Detrimental Information

The authors, who are brothers, describe their debut as “not nonfiction.” More outsider art than graphic novel, their vignettes of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood are presented in a sketchbook format, with crude, scratchy cartoons accompanied by text hand-drawn in wide balloonlike lettering. Small naked creatures populate the page, stories wrapping around them, and give a buzzing kinetic energy to the quick-paced tales. It’s filled with schoolboy adventures dealing with poop, pee, dumpster donuts, and rectal thermometers. Anecdotes are frequently capped with maxims—recognitions of the banality of everyday life, the mundane realizations that clutter the journey through life. The visual style is challenging to the eye and the brain, turning these relatively simple stories into demanding analyses. The bold choice of presentation commands the reader to consider them separately and together. The book is fast moving and occasionally hilarious, but the rough, provocative, naive art narrows its appeal. (July)