One! Hundred! Demons! [Hardcover]

Youll wonder how anything can be so sad and so funny at the same time. Lev Grossman,Time

Inspired by a sixteenth-century Zen monks painting of a hundred demons chasing each other across a long scroll, acclaimed cartoonist Lynda Barry confronts various demons from her life in seventeen full-color vignettes. In Barrys hand, demons are the life moments that haunt you, form you, and stay with you: your worst boyfriend; kickball games on a warm summer night; watching your baby brother dance; the smell of various houses in the neighborhood you grew up in; or the day you realize your childhood is long behind you and you are officially a teenager.

As a cartoonist, Lynda Barry has the innate ability to zero in on the essence of truth, a magical quality that has made her bookOne! Hundred! Demons!an enduring classic of the early twenty-first century. In the books intro, however, Barry throws the idea of truth out of the window by asking the reader to decide if fiction can have truth and if autobiography can have a fiction, a hybrid that Barry coins autobiofictionalography. As readers get to know Barrys demons, they realize that the actual truth no longer matters because the universality of Barrys comics, true or untrue, reigns supreme.

You'll wonder how anything can be so sad and so funny at the same time. -Lev Grossman,TimeLynda Barryhas worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator, and teacher. She is the inimitable creator behind the seminal comic stripErnie Pooks Comeek, and author ofThe Freddie Stories,One! Hundred! Demons!,The Greatest of Marlys,Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel,Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies!, andThe Good Times are Killing Me, which was adapted as an off-Broadway play and won the Washington State Governors Award. Barry has written three bestselling and acclaimed creative howl3;