New York Review Books

Creative Team

Description

The most renowned work by the legendary Japanese writer who inspired Studio Ghibli, Night on the Galactic Railroad is a classic for readers of My Father's Dragon and A Wrinkle in Time . An adventure story steeped in profound themes. On the eve of the Milky Way festival, Giovanni rushes past his classmates who are busy preparing for the celebration. He must get to his job at the printing office where he plucks tiny pieces of type with tweezers from a box, in exchange for a single silver coin. Later, he waits in a dusky kitchen that smells of cows for a bottle of milk to bring to his mother. Night has fallen when his classmates begin sailing gourds lit with candles down the black, glistening river. Giovanni wanders along a hillside. The dark blue sky begins to twinkle and shine. And suddenly, Giovanni finds himself transported to a compartment of the Galactic train. Across from him is his fellow classmate, the tender-hearted, enigmatic Campanella. So begins an expedition traversing the galaxy. Campanella and Giovanni, etched in a black-and-white gothic style, travel through fields of purple flowers, into constellations. They meet the strangest people. There's the lighthouse man, the bird catcher, and the shipwrecked children. Kenji Miyazawa's story unravels its mysterious thread, in an exquisite translation by Asa Yoneda and David Boyd. Osamu Tsukasa's illustrations combine the enigmatic beauty of Edvard Munch and Aubrey Beardsley's art nouveau ink drawings––both of whom were inspired by Japanese woodblock prints. Miyazawa's classic story will stay with readers long after childhood.

Description

A CLASSIC 1930s COMIC STRIP: The New Yorker ’s first art editor satirizes the petit bourgeoisie in these stylishly eccentric cartoons with echoes of Cheever and Wodehouse. Rea Irvin was The New Yorker ’s first art editor and creator of the magazine’s iconic mascot, the butterfly enthusiast Eustace Tilly. In 1930, he ventured into new territory with the comic strip The Smythes . The Smythes—comprised of John, Margie, and their two forgettable children, Willie and Maudie—are a niceish suburban family, restless in their social stature, and eager to climb a sometimes wobbly social ladder (a ladder made even wobblier by the Great Depression). Irvin’s distinct, graceful line renders the Smythes in all their glory and hilarity as they navigate ill-fated dinner parties with pompous socialites, fend off robbers dressed as Santa, and get chased out of restaurants by cleaver-wielding chefs. With flavors of the upper-crust humor of Wodehouse and the suburban surrealism of Cheever, The Smythes drolly captures the joys, heartbreaks, and humiliations of being in a family. Handpicked by acclaimed cartoonists R. Kikuo Johnson and Dash Shaw—who also penned the introduction together—this new selection of Smythes strips also includes an afterword by comics historian Caitlin McGurk that sheds new light on Irvin’s work and life. An unsung masterpiece of cartooning, The Smythes is finally available to a new generation of readers ready to marvel at the full reach of Irvin’s artistic abilities.