Soft City: The Lost Graphic Novel

It's basically a wordless graphic novel - there are words here and there, but more for atmosphere than actual dialog or narration. And it's B&W - there are a few spots of color, but they just emphasize the surrounding starkness. And it's all line drawing - solid masses of color do appear, but only rarely. And detailed, with endless architectural geometries, swarming masses of people and cars, and office bullpens that seem to go on forever. And, somehow, it combines claustrophobic crowds and traffic jams with agoraphobic chasms of concrete, with people dwarfed by looming facades. The dichotomy of horizontal oceans of interchangeable people vs soaring, upright facades of nearly featureless structures - it almost seems as if the two elements belong to different worlds.All of which follows a dystopic "day in the life" story line. The 1960s-70s origin is fairly apparent, but it's stood up to time far better than many stories. If people in modern society seem ground down to fit a common mold and pattern of life, this could be your worst nightmare. Although elements of individuality remain in just about every scene of human hordes, the spare, linear drawing style robs most characters of any individuality. I tried to compare it to things like the Bladerunner movie, with similar visual themes of dense population and architecture on inhuman scales, but comparison failed. Bladerunner kept far too much personality in the people and things portrayed - this turns people into indistinguishable pebbles on a very large beach.I like it, like it a lot. That said, this won't work for every reader. If it's not your thing, I can see why. But for the rest of us, it's a unique experience.-- wiredweird

Apparently it is a miracle that this book even exists. Considered lost for thirty years, it was then wrapped up in legal disputes for at least fifteen more, and now has finally been published to less than commercial fanfare, but to the joy of graphic artists and comic connoisseurs across the globe. This is the city high-rise, middle manager, version of Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”. We see the actions of one family as they go through their regular day of wake up, commute to work, do their job, shop, TV, sleep. This is reflected by thousands of people about them doing the same actions. The commuting parts I appreciate, as they go on for pages and pages, accurately reflecting the tediousness of going to and from work, and just how much of your valuable life is eaten up in this activity. One might discuss the action (or perhaps non-action) of this book in terms of the banality of existence, the dehumanization of the individual in corporate society, the purposelessness of modern Western first world life, but it is more than that. The people here aren’t mindless drones. We see snatches of their dreams and fantasies popping up in the urban landscape. These are of the escapist sort: desert islands, beautiful women and men, flying aces in an old war. These are people with dreams not just drones.

While we've learned to be wary of "forgotten treasures" in popular art—sometimes there's a good reason they were forgotten, after all!—there's no fear of that with this stunning, fittingly oversized book. Soft City is the future seen from our recent past, extrapolating a uniform life for all in a uniform world of uniform work, a simple yet detailed vision of all-encompassing, soul-destroying banality.Now, one of the positive blurbs for this book states, "Even if these anxieties are no longer quite the same—if we now inhabit a world in which the absence of work is more terrifying than its overbearing presence—there is still value to Pushwagner’s vision." This may be true ... but either way, work & its necessity, with its domination & crushing of the human soul, remains true as well.And of course there's more to it than that. Work is merely the outward expression of a state of mind, the endless treadmill of consumption without satisfaction, where the illusion of constant innovation in a million shiny digital ways blinds consumers to the unchanging nature of their existence. In this deeper aspect, "Soft City" is frighteningly up-to-date—whether we've got work or not, it's what determines our lives & substitutes for genuine meaning—this need for More, always More, that never gets us anywhere except closer to the end of an unlived life. Urgently recommended!

The author captures the wonderful monotony of our structured lives. I'm wondering how he was able to capture my life and then I remember that I carry a device with location tracker, camera, microphone, and data recorder in my pocket at all times. Also, I have a biometric tracker on my wrist that allows access to my internal states. With just a minimal amount of data aggregation from these two devices one can piece together my entire existence.

Perhaps it was a poor translation from Norwegian to English, or it was just terrible dialogue but this book was very mediocre. A poor attempt at recognizing nihilism through monotonous and droll city life in a capitalistic society. The illustrations range from very well drawn to outright nightmare fuel, so I’ll give it 1 star for that. 1 more star for the binding, which was well made albeit far too tall for a realistic shelf piece.

Stunning and amazing visionary work that this was created in the 70's way before Microsoft...! Pushwagner was a visionary as most great artists.

Got here faster than I thought! The only problem was the top of the spine / binding (?) was a little bent. Other than that, I have no complaints!

fun. bizarre. not for everyone.

Was looking forward to this but it has had the corner knocked badly. I was hoping to give this as a present

An incredible book that all should experience one time.

Una storia intrigante e "acida".Non ci sono parole per descrivere questo viaggio, lo si deve leggere da soli per immergersi del tutto nella storia.Disegni eccezionali, certo, non possono piacere a tutti, ma posso assicurare che ci sono pochi fumetti/ graphic novel disegnati in questo modo.Lo consiglio a chi vuole sperimentare i lati un po più "nascosti" del mondo delle graphic novel.

Hariton Pushwagner, nome d'arte di Terje Brofos, autore di Oslo, ha sviluppato questo volume è a partire dal 1969, sotto forti dosi di LSD; lasciato nel dimenticatoio per anni, quest'opera è riaffiorato in tempi ben più recenti, fino ad essere pubblicata per la prima volta nel 2008.La trama è molto semplice: un giorno qualsiasi di una persona qualunque in una megalopoli dalle dimensioni oppressive che annientano l'individualità di chi ne fa parte.L'alienazione è il filo conduttore della storia ed è resa efficacemente dalla ripetitività ossessiva degli elementi che riempiono pressoché ogni singola pagina del volume.CURIOSITÀ: provate a leggere il titolo presente in copertina.

Quarta di copertina rovinata. Non ho potuto cambiarlo essendo un regalo di Natale