Christophe Chabouté

A French filmmaker moves to New York City and has a notion to immerse himself by becoming a cab driver. Much of this graphic novel is him jumping through all the many, convoluted, and necessary bureaucratic hoops and then sitting in his cab brainstorming scenes for his movie as he scrutinizes his passengers, his fellow cab drivers, and the people on the streets of the city. Instead of a film, the real Benoit Cohen turned this endeavor into a 2017 French novel, Yellow Cab, that Christophe show more Chabouté has now adapted into a graphic novel.

It sort of reminds me of stories about method actors going extra lengths to develop their characters, but mostly it reminds me of promotions I've seen for a cheesy reality show called Undercover Boss, where an out-of-touch CEO pretends he's just one of the guys to get the inside scoop on how the other half lives. Cohen's motives, casual deception, discreet recording, and failure to really delve into the ramifications of slumming amongst the common man while enjoying a more privileged lifestyle once he steps out of the cab just left me a bit queasy and uncomfortable. It didn't help when he decided to make his movie's lead character female and started conjecturing how he might have to adapt his experiences to how he imagines a woman might experience them. I'm not sure he has a firm grip on that point of view.

In the end, I was bored as he settled on having the city itself be the main character, focusing on all the little moments with individual people, as if every strange person he sees is his resource to exploit, and as if we haven't seen the same sort of thing done again and again before. Based on this adaptation, I wouldn't want to see his film if it ever does get made. show less

This is a graphic novel, and one without words. I was a bit stunned when I picked it up as it is a thick and heavy book but in fact, I read it in one sitting. I was drawn in immediately. The illustrations are excellent; what emotions Chaboute can convey on just one page, are shown on the face of just one character (pages 2 and 3), and are wonderful. And he does this over and over, throughout the book.

The central character in the book is, obviously, a single park bench. The drama is of the show more life around it, the people (and a dog!) who pass by, seeing the bench (or not), using it (or not), over a period of time. As a reader, I grew to feel I knew the characters, looked forward to seeing them, and followed their *stories* with anticipation and a range of emotions of my own (love, sadness, anger, hope, to name a few). A picture is worth a thousand words, indeed! This book is a little miracle, if you think about it. No translations needed, as it speaks the universal language of emotion.

This was my first introduction to this author but I am going to seek out his other works. show less

I have taken a personal vow to not read any more graphic novel adaptations of works I have not read, so in order to read this book I have spent the week making my way through [book:The Call Of The Wild And Selected Stories|2626625]. My wife advises me that "To Build a Fire" is a popular example to use in units on "man vs. nature" in most secondary school English classes, but I don't believe I've ever read it before. The only Jack London work I've ever read in full is [book:White Fang|43035] show more decades ago (though pre-vow, I have read several adaptations of Call of the Wild.)

Unfortunately for this adaptation, it suffers in comparison to the original when read the same day, but is still a fairly remarkable attempt at capturing the heart of the story: a man's confidence in his ability to safely walk with his dog to a far-off refuge begins to crumble as he faces a series of mishaps in -75 degree Fahrenheit temperatures in the Yukon. (This seems particularly timely as I confidently drove to work during two days of subzero temperatures in Iowa this week.)

Chaboute uses a minimal amount of words, relying on his art to convey the coldness and the danger of the environment. And it does for the most part. But the power of London's story is how its third-person omniscient narrator lets you know everything the protagonist is choosing to ignore and gives you a front-row seat to the changing tide of his thoughts as outside forces come crashing down on his bubble. Chaboute (or his translator) tries to make the few words used in this graphic novel more immediate by switching to second-person narration, and that's not a bad choice, but the little caption boxes scattered across a page give us ellipse-laden sentences like this: "...but the distant trail, no sun in the sky...this great cold...the weighty silence and the strangeness of it all has no effect on you...you are not worried...even though you are a newcomer to this land...a cheechako...and this is your first winter..."

The original is a classic for a reason, and this adaptation serves as a fine chance to revisit it. show less

It's been a while since I read Moby-Dick and, though I liked it a lot I am unlikely to read it again (so many books, so little time). But a graphic novel edition? Yes, please! It was a treat to get a refresher in the form of a book I could finish in one sitting, as well as reintroductions to the characters and overall narrative arc. I would have preferred an illustration style that was a bit less stark, but a lack of color is arguably a fitting artistic choice.