Maurice Vellekoop

A long and boring autobiography of a Canadian gay artist, overstuffed with all his pop culture loves, dating travails, friendships, imaginary friends, and mommy and daddy issues.

I did like the end of the book as the author worked with a therapist to figure out the source of the depression he struggles with for so long, but it couldn't help me forget the tedium of slogging through all the little details of his life up till that point.

FOR REFERENCE:

Contents:

Part One: Fairy Gifts and Curses

• show more Two Excursions
• Once Upon a Dream
• Life With Father
• Bewitched
• I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together
• Our Daily Bread
• Christian Deformed
• Virginia Is for Lovers
• God's Temples

Part Two: The Spindle's Prick

• Thistletown
• Teenage Wildlife
• Paul Baker: An Introduction
• Breaking Away
• Stroke
• Flowers of Romance
• Guy Trouble

Part Three: The Sleep

• Disney's Beauty
• Tooty Fruity
• Date
• Vissi d'Arte
• Party Time
• Success!
• Island Retreat
• Oklahoma!
• Down There
• Stendhal Syndrome

Part Four: Wake Up!

• Theodora Goes Wild
• Happy Birthday to Me!
• Deep Magic
• Maggie
• Messing Around
• Dad
• Bruce
• Paul
• Mum
• Deeper Magic
• Epilogue
• Coda
• Acknowledgments show less

Where was this book when I was learning my alphabet??

This tiny book is filled with fun, witty,hard core erotic illustrations. Its design is reminiscent of the Little Golden Books, but it is truly not the kind of thing you would probably want to give as a present at a baby shower. More varied than Tom of Finland, more playful than Patrick Fillion. Vellekoop's sexual alphabet includes men of every color, age, body type and predilection. So much so, in fact, it's impossible for me to choose a show more favorite. show less

graphic nonfiction/memoir, growing up in 1960s/70s Toronto area, Canada with Christian Dutch immigrant parents, later discovering the gay scene as a comic artist, briefly moving to Brooklyn, New York in 1995, where eventually he would talk to a therapist, and moving back to Toronto - TW/CW: unpredictably angry dad that yells a lot, vaguely disapproving parents, anti-gay slurs, language/nudity, drug use and addiction, violence (punching/beating, knife), alcoholism, depression, loss of show more acquaintances to AIDS.

This took me longer to read because the illustrations are caricature-like (apart from occasional, more photo-realistic depictions like that shown on the cover) and to me it looked as though there were bulgey-eyed ventriloquist dummies staring at me from every frame, plus it's 480+ pages and sometimes very, very dull. I'm not sure the graphic format is ideal for telling the story since much of it depends on presenting information through conversation bubbles. The pacing got better towards the end as Vellekoop found a therapist he liked and started making progress in figuring out his issues and showing more depth/development (to be fair, he had a lot of difficult hangups that he needed to get through first but it makes the first 2/3 feel slow and somewhat empty). I wanted to like this more, especially as there are not that many books out there that deal with the awkwardness of a closeted queer boy going through puberty, etc., and it was good to see all the progress being made through the therapy towards the end (particularly in talking to his late mother about how better to support him; in the Epilogue he even finds himself in a 4-year relationship), but overall it was just ok for me. show less

I think this is now my favorite graphic novel. The art is so clear and easy to decipher what is happening-- I find too many graphic novels are difficult for me to follow visually. The writing is charming, clear, and tells Maurice Vellekoop's memories of his life clearly. 2024 read.