Tag Archive for 'Kevin Huizenga'

Kevin Huizenga The River at Night – Release Event, Oct 4th

Oct ’19
4
7:00 pm

A MAN HAS TROUBLE FALLING ASLEEP AND REFLECTS ON HIS LIFE, MARRIAGE, AND TIME ITSELF

In The River at Night, Kevin Huizenga delves deep into consciousness. What begins as a simple, distracted conversation between husband and wife, Glenn and Wendy Ganges—him reading a library book and her working on her computer—becomes an exploration of being and the passage of time. As they head to bed, Wendy exhausted by a fussy editor and Glenn energized by his reading and no small amount of caffeine, the story begins to fracture.

The River at Night flashes back, first to satirize the dot-com boom of the late 1990s and then to examine the camaraderie of playing first-person shooter video games with work colleagues. Huizenga shifts focus to suggest ways to fall asleep as Glenn ponders what the passage of time feels like to geologists or productivity gurus. The story explores the simple pleasures of a marriage, like lying awake in bed next to a slumbering lover, along with the less cherished moments of disappointment or inadvertent betrayal of trust. Huizenga uses the cartoon medium like a symphony, establishing rhythms and introducing themes that he returns to, adding and subtracting events and thoughts, stretching and compressing time. A walk to the library becomes a meditation on how we understand time, as Huizenga shows the breadth of the comics medium in surprising ways. The River at Night is a modern formalist masterpiece as empathetic, inventive, and funny as anything ever written.

Praise for The River at Night

Glenn Ganges in: The River at Night is perilously philosophical, goofily logical, lovingly wild. In Huizenga’s hands, an ordinary day reveals its acme holes of infinite regress and counterfactual calamity. A wonderful book, to read and read again. 

 Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances and Little Labours

Unexpectedly poignant and occasionally magical… While Huizenga’s architectural, fine-line style is clearly influenced by Chris Ware… the vast spaciousness of this surreal night flight is all his own. Glenn’s reveries will pull readers into multiple deserved rereadings. 

 Publishers Weekly

A mix of John McPhee and Richard McGuire’s “Here,” The River at Night is about making the best of life when you know that the world’s been around for billions of years and will go on long after you, too, are gone. How wonderful to spend time with these sweet, gentle characters as they stare straight into the unfeeling universe and decide to make the best of it. A truly beautiful book. 

 Paul Ford, National Magazine Award-winning Technology Critic

Wow! I was not prepared for this: The River at Night is a surprising, beautifully rendered, mind-expanding, heartwarming exploration of what it means to be human, to have thoughts, to lie in bed all night after guzzling too much coffee, to follow your thoughts on a journey that maps the universe and makes light of the electrical activity of a brilliant mind. Kevin Huizenga is a kind of dreamer who gets us to think, to love what’s in our heads, to love what’s in his. Everybody will dig this book! 

 Matthew Klam, author of Who is Rich?

Facebook Event Invite here.

Chicago Alternative Comics Expo presents Kramers Ergot 9 Signing 6/10

Jun ’16
10
7:00 pm

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CAKE is excited to present a signing event for Kramers Ergot 9, with CAKE Special Guest Sammy Harkham. Joining the signing will be contributors Andy Burkholder, Anya Davidson, Kevin Huizenga, Patrick Kyle, John Pham, and Lale Westvind.

  “I think this is the best issue yet and I couldn’t be happier doing it with any other publisher. Fantagraphics is the place where the best of the low brow and the literary strands of comics are equally represented and cherished on their own terms, and that’s something I have always strived for with Kramers, as well. So it’s a great fit.” – Sammy Harkam

Since Kramers Ergot ‘s inception in 2000, it has introduced new talents and solidified aesthetics; each volume is an of-the-moment, state-of-the-medium manifesto. This anthology has always been a reflection of creator/editor Sammy Harkham’s comics passions, both past and future. Kramers Ergot 9 gathers many of the best and brightest together in one giant, oversized collection.

Quimby’s is proud to co-sponsor The Chicago Alternative Comics Expo [CAKE], a weekend-long celebration of independent comics, inspired by Chicago’s rich legacy as home to many of underground and alternative comics’ most talented artists– past, present and future. Featuring comics for sale, workshops, exhibitions, panel discussions and more, CAKE is dedicated to fostering community and dialogue amongst independent artists, small presses, publishers and readers. The Fifth Annual CAKE will take place on Saturday, June 11 and Sunday, June 12, 2016, at the Center on Halsted, 3656 N Halsted Ave. in Chicago. For more info about CAKE: cakechicago.com & Max Morris cakeexpo(at)gmail(dot)com.

This event is sponsored by Revolution Brewery, and will have refreshments provided while supplies last.

Friday, June 10th, 7pm – Free Event

Click here to see the Facebook event to invite your friends!

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Quimby’s Bookstore Welcomes Kevin Huizenga and Dan Zettwoch 6/15

Jun ’12
15
7:00 pm

Gloriana is a long-form poem in graphic form, and within its pages, Kevin Huizenga exposes the mechanics that underpin everyday life. His protagonist, Glenn Ganges, has conversations about dish soap and library visits that are both faithful depictions of mundane interactions and existential dissections of the units that construct our lives.
In Gloriana, Kevin Huizenga exposes the mechanics that underpin everyday life. His protagonist, Glenn Ganges, has conversations about dish soap and library visits that are both faithful depictions of mundane interactions and existential dissections of the units that construct our lives. Huizenga has an understated, quiet approach to story writing that allows his characters (and his readers) the self-awareness to recognize the humor and tragedy of every moment.

Huizenga’s much-lauded work is finely detailed, and in its innovative use of form, it explores the boundaries of the comic medium, deconstructing and reconstructing panels to express temporality and lived experience more fully. Presented in this expanded edition, Gloriana employs familiar settings and thorough, sometimes scientific explanations to reach thoughtful conclusions.

Dan Zettwoch’s Birdseye Bristoe celebrates the visual complexity of our world, and the impossibility of distilling this into a single digital signal. In Birdseye Bristoe, there are homes rigged entirely from bungee cords and 3-liter soda bottles, geodesic domes that have been turned into jungle gyms, an array of lawn-mowing routes, and guessing games inspired by the ambiguity of religious and heavy metal iconography.

It’s a story line we know all too well: “A mysterious stranger comes to town.” Only the town is not really a town and the stranger is a gigantic cell-phone tower. The town is Birdseye Bristoe—a portmanteau created from an interstate sign that points to two real towns—and it has only one real permanent resident, an old-timer known only as Uncle. A confirmed bachelor and World War II veteran, he owns most of the real estate in town. His teenaged great-niece and -nephew visit occasionally, though the town doesn’t have much to offer apart from an adult superstore, a gas station, and a tackle shop.

Uncle reluctantly agrees to lease his land to a conglomerate of telecommunications carriers, and sets the somewhat random condition that the tower be built with a huge crossbar set horizontally into the mast, making it also the world’s largest cross. Birdseye Bristoe begins with the destruction of the cell tower and works backward to unravel the story of its fall.

For more info about both books, see drawnandquarterly.com

Don’t miss Kevin Huizenga and Dan Zettwoch here at Quimby’s Bookstore Fri, June 15th, 7pm

This event is in tandem with The Chicago Alternative Comics Expo [CAKE] June 16th and 17th, celebrates independent, underground, and alternative comics. There will be comics for sale, workshops, exhibitions, panel discussions and more. Over 200 guests will be in attendance including: Carrie McNinch, Michael Deforge, Brian Ralph, Gabrielle Bell, Anders Nilsen, Laura Park, Lisa Hanawalt, Julia Wertz, Nate Powell, Secret Acres, Sparkplug, Ken Dahl, Nicole J. Georges, Kevin Huizenga, Patrick Kyle, Blaise Larmee, and The Providence Comics Consortium and more! CAKE wil be at Columbia College’s Ludington Building, 1104 S Wabash. Quimby’s is proud to be a co-sponsor, and even prouder to be sponsoring the CAKE panel “Crude and Rude: The Importance of Vulgarity with Ivan Brunetti, Lisa Hanawalt, Hellen Jo, and Onsmith, Moderated by Josh Reinwald and Justin Rosenberg of the comic Crass Sophisticate.” For more info: cakechicago.com