GRACE BOOK CLUB
Every Monday, Grace recommends a book by a woman writing literary prose.
I LOVE LED ZEPPELIN by Ellen Forney
A beautiful collection of Ellen Forney’s comics published by Fantagraphics Books, I Love Led Zeppelin is the work of an artist totally geeking out on human behavior. Black and white panels are crammed with texture, motion lines, grunts, gulps, and scads of wry commentary. Forney is funny and lowers a big bullshit detector on topics such as sex (gay), drugs (recreation/recovery), and the marvelous enterprises of others (blacksmiths, microvascular surgeons, call girls). In the “How To…” section of the book, large one-page panels demonstrate How To Be a Fabulous Fag Hag (a collaboration with Margaret Cho), How To Sew an Amputated Finger Back On, How To Tip, How To Use Your Voice, and How To Fuck a Woman With Your Hands!!. Ellen Forney has done her research, the comics are practical and instructive and hilarious and serious, too. The artist’s inner nerd has been commissioned to celebrate the diversity and the diversity of skills in the people around her. Later sections of the book include more comics in the single-page format, a section of longer comics from ’92-’94, and a series of collaborations with the likes of Dan Savage and Kristin Gore, who write text paired with Forney’s bold illustrations, as well as a collaboration with artist Ariel Bordeaux. Ellen Forney draws with a wink and a nudge and then draws you in with intimate close-ups of how sweet and silly and vulnerable we all are. In I Love Led Zeppelin, maybe she loves Led Zeppelin, but she also loves the people in her world and all the neat shit they know how to do.