Creator: Craig Thompson
Faber Press, 2018 (expanded edition)
This autobiographical travelogue was first written in 2004 by Craig Thomson, an American creator who had very significant success in the early 2000s with an independent comic book publication called Blankets. It was, to the title’s considerable benefit, expanded in 2018.
Mr Thompson documents his journeys from March 2004 to June 2004 exploring various parts of North Africa and continental Europe. It is generally an entertaining read. Mr. Thompson captures the personalities, profiles, appearances, and locations of so many of the exotic places that he visited during his journey. These range from the depths of the Sahara Desert to Marrakesh, to Barcelona, to Leon. Here is the marketing copy:
A unique insight into an acclaimed cartoonist’s travels through Europe and Morocco
Riding the international success of Blankets, Craig Thompson sets out on a tour across Europe and Morocco, promoting the various European editions of his book and beginning research for his next graphic novel, Habibi. Carnet de Voyage is a gorgeous sketchbook diary of his travels as he finds intellectual and spiritual stimulation during the day-to-day work of being an author. From wandering around Paris and Barcelona between events, to navigating markets in Fez and fleeing tourist traps in Marrakesh, we see glimpses of each place, rendered in Thompson’s exquisite ink line.
While desert landscapes and crowded street scenes flow across the pages, the sketchbook is packed first and foremost with people—travelers passing through, the friends and lovers he meets along the way, distant figures of old friends and other cartoonists who freely weave in and out of his subconscious. This expanded edition also includes a new epilogue drawn from his most recent European book tour, including several familiar faces and Thompson’s reflections on keeping a sketchbook. Carnet de Voyage is a casual yet intimate portrait of a celebrated cartoonist at a moment between works—surprisingly open and candid in his observations and revelations.
Although the story is very text-heavy, Mr. Thompson’s continual, daily sketches are what propels the story. The sketches range from very quick outlines of landscapes, to thoughtful and careful profiles of the people he meets along the way. Some of these are quite intimate:
Lurking beneath the sights of strange and charming countries, Mr Thompson is heartbroken. The theme underlying his sojourn is his despair at being alone and single. The alien and remarkable things that Mr Thompson witnesses in his escape, particularly in North Africa, are constantly punctured by Mr Thompson’s melancholy and yearning for sex. It features often enough to be annoying. At least Mr Thomson is aware of his self-indulgence. At one stage, stuck on a train for nine hours, he says “with nothing to distract me, I had to face how unhappy a person I was… a terrible ache in the pit of my gut… so pitifully unhappy.” Mr Thompson has a background sprite, a character which floats around narrative detritus of Mr Thompson’s imagination, tell him off for being so whiny.
The landscapes! The people! The novelty! And yet all our narrator can do is complain about not getting laid.
The Guardian in 2018 was more forgiving than we are – see Carnet de Voyage by Craig Thompson – review | Comics and graphic novels | The Guardian:
A lot of this was terribly and painfully familiar to me, and will be to anyone who has travelled alone. The highs are incredible: those sudden epiphanies in which you’re consumed by a sense of freedom and privilege. But then, of course, there are the lows, when you must face up to how unexpectedly pathetic you are: unable, sometimes, even to leave your hotel room, however grim. Did you realise, before you set off, that you secretly yearn for luxury? If you did, you would never have admitted it out loud. Thompson captures all of this, and if his narrative is, as a result, sometimes a little claustrophobic, you always forgive him for it. All human life is here: in his head, as on the teeming streets.
The second half of the 2004 journey is a tour of various comic book industry related events, meeting his famous and influential peers. (Blankets won two Eisner and three Harvey Awards, and so Mr Thompson is a worthy inclusion in this tour.) Aside from detail on the exhausting nature of these events (Mr Thompson repeatedly complains that his hand is sore from sketches for punters at conventions), Mr Thompson finally breaks his drought and has a summer fling with a Swede.
Twelve years later, Mr Thompson adds a nostalgic coda to his story. His hair has greyed, and he is much more together (he unnecessarily cringes over the expression of his state of mind in 2004). The coda is concerned with what he sees rather than his state of mind.
But more than that, this new ending reminds us of the Japanese concept of mono no aware: the awareness of impermanence. Mr Thompson’s travels in 2004 are ephemeral. They have now been reduced to a memory supported by sketches and commentary. To underscore this, the apartment of his friend Benoit Peeters is severely damaged by fire. Books, original art by the likes of Herge, manuscripts are all reduced to ash. Nothing lasts in the long run.
We would not have liked to read the 2004 text in the absence of the 2018 addition.
Mr Thompson’s dreamy last words, accompanying drawings of various people, mostly asleep, capture a further sentiment of imperfection driven through time.
Our lives are not books.
They’re not that deliberate and well-crafted.
They’re sketches.
Spontaneous… delicate…
…not fully realised.
How sublime.