Books
by Michael Kluckner
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"In any case,
rather like priests who have forgotten the meaning of the
prayers they chant, we shall go on for quite a long time talking
of books and writing books, pretending all the while not to
notice that the church is empty and the parishioners have gone
elsewhere to attend other gods, perhaps in silence or with new
words." – Gore Vidal, "French Letters," in Matters
of Fact and Fiction (Random House, 1977) (RIP August,
2012) |
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Surviving Vancouver 2024 ISBN 978-1-988242-54-5 128 pages, 8 1/2 x 11 inches, softcover Published by Midtown Press, Vancouver $25 A book that looks at what has survived in Vancouver, and how people are surviving. Adjective and verb. It contains a review of its recent political debates on growth, development and housing supply and a lament for the City's indifference to its heritage buildings and neighbourhoods. Another section looks at the historic plight of poor and homeless people in the City, dating back to the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the alternatives people of means use to escape what they see as a disordered mess of a place. And not just "Vancouver" – the city itself – but the Metro Vancouver region. More information on the book's own page here. |
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The Rooming House The West Coast in the Seventies 2022 ISBN 978-1-988242-46-0 160 pages, 6 x 9 inches Published by Midtown Press, Vancouver $19.95 In the 1960s and early '70s, thousands of youths were on the road, hitchhiking across Canada and the USA and travelling through Europe, living in rooming houses in cities like Vancouver and in communes in the country. Their individual stories played out on a canvas stretched across the frame of world events including Vietnam, Woodstock, Watergate, and the emerging environmental movement, often in a climate of idealism, protest and anger. This book follows several of these young men and women sharing an old home in Vancouver's Kitsilano district, tracking their loves, losses and wanderings through the diary entries of two of them. It is both a coming-of-age novel and an exploration of the events of those years, complete with a downloadable soundtrack of rock classics and notes for readers who weren't around then. An overview with some sample page spreads is here. |
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HERE & GONE Artwork of Vancouver & Beyond 2020 ISBN 978-1-988242-38-5 80 pages, 8 1/2 x 11 inches, colour Published by Midtown Press, Vancouver $19.95 My first collection of paintings and other artwork published in nine years, exploring relics of old Vancouver and rural British Columbia, along with images of people and places that have my kind of "Vancouver poetry," and artwork from my travel sketchbooks around the world. An overview with some sample page spreads is here. |
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LOWERING SIMON FRASER 2019 42 pages, black and white, 8 x 10 1/2 inches Published by the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, in an edition of 500 copies. Concept by Maddie Leach, illustrations and interpretations by me. Free: available from the Contemporary Art Gallery An unusual foray for me, as a collaborator on a conceptual art project to figuratively lower – that is, to remove a piece from – a historic monument to the explorer and fur trader Simon Fraser. Unusual, too, in that it was a funded project – the participants were paid and the final product, dubbed a bookwork, was distributed for free. A complete overview is here. |
THREE GRAPHIC NOVELS: 2015 – 2020
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JULIA Midtown Press, 2018 (pb) ISBN 978-1-988242-20-0 Suggested retail: $19.95 132 pages, black and white, 7 5/8 x 10 3/4 inches Contains supplementary notes, a bibliography and an index. A novelist, journalist, socialite, botanist, explorer, and World War I ambulance driver, Julia Henshaw was a unique and colourful personality. This graphic biography follows her extraordinary life from Montreal to Vancouver, from the Rocky Mountains to England, and from the mining towns of BC's Kootenays to the battlefields of France and Belgium. Her strongly expressed views of women's roles and voting rights, of racial and class issues, and of Canada's relationship to Great Britain and the USA are an illuminating contrast with the values of her contemporaries, and with society today. Go here for a preview and some images, plus reviews. |
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2050: A Post-Apocalyptic Murder Mystery Midtown Press, 2016 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-988242-18-7 $19.95 A graphic novel inspired by the planet's current plight and triggered, to a degree, by a trip to Cuba few years back. Go here for a preview and some images, plus reviews. |
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TOSHIKO 2nd edition 2020 ISBN 978-1-988242-35-4 Midtown Press, 2015 (paperback) ISBN 978-0-9881101-7-5 $19.95 French edition: Presses de Bras d'Apic, 2015 ISBN 978-2-9812179-7-4 $24.95 A graphic novel. Go here for a preview and some images, plus reviews. |
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A YEAR AT KILLARA FARM (illustations only) Harbour, 2012 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-55017-571-4 About $29.95 My wife Christine Allen's elegiac memoir of our years on the farm, including seasonal recipes, gardening tips, and my watercolours of sheep, chickens, ducks, geese, plants and landscapes.  |
