| Asterios Polyp |  | Author: David Mazzucchelli
Publisher: Pantheon
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $19.77
as of 9/4/2010 02:24 CDT details
You Save: $10.18 (34%)
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Seller: Amazon.com
Rating:  58 reviews
Sales Rank: 11,309
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 344
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.9
Dimensions (in): 11 x 8.8 x 1.7
ISBN: 0307377326
Dewey Decimal Number: 741.5973
EAN: 9780307377326
ASIN: 0307377326
Publication Date: July 7, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| • | ISBN13: 9780307377326 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
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Product Description
The triumphant return of one of comics’ greatest talents, with an engrossing story of one man’s search for love, meaning, sanity, and perfect architectural proportions. An epic story long awaited, and well worth the wait.
Meet Asterios Polyp: middle-aged, meagerly successful architect and teacher, aesthete and womanizer, whose life is wholly upended when his New York City apartment goes up in flames. In a tenacious daze, he leaves the city and relocates to a small town in the American heartland. But what is this “escape” really about?
As the story unfolds, moving between the present and the past, we begin to understand this confounding yet fascinating character, and how he’s gotten to where he is. And isn’t. And we meet Hana: a sweet, smart, first-generation Japanese American artist with whom he had made a blissful life. But now she’s gone. Did Asterios do something to drive her away? What has happened to her? Is she even alive? All the questions will be answered, eventually.
In the meantime, we are enthralled by Mazzucchelli’s extraordinarily imagined world of brilliantly conceived eccentrics, sharply observed social mores, and deftly depicted asides on everything from design theory to the nature of human perception.
Asterios Polyp is David Mazzucchelli’s masterpiece: a great American graphic novel.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 58
 Mindblowing Graphic Novel Greatness August 28, 2010
Scott Allen (New York)
Stunning! All I could think after reading Asterios Polyp for the first time was "what just happened to me?" This ground-breaking graphic novel achieves something I thought could not be done- it is completely original. Let's start with the cover- the artist's approach to the letters in the title of the book is so original that I couldn't stop from staring at the cover for ten minutes. Inside the cover, the end pages are beautiful drawings of flowers. This was just a taste of the painstaking detail the artist used to create not just a story, but a meditation on philosophy, the meaning of memory and time, and life itself.
This book feels at times deeply personal and autobiographical, yet at the same time universal. It asks not only the big questions, but the small, daily questions. What is a memory? What is self? What does time mean? Yet this is all wrapped in a fast-paced story of an eccentric man. The artist shifts drawing styles with amazing fluidity, at times building the story, at other times leading us off into strange directions. The complete interlock between art style and story and theme here is mind-blowing.
This one has my vote for Best Graphic Novel of 2009.
 an euphonious visual cacophony. August 18, 2010
J. Edgar Mihelic (Chicago)
Asterios Polyp is an architect, and the main character of this eponymous ontological examination - cum - graphic novel. The work is ambitious, but it fails on many levels.
It fails as a story and as philosophy.
I never felt the energy or any chemistry between the main character or any of his supporting characters. He is a cold architect and academic, most famous for his designs and not for the buildings because the buildings are never made. This duality between the real and the imagined is to keep up the continual reinforcement of the dichotomous world that Polyp exists in.
The most notable, and the most gimmick-like of these is that the book is nominally narrated by his stillborn twin as a shadow that continually follows him. Polyp is as much defined by the potentiality of the nothingness that is/was his dead brother. This part seems heavy-handed and fake. The life Polyp lives seems to be on the surfaces - he is a flaneur, an observer of his own existence. He records his life, but doesn't watch the tapes. He is the self-deconstructing dialectic. He is boring. His life of teaching and falling in love and getting married and divorced is shallow.
When, as so happens, his house burns down and he goes on a journey of self-discovery, I was reminded of Fight Club: A Novel more than anything else. When he discovers himself and just begins to reconcile his dual nature into one of a person of depth, the book ends with an ominous portent hanging over him. While the ending makes thematic sense, it felt to me a return to the shallows that works artistically but not as a story.
Because it does work artistically. The drawings of the characters and their speech help give them all depth except for Polyp. Even though I feel that this feeling is the `point' of the artist, it still is cold and distancing. The poly-stylistic thing works in a way I cannot fully describe, the best I can think of is as a euphonious visual cacophony.
Great! August 4, 2010
composer_city
Bought this comic book for my boyfriend without knowing anything about comics at all! I did a lot of research and it seemed like people really liked this book, so I got it. He LOVED it. Absolutely get it.
Read and read again June 24, 2010
Dp Simmonds (Sydney, Australia)
Not a fan of graphic novels, comics or manga but came to Asterios Polyp through a review in the NY Times that made it sound interesting enough to send off for immediately. First impression is the book itself: the design and feel of it are so pleasing; I read it quickly - not much more than an hour and was entranced by the art, the characters and characterization; finished it way too quickly. Set it aside; thought about it all day, took it to bed and began a slow and deliberate re-read, planning to savor every page and idea. I did that and have done it again since. It's a book that rewards many returns because there is always something new waiting to be discovered. And quite frankly, the guy is a genius. It's one of the great American novels: true, honest, funny, tragic and so illuminating it's dazzling. Unfortunately I am unable to lend it to even the closest and most trusted of my book friends; I just don't trust them to give it back.
 I don't get it June 18, 2010
R. Hunt (scottsdale, AZ)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
What? This is apparently supposed to be an interesting book based on all of the reviews. However, I was very disappointed with it. I believe the author was trying very hard to make a point, but whatever that point was completely lost me. It's like a very good artist (the artwork was good) trying to come up with an interesting philosophy book - hard to do, and in this case, a total disaster.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 58
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