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A Graphic Novelist’s Passionate Anatomy of New York A Graphic Novelist’s Passionate Anatomy of New York
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On her website, the graphic novelist Julia Wertz offers an artist statement in the form of a short, looping video. A large, complacent-looking cat in a tightfitting bee costume looks blankly into the camera. Then it falls off the couch.On her website, the graphic novelist Julia Wertz offers an artist statement in the form of a short, looping video. A large, complacent-looking cat in a tightfitting bee costume looks blankly into the camera. Then it falls off the couch.
Wertz has become a cult favorite for her graphic memoirs “Drinking at the Movies” (2010) and “The Infinite Wait and Other Stories” (2012). She takes on serious themes — her alcoholism and chronic illness — but always makes time for silly stoner humor. To some lasting rue, she titled her first collections “The Fart Party” (2007) and “The Fart Party Vol. 2.” (2009) and is now trying to rebrand them as “Museum of Mistakes.” Futilely, I fear.Wertz has become a cult favorite for her graphic memoirs “Drinking at the Movies” (2010) and “The Infinite Wait and Other Stories” (2012). She takes on serious themes — her alcoholism and chronic illness — but always makes time for silly stoner humor. To some lasting rue, she titled her first collections “The Fart Party” (2007) and “The Fart Party Vol. 2.” (2009) and is now trying to rebrand them as “Museum of Mistakes.” Futilely, I fear.
Her new book, “Tenements, Towers & Trash,” is a departure. The focus isn’t on her life but on her great love, New York. It’s a passionate anatomy of the city, a book of dramatic streetscapes and hidden histories — mostly of infamous women, like the 19th-century celebrity abortionist Madame Restell, who catered to socialites and built her Fifth Avenue mansion a block away from a Catholic church, supposedly to taunt the faithful.Her new book, “Tenements, Towers & Trash,” is a departure. The focus isn’t on her life but on her great love, New York. It’s a passionate anatomy of the city, a book of dramatic streetscapes and hidden histories — mostly of infamous women, like the 19th-century celebrity abortionist Madame Restell, who catered to socialites and built her Fifth Avenue mansion a block away from a Catholic church, supposedly to taunt the faithful.
But we’re still in Wertzworld: the velvety black and white illustrations, the crisp lines of the landscapes and the rounded, expressive faces of the characters who look straight out of a Tintin comic. The artist herself is still the tousled and anxious creature of the previous books, very much a large cat in a bee costume — awkward, unlucky, straining for dignity and supremely lovable.But we’re still in Wertzworld: the velvety black and white illustrations, the crisp lines of the landscapes and the rounded, expressive faces of the characters who look straight out of a Tintin comic. The artist herself is still the tousled and anxious creature of the previous books, very much a large cat in a bee costume — awkward, unlucky, straining for dignity and supremely lovable.
The city rises majestically in these pages. The crowded panels evoke the jostle of urban life. Your eye doesn’t know where to settle; there’s so much to absorb. Wertz loves New York down to its guts: the pneumatic tubes that stretch the length of the island and were once used to send gusts of letters from one post office to another. She loves the arteries of the subways, the lungs of the parks. She goes uptown to sketch movie theaters in the Bronx and peers down to the bottom of the Hudson River, the “ watery grave” where illegal pinball machines were dumped by the city in the 1970s.The city rises majestically in these pages. The crowded panels evoke the jostle of urban life. Your eye doesn’t know where to settle; there’s so much to absorb. Wertz loves New York down to its guts: the pneumatic tubes that stretch the length of the island and were once used to send gusts of letters from one post office to another. She loves the arteries of the subways, the lungs of the parks. She goes uptown to sketch movie theaters in the Bronx and peers down to the bottom of the Hudson River, the “ watery grave” where illegal pinball machines were dumped by the city in the 1970s.
She unearths so many strange, wondrous facts that my exclamation marks in the margin resemble elaborate Morse code.She unearths so many strange, wondrous facts that my exclamation marks in the margin resemble elaborate Morse code.
“You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now,” Colson Whitehead wrote in his ode to his hometown, “The Colossus of New York.” The palimpsest of the city is Wertz’s obsession. She draws the route of one of her 15-mile walks, pointing out what catches her eye — “patches of old slate sidewalk” and intricate, antique doorknobs. “I spend the whole walk in current New York City looking for evidence of the past New York City,” she writes.“You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now,” Colson Whitehead wrote in his ode to his hometown, “The Colossus of New York.” The palimpsest of the city is Wertz’s obsession. She draws the route of one of her 15-mile walks, pointing out what catches her eye — “patches of old slate sidewalk” and intricate, antique doorknobs. “I spend the whole walk in current New York City looking for evidence of the past New York City,” she writes.
The graphic form, more than any other, can play host to this desire, monkey with chronology and reveal how the past creeps into the present — no special effects or laborious exposition required. In “Here,” Richard McGuire followed a corner of a living room from 3,000,500,000 B.C. to A.D. 22,175. Wertz doesn’t attempt quite so ambitious a span, but the effect she achieves is no less transporting. She juxtaposes sketches of street corners then and now: the cigar shops on Broadway that gave way to an Apple Store and a Jamba Juice; Harlem’s fabled Lenox Lounge, lit up like a chandelier in the 1940s, shuttered and fallen into disrepair in 2016. She traces the evolution of food carts and street sweepers. On one page she pays homage to the heavy, embossed “hotel keys of yore.”The graphic form, more than any other, can play host to this desire, monkey with chronology and reveal how the past creeps into the present — no special effects or laborious exposition required. In “Here,” Richard McGuire followed a corner of a living room from 3,000,500,000 B.C. to A.D. 22,175. Wertz doesn’t attempt quite so ambitious a span, but the effect she achieves is no less transporting. She juxtaposes sketches of street corners then and now: the cigar shops on Broadway that gave way to an Apple Store and a Jamba Juice; Harlem’s fabled Lenox Lounge, lit up like a chandelier in the 1940s, shuttered and fallen into disrepair in 2016. She traces the evolution of food carts and street sweepers. On one page she pays homage to the heavy, embossed “hotel keys of yore.”
Pete Hamill called nostalgia “the most powerful of all New York emotions.” It’s reached a particular pitch in recent years with rising income inequality, the influx of investors for whom New York represents property not home and a lack of affordable housing that has come to constitute what some are calling “a humanitarian emergency.” There has been a drove of elegies to the lost diversity of the city: “St. Marks Is Dead” by Ada Calhoun, “Vanishing New York” by Jeremiah Moss, “Arbitrary Stupid Goal” by Tamara Shopsin, “The Lonely City” by Olivia Laing. Roz Chast’s graphic love letter to the city, “Going into Town,” also published this month, is more sanguine than most about the evolution of New York but still strikes a melancholy note. (“I try not to freak out every time a favorite restaurant or bookstore closes. I remind myself that life is change, and that life in New York is definitely change.”) These writers long for what the city was once, a place people moved to find alternatives to the suburbs, not to recreate them, a place that allowed for failure, for reinvention. Pete Hamill called nostalgia “the most powerful of all New York emotions.” It’s reached a particular pitch in recent years with rising income inequality, the influx of investors for whom New York represents property not home and a lack of affordable housing that has come to constitute what some are calling “a humanitarian emergency.” There has been a drove of elegies to the lost diversity of the city: “St. Marks Is Dead” by Ada Calhoun, “Vanishing New York” by Jeremiah Moss, “Arbitrary Stupid Goal” by Tamara Shopsin, “The Lonely City” by Olivia Laing. Roz Chast’s graphic love letter to the city, “Going Into Town,” also published this month, is more sanguine than most about the evolution of New York but still strikes a melancholy note. (“I try not to freak out every time a favorite restaurant or bookstore closes. I remind myself that life is change, and that life in New York is definitely change.”) These writers long for what the city was once, a place people moved to find alternatives to the suburbs, not to recreate them, a place that allowed for failure, for reinvention.
Wertz registers the changes but without polemic. There’s no need; the coda to her project is enough. After 10 years in the city, she was priced out of her Brooklyn neighborhood last year. She wrote this book in California.Wertz registers the changes but without polemic. There’s no need; the coda to her project is enough. After 10 years in the city, she was priced out of her Brooklyn neighborhood last year. She wrote this book in California.