes his masterpiece, "And I . . . probably . . . always will" (ellipses in the original). Dream on, Mr. Tatsumi.