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When he’s not Baking With Kafka or exposing the ultra-secretive Department of Mind-Blowing Theories, cartoonist Tom Gauld keeps himself busy crafting literary cartoons that have done for bibliophiles what Scott Adams’ Dilbert has for the office workplace; suggest that a world taken over and controlled by librarians would be a repressive and uppercrust affair, but thanks to the Dewey Decimal system, it would be a much quieter, more organized place.
Revenge of the Librarians collects nearly 200 pages of Gauld’s single-paneled comics into a highly collectable, intimately sharable book that’s perfect for holiday gift-buying, both to others and to yourself. Charity begins at home, remember.
Culled from his work for The Guardian, Gauld’s fourth (proper) collection of paneled funnies is bursting with more of his familiar literary allusions, puns, play on words (and wordplay), parody, and outright desecration of norms that will delight and titillate book lovers the world over. While much of the content will be familiar, including content generators, Venn diagrams, algorithmic plots, critical praise (and derision), Jack Reacher plots, font follies, etc., the nastiness of his country’s mandatory lockdowns meant more fuel for the pyre.
One thing you won’t find is proper chronology, which is disappointing given the subject matter (both in content and context) as the comics here aren’t presented in proper order (or given their original publication date). A little sleuthing reveals the cartoons reprinted in this collection were originally published between 2018 and 2020, many predating the Covid-19 pandemic and several created specifically to address it. My inquisitive side doesn’t mind a little scavenger hunt to track down the clues, but the lazy reader in me would’ve appreciated a few Cliff notes.
A snowman reading Proust’s ‘In Search of Time’, only to melt away into a puddle, is genius, as is ‘Waiting For Godot to Join the Zoom Meeting’. Pet lovers get advice with ‘How To Tell if Your Cat Is Interested in The Novel You Are Writing’ (spoiler: they’re not) and ‘How To Tell if Your Dog Is Interested in The Novel You Are Writing’ (spoiler: they are).
More than anything, Gauld shows sympathy, if not outright camaraderie, for anyone who’s ever attempted to pen the Next Big Thing in publishing. The world is so full of distractions, isn’t it? When all else fails, procrastinate, caffeinate, and learn how to subjugate those verbs. There’s always tomorrow. And the day after that. What’s the rush?
Highlights of this collection include Gauld updating ‘The Ant and the Grasshopper’ into a capitalist treatise on meritocracy, sharing ‘Hallowe’en Costumes for Pretentious Children’, suggesting ‘Picture Books for Young Billionaires’ and, for today’s neurotics, ‘Classic Novels with Added Positivity’ is a must. ‘Classics Reissued With Lower Standards’ is both hilarious, yet depressing. If all else fails, why not enjoy ‘Prequels To Classic Novels’ (“The First of the Mohicans”) or some gender-swapped classics (“Of Mice and Women”, “The Lady of the Flies”)?
Also included are several barbs to help remind us of a certain world-shuttering viral pandemic (that we’d all like to forget, frankly) including ‘The Government Finally Issues Coronavirus Guidance for Fantastic Quests’ (“Successful quests may be celebrated with an outdoor gathering of up to six people or twelves hobbits”), or ‘Coronavirus Advice From a Regency Novel’ (Wash your hands…Like a Duchess after contact with the boy who feeds pigs).
It’s actually scary how much dedicated readers have in common with quarantined folk, if you stop to think about it. Revenge of the Librarians won’t make up for the incalculable injustices so many incurred over the past few years, but it’ll certainly help make the next viral lockdown more enjoyable, should that ever happen again. And if so, Gauld’s cartoons reveal the day-to-day existence of Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, infamous for his man-to-insect transformation, would carry on much the same. In a way, aren’t we all Gregor Samsas?