You Know Exactly: The Third Collection of All Over Coffee

A beautiful and haunting collection of visual artwork paired with evocative words. The scenes are mostly of San Francisco, street scenes and cityscapes that the artist has come upon. The words are sometimes motivational, or thought-provoking, or sometimes snatches of conversation. As the collection progresses, the words become conversations become stories. Interspersed throughout are essays by the artist narrating his creative journey or recalling events in his life that shaped his art.

This was in many senses a dense book. I found myself savoring it, contemplating the images and the words for far longer than it took to merely consume them. A truly bountiful collection or layered art.

What a delightful surprise! I received a review copy of You Know Exactly What You Have To Do through LibraryThing without any knowledge of Paul Madonna, or All Over Coffee, his comic strip that ran in the San Fransisco Chronicle from 2004 to 2015. This large-format, beautifully printed book is the third in a series collecting some of the best of the strip, though I wouldn't fret about taking it out of order. All Over Coffee is/was something of an ever-changing project, not so much telling a story but capturing moments in time and space. Each "strip" is really just one hand-drawn image, sometimes with overlaid or accompanying text, sometimes just on its own. Madonna's loose but detail-oriented hand presents building's, cityscapes, show more everyday objects, and landscapes in a monochrome so vibrant you could almost walk into them, sometimes with a splash of color to bring out an element. The stories they tell are often vignettes - from the mundane to the fantastic - whose relationships to the images are up to the reader to decipher. Very often, the text is just a phrase incorporated into the image, such as the title so dramatically printed on the front cover. The book is bound like a sketchbook, with the spine on the top of each page, making leafing through a little art adventure.

Madonna includes several essays describing his process, the history of the strip, and introducing some of the themes that tie together the selections. All in all, it is a beautiful, often touching, strangely inspiring, and quietly melancholy slice-of-life that I firmly recommend. Now I need to go find the first two collections! show less

It feels a bit corny to say, but Paul Madonna is a real inspiration for me; I love his style and approach to his art equally. This is a wonderful book, both a visual treat and a good exploration into his craft—not so much the making of the work as his editorial decisions around the All Over Coffee series, his books, and other projects. I discovered him at City Lights Bookstore when I was in San Francisco in 2015, and just fell in love with his work—time for me to own more of it in paper-and-board format, I think. I had a professor in my undergrad years who said that every piece of art you make should have beauty and mystery, and Madonna's work satisfies that craving for me in a big way.

YOU KNOW EXACTLY is an oddly compelling set of contrasts and combinations,
notably the HUGE WORDS and drawings.

I loved the minimalist pages - drawings and few words - best...as well, RED livening up The Browns,
the ARROW for BIRDS,
ACT I,
and "more seals" > hated the head in the bowl
and other bodiless heads.

The author's messages veer from "LET'S GET DRUNK" and "BE CALM"
to 'YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO."
Do you now...?

All Over Coffee was a regular feature in the San Francisco Chronicle for eighteen years. Was it a comic strip? Poetic art? Illustrated musings? There is no easy category for such a creative endeavor, which has been assembled into several collections, this one being the third and final anthology. As the artist says on an opening page, “All my attempts at beauty/are little more than decoration/if through them, my demons are not set free.” You will want to spend time turning these pages, perhaps absorbing only a few at one sitting. Some are wordless pen and ink drawings of San Francisco life, both real and imagined. Others bear a slogan: “Be calm,” “What kinds of stories do you tell?” “Lick the bowl,” set against an image, show more while others tell a memory or anecdote. Almost all of the drawings are monotone, but that doesn’t mean that they lack depth or impact. They were created on the spot, with nearly an urgent sense of immediacy, filling over two hundred notebooks, in his estimation. Paul Madonna has organized the work into sections, each of which he introduces with some background, describing his projects. A wonderful compilation that may fill you with wonder, satisfaction, curiosity. show less

I know exactly what I must do. I have to write a review of Paul Madonna’s Third Collection of All Over Coffee – an enigmatic comic strip collection that the author admits to not having a clear definition of.

The coffee table book (pun intended) is illustrated with cityscapes and empty streets, snapshot sketches with absorbing detail paired with unrelated, vague post-it-note phrases, quips and whimsical handwriting.

The intricate ink-washed drawings of public places juxtaposed with cryptic private thoughts create an odd relationship between image and words. The text disorientated me at times. However, I didn’t mind being lost between the elaborated lines.

Thanks to LibraryThing and West Margin Press for an advance reader copy. All comments and opinions are my own.

I have been reading Paul Madonna since the San Francisco Chronicle began publishing his work in February 2004. At that time he was considered an artist/cartoonist and the pieces published were a comic strip called All Over Coffee. I have also seen Madonna’s work framed in a museum exhibit. This oversized book is the third and final collection of All Over Coffee.

A blend of storytelling and art, many would call this a graphic novel. Most of the images are pen & ink and watercolor and focus on architecture, sometimes landscapes, but rarely people. They often feature older San Francisco Victorian buildings with a great deal of show more detail, in addition to words and phrases that Madonna adds to create an aura of symbolism and meaning.

Interspersed with the art are first person accounts of Madonna’s experiences, which makes this a memoir of sorts. His personal story is juxtaposed with the often bizarre and haunting short stories written on top of the graphics. He also discusses why he chose to include certain images and why they are important to him, so the book becomes a personal notebook or diary.

I think Madonna is extremely talented. I admire his success in starting as an unemployed college graduate to becoming a published comic strip artist, winning several awards, publishing three books, and exhibiting in many museums. And through it all he has continued to draw, paint, and write in his unmistakable style.

This is the kind of book that is best appreciated when read a few pages at a time. I would put it on a coffee table for guests to enjoy. It would also make a unique gift. show less