This is an auction for THE FATE OF THE ARTIST by Eddie Campbell.

“Campbell, best known for his work on From Hell and his autobiographical Alec comics, has come up with a marvellous oddity: a meta-memoir about his own disappearance that's a kind of nervous breakdown on paper. It's a non-linear, mixed-media collage of a book: there are typeset prose passages, painted comics about his family, old-fashioned newspaper strips, photos with typeset word balloons, a child's crayon scrawl representing God and, near the end, an illustrated adaptation of O. Henry's story "The Confessions of a Humorist," which concerns how habitually turning life into art can make life unbearable. The tone is whimsical and playful, but there's a deep despair beneath it—about drinking, burnout and what happens to an artist "when his imaginary friends stop calling"—that overwhelms and takes the place of the plot. What pulls the whole thing together is Campbell's stunning visual technique: fierce blotches of watercolour, scraggly pen-and-ink work and whiplash stylistic shifts from impressionistic caricatures to exquisitely rendered painterly miniatures.”

• a *** starred *** review in Publishers Weekly (US)

Very favourable reviews on Amazon.com.

Large format paperback 2006.

96 pages.

Illustrated throughout.

Very good condition.

The cost of shipping is $4.95, or $6.40 by tracked mail. If you are on rural delivery and want tracked mail, the shipping cost will be $8.95.

There is of course no charge for shipping if you collect this book from my shop in Palmerston ?North following the auction.

Payment within seven days, please.