Close-ups of French friends jostle alongside wide-screen landscapes little notes and arrows carry us along Thompson’s stream-of-consciousness there’s a page on how to wind a turban, complete with steps. Like others of its type, the book encourages the eye and mind to wander. The sketchbook-cum-travelogue is quite a dreamy object - it doesn’t use many separated panels, and drawing often fills the page, black crosshatched edges feathering and dissolving into the ragged white surround. The result is a swiftly compiled record of his travels in Europe and Morocco (where he researched his long-gestating graphic novel “Habibi”). To stay productive and to connect to a tradition popular with other artists, Thompson committed to recording a travel diary - or “Carnet de Voyage” - as he went, sketching every day. Thompson’s French publisher organized a book tour, and when other publishers in other countries piled on, the trip turned into an odyssey.
He was also, though, slightly adrift: His girlfriend had just left him, and he wanted to get out of Portland, Ore., which was full of memories of her. His intimate “Blankets ” - an autobiographical tale of first love, brotherly failure and lost faith - had won a number of awards, and his success was helping to move the graphic memoir into the American mainstream. $21.95.īack in 2004, Craig Thompson was coming into his own as a serious graphic novelist. CARNET DE VOYAGE By Craig Thompson 256 pp.
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