In his graphic memoir THE YEAR OF LOVING DANGEROUSLY, Ted Rall recalls the year 1984. While the rest of America was living well off President Reagan's policies, Rall hit rock-bottom. It started with a wart on his chest, which caused an artery to pop, which sent him to the ER, which caused him to miss finals, which half of his pompous college professors inexplicably wouldn't let him make up.
That sent him into academic probation and got him kicked out of Columbia University's engineering school. And that's just the start of a Very Bad Year, with him getting arrested, evicted and dumped by his serious girlfriend. He avoided homelessness only by becoming a quasi-gigolo.
Somehow, he had a magic touch of meeting beautiful women — some even married — and going home with them for sex, even if just for a one-night stands. But even one-night stands add up, so casual sex literally kept him off the streets.
Rall is a talented political cartoonist on the indie side of things, so it's odd to see him: a) writing something so serious, and b) not illustrating it. But I'm glad he ceded artist duties to BLUESMAN's Pablo G. Callejo, because Rall's own style would not gel with the somber, sometimes tragic tone. For example, if he had drawn it, would the scene in which he slowly eats a slice of Sicilian pizza before intending to commit suicide feel real?
Perhaps not coincidentally, Rall's theme of sudden, unexpected poverty is even more relatable 25 years after the fact. Good for him for surviving through hard-knock event after hard-knock event — only a few of his own doing — to tell us about it. You feel for him, but not too terribly — if he had been celibate all that time, well, that'd be a different story. —Rod Lott
Buy it at Amazon.
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