Excerpt
Untitled Page
All Over Coffee
by Paul Madonna
Foreword
There is the life you think you lead, and then there is the one you really do. The first is made of solid dots your home, your dog, your office that connect in a straight and pleasing line for months and years, forming the sensible narrative of a life. Details that do not help the story telephone wires, bus delays, someone else’s receipt falling from a used paper-back are left out. It is a neat fantasy. It is, in its way, quite beautiful.
But Paul Madonna remembers what you forgot. You may edit them out, but you spend more time looking at telephone wires, at buildings seen between other buildings, at painted curbs and fireplugs, than at your own beloved dog. You say and think things very unlike yourself, and overhear conversations unrelated to that carefully revised version of your life. You make sure they are forgotten. But they are not forgotten. They are in this book.
Madonna’s images and text relate in an astounding way. As in the work of the novelist W. G. Sebald, neither do the words narrate a picture, nor does the image illustrate the words. Instead, they are each meant to turn the other sideways, pointing not to any specific event or storyline but to a moment in which the two might coexist. For instance: in one frame we are shown the cut-off view of a building, trees and part of a cross; we are also given the end of a thought about space. Is this the setting for that thought? Are we meant to remember the stars in that day sky? What about the cross? The fact is that both parts are incomplete and, like the broken lines of a poem, produce the pleasure of multiple connections. Like the poem, it rewards revisiting. None of this would work if the text were not so carefully conceived, or the images so painstakingly conjured; it could only take a novelist and artist to produce them. The clear dedication and talent at work is what calls for careful attention to these pages, both admiring the words and artwork and enjoying the connections they spark. It is no more than the attention we always give to art. In return, what Madonna provides is more than what is on the page; there is another dimension present, lending each work a sculptural effect. Two beautifully crafted objects are set before us on the page, at rest. There are no people present, no wind, no motors to move them. What sets them in motion, through a series of connections and memories, is our mind.
This book is not in black and white, though it may at first appear that way. In fact, color is a crucial part of its beauty. Like the initials of the title, color makes its secret cameos throughout the work, sometimes in hidden details, sometimes appearing sublimely all across a page, but I recommend also looking for its subtle progress in the ink washes. In each of them, as with the images in our mind’s eye, emotion adds a hidden depth.
by Andrew Sean Greer
All Over Coffee launched in the San Francisco Chronicle and on SFGate.com February 8, 2004. Immediately, letters of praise, confusion, and disgust poured in. Angry voices brought out voices of support, and debate over the strip took on a life of its own. The strip ran in the Datebook section four days a week for one year, then three days a week for six months before settling into its current position of one day a week in the Sunday Datebook.
This collection represents a selection of 151 strips from the 320 at the time of collecting. For the most part, strips are presented in order of publication date. In a few cases, pieces have been placed out of order to help the flow of the book. More on this is in the “Collecting” section of the afterword.
The afterword also details the story, development, and process of All Over Coffee.
by Paul Madonna, San Francisco, 9.17.06