We review graphic novels galore this week, including Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller: The Man Who Created 'Nancy' by Bill Griffith, which is "as approachable, enticing, and weird as the Nancy cartoonist's own work is"; the 20th-anniversary edition of Craig Thompson's Blankets, which paved the way for the graphic revolution, "tenderly written and drawn with a naked vulnerability" and featuring a new afterword and process sketches; and Ben Hatke's Things in the Basement, "a gorgeous, maze-like graphic novel for young readers" featuring a boy on a quest to find his baby sister's special sock. Plus so much more!
In The Writer's Life, poet and debut novelist Ben Purkert manages to evoke the names of Paula Fox, Jonathan Franzen, John Updike, and Philip Roth in support of one book. See how he does it.