The New York Trilogy
The New York Trilogy is post-modern literature disguised as Noir fiction where language is the prime suspect. An interpretation of detective and mystery fiction, each book explores various philosophical themes. In City of Glass, an author of detective fiction investigates a murder and descends into madness. Ghosts features a private eye named Blue, trailing a man named Black, for a client called White. This too ends with the protagonist’s downfall. And in The Locked Room, another author is experiencing writer’s block, and hopes to brake it by solving the disappearance of his childhood friend. The second two parts of this trilogy will be appearing in this volume for the very first time as a graphic novel.
Paul Karasik, the mastermind behind the three adaptations, art directed all three books. City of Glass is illustrated by the award-winning cartoonist David Mazzucchielli, the second volume, Ghosts, is illustrated by New Yorker cover artist, Lorenzo Mattotti, and The Locked Room is adapted and drawn by Karasik himself. These adaptations take Auster’s sophisticated wordplay and translate it into comics play: both highbrow and lowbrow and immensely fun reading.
How To Read Nancy
"How To Read Nancy" , written in collaboration with Mark Newgarden, is the deconstruction of a single Nancy comic strip to reveal the hidden language of comics.
Eisner Award, 2018: Best Comics-Related Book of the Year
New York Times review:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/books/review/latest-graphic-novels.html
New York Review of Books review:
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/17/grown-men-reading-nancy/
The Comics Journal review:
Turn Loose Our Death Rays and Kill Them All: The Complete Works of Fletcher Hanks
"Turn Loose Our Death Rays and Kill Them All!" is a collection that I edited of the complete works of golden age cartoonist, Fletcher Hanks, who R.Crumb called, "A twisted dude."
Eisner Award, 2008: Best Archival Comics Project of the Year (I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets)
Here is a video link about Fletcher Hanks at the Small Press Expo:
The Ride Together: A Brother and Sister's Memoir of Autism in the Family
"The Ride Together: A Brother and Sister's Memoir of Autism in the Family," is a comics/prose story of growing up with a sibling with autism co-created with my sister, Judy Karasik.
Here is a link to me and my sister, Judy, talking about "The Ride Together" on NPR's "Talk of the Nation":
