A review by robertrivasplata
Impossible People: A Completely Average Recovery Story by Julia Wertz

emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

Julia Wertz's memoir of escaping alcoholism & growing the fuck up in general. For once, this is a book featuring a drinking problem that doesn't make the drinks sound incredibly appealing. Usually the depressing depictions of alcoholism that I read make me perversely interested in whatever the characters' (fictional or otherwise) drink of choice is. Impossible People has all the details about Wertz's Brooklyn basement studio with the amazing rent & dubious legality that Wertz hinted at in Tenements, Towers, and Trash. The street & roomscapes have the same detail & style of Tenements, Towers, & Trash, but now the streets of New York are populated with Wertz's quirky cartoon characters. The art kind of reminds me of the newspaper comics page April Fools Day antics where the characters would switch strips or drop in on other strips (e.g. Dick Tracy dropping by Blondie, Rat from Pearls Before Swine popping up in Mark Trail, Dagwood and Ted Forth switching places, etc). The backgrounds seem like they are from one (serious) strip, most of the characters are from another strip (humorous), Julia's cartoon avatar could be from another (humorous) strip, & finally her cat Jack comes from yet another (humorous/cute) strip in the funny pages. Wertz & Jack probably could have once made a bunch of money from a syndicated animal comic strip (& associated greeting cards & merchandise franchises that would eventually be better remembered than the strip, perhaps even entering the archaeological record in the form of plastic artifacts seeded across the worlds oceans via container ship accidents). Speaking of Jack the cat, was he right about “Jeff” the whole time??? The part with the Comics convention in France is a reminder that as much as I make fun of English speakers' mangling of foreign names, the French are still masters of the art. This is definitely the best thing I've read by Wertz. Impossible People kept reminding me of a Melvins song (featuring David Yow) that has a sample of someone saying “well, I have a new friend, his name is sobriety...” Kind of makes me want to read Drinking at the Movies, but I'm mostly looking forward to seeing whatever she comes out with next.