{"id":131225,"date":"2018-11-30T11:00:28","date_gmt":"2018-11-30T16:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=131225"},"modified":"2018-11-30T14:29:15","modified_gmt":"2018-11-30T19:29:15","slug":"on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/","title":{"rendered":"On Edmond Baudoin, an Ink-Stained Proust"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Edmond Baudoin is a force of nature who holds a singular position in the French comics scene. An ink-stained Proust, his drawings and his memory keep bringing him back to the small, Southern French village of his youth as well as the nearby city of Nice, on the Mediterranean coast. In many of his books, you see the same woodland paths, the same barren views of Nice harbor, the same faces: his own adolescent self, his parents, his brother.<\/p>\n

He came to cartooning relatively late in life\u2014his first album (as the French call their bound comic books) wasn\u2019t published until he was forty years old, in the early eighties. From his earliest works, Baudoin focused on autobiography, making him one of the first French cartoonists to explore this genre, which has gone on to become one of the most prominent features of European literary comics. At the same time, his art\u2014already confident, with an inky expressionist manner reminiscent of his contemporaries Jacques Tardi and Jos\u00e9\u00a0Antonio Mu\u00f1oz\u2014evolved quickly into a daringly loose, calligraphic brush style that has made him one of the most respected and recognizable cartoonists in Europe.<\/p>\n

After Baudoin\u2019s first few albums, \u00c9tienne Robial\u2014the legendary graphic designer and cofounder, along with Florence Cestac, of Futuropolis, one of France\u2019s most influential independent publishers\u2014prodded Baudoin to break with traditional narrative structure. Shortly thereafter, an epiphanic Miles Davis concert gave the cartoonist the courage to start improvising in his work by introducing digressions, elements of collage, and postmodern authorial interruptions. Books like Un flip Coca!<\/em> and Un rubis sur les l\u00e8vres<\/em> are full of jarring juxtapositions and shifts in style. A few years later, Couma ac\u00f2<\/em> harnesses this jazzy, improvised style to the form of a more classical family memoir, a template Baudoin has returned to numerous times, notably in Piero<\/em>,\u00a0published in English this month by New York Review Comics. Couma ac\u00f2<\/em> was also his first big critical breakthrough, winning him the prize for best album of the year at the Angoul\u00eame International Comics Festival in 1992. He would go on to win two scriptwriting awards: for Le voyage<\/em> in 1997 and for Les quatres fleuves<\/em> (in collaboration with the mystery writer Fred Vargas) in 2002.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Baudoin\u2019s focus on everyday life, his unconventional drawing, and his philosophical, self-questioning approach to memoir set him apart from better known contemporaries like Tardi or Jacques Loustal. He had to wait another decade or so before a new generation of artists and publishers, centering around the Parisian publishing collective L\u2019Association, would claim him as one of their own, making of him a crucial bridge between their punk, DIY new comics wave and the more classicist auteurs Baudoin came up with. He remains much admired and respected by both camps to this day.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At age seventy-six, he continues producing books and drawings at a furious rate, giving lie to the maxim that comics is \u201ca young man\u2019s game,\u201d as R. Crumb<\/a> has said (himself another septuagenarian who still cranks out a two-hundred-page book when he feels like it). Speaking of Crumb, it was he and Aline Kominsky who gave Americans their first taste of Baudoin\u2019s work some twenty years ago in the last issue of their anthology Weirdo<\/em>\u2014an issue put together from their new home in Southern France, with the English title,\u00a0W<\/em>eirdo<\/em>, replaced by the phonetically Frenchified Verre d\u2019eau<\/em>.<\/p>\n

To some extent, Piero<\/em> stands apart in Baudoin\u2019s oeuvre. It was commissioned by a short-lived comics imprint of Seuil Jeunesse, the young-adult wing of a major French publisher, in an attempt (alongside many other mainstream publishers at the time) to repeat the success L\u2019Association was having then with its simple yet elegant paperback comic books. In that period, L\u2019Association managed to retain their artistic credibility while also publishing the occasional best seller, like Emmanuel Guibert\u2019s La guerre d\u2019Alan<\/em> and, most notably, Marjane Satrapi\u2019s blockbuster hit Persepolis<\/em>. Inspired by this model, Seuil put out a series of trade paperback\u2013size comics, nominally destined for young-adult readers, made by authors poached from this burgeoning French indie scene. Baudoin created Piero<\/em> and one other book for them, a fable about a young boy living in Nice called Mat<\/em>, before the imprint shut down. (The books have since been reissued in France by the publisher Gallimard.)<\/p>\n

To readers familiar with Baudoin\u2019s work, what\u2019s most unusual about Piero<\/em> is that it does not feature his trademark virtuosic brush art. Instead, he opts for the busy, scratching, and scribbling lines of a Rotring ArtPen, presumably in order to emulate the ballpoint pens and pencils with which the young protagonists are constantly drawing. Perhaps he also aims to create a sense of intimacy in this smaller-than-usual format (a typical French album is about eight by twelve inches), much the way Art Spiegelman chose to draw the art for his book Maus<\/em> at the actual size it would be printed, instead of drawing the original art half again or twice as large\u2014a common technique cartoonists use to make their art look better when printed. Personally, I love the pen drawing in Piero<\/em>, and if it\u2019s not as flashy as Baudoin\u2019s brushwork, it just goes to show that he doesn\u2019t need flashy virtuosity to create an indelible image. Just look at the forlorn Martian above, or admire the graceful simplicity below of the two boys floating in the outer space of their dream world. Furthermore, the choice of pen underscores an important quality of Baudoin as an artist: that above all, he is interested in using drawing to tell stories and to examine life and the nature of art.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The scene we enter in Piero<\/em> is the modest world of Momo (as Baudoin was called as a child) and his older brother, Pierre, nicknamed Piero, living out their childhood between an apartment in Nice, where their father worked as an accountant, and, more important, a tiny rural hamlet called Villars-sur-Var, where he and his brother would spend their summers (and where Baudoin still spends part of the year, alternating with his cozy studio in Paris). This sun-bleached, woody terrain, full of creeks and valleys, is a recurring setting in Baudoin\u2019s work. He has drawn it countless times and from countless angles, never tiring of exploring its rich forms and emotional resonances.<\/p>\n

A particular charm of Piero<\/em> resides in Baudoin\u2019s ability to evoke the creativity of children at play. When I read the scenes showing the two siblings drawing together, it puts me immediately back in my own childhood fantasies, my younger brother and I devising invisible city blocks along the apartment hallway where we and our stuffed animals (we dubbed them the \u201cSweeties\u201d) could drive around in miniature cars. Similarly, I observe my own eight- and ten-year-old children hunched over a piece of paper, punctuating long stretches of silent concentration with giggles, and I think of Edmond and his brother drawing their epic battle scenes. It\u2019s clear that Baudoin has captured something elemental in these sequences that he presents so matter-of-factly and unsentimentally (which is not to say they are not also suffused with nostalgia).<\/p>\n

In a sense, Piero<\/em> contains the distillation of all the themes of Baudoin\u2019s work, from the places he grew up to the people he knew and, especially, his family. Curiously, although Baudoin\u2019s mother and father show up regularly in his other books, his brother rarely appears except in the occasional passing mention. It\u2019s as if this is the sum of what Baudoin feels he has to say about his brother and the influence he had on him. It is in many ways akin, though with much less tragic contours, to Crumb\u2019s idolization of his older brother Charles, who similarly rejected art, leaving the task\u2014perceived as an almost holy duty\u2014to his younger brother. Piero<\/em> is in this sense an origin story that ends with Baudoin in the position of James Joyce\u2019s Stephen Dedalus at the end of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man<\/em>, about to go forth and encounter the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of his soul the uncreated conscience of his race.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Matt Madden is a translator and cartoonist. He is the author of\u00a0<\/em>99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style, which is a comics adaptation of Raymond Queneau\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>Exercises in Style, and of two textbooks cowritten with his wife, Jessica Abel:\u00a0<\/em>Drawing Words & Writing Pictures\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>Mastering Comics. Madden and Abel were series editors of\u00a0The Best American Comics for six years. He lives in Philadelphia.<\/em><\/p>\n

From\u00a0<\/span><\/em>Piero<\/span><\/a>, by Edmond Baudoin, translated from the French by Matt Madden.\u00a0<\/span>Excerpt and images<\/span> courtesy of\u00a0<\/span>New York Review Comics<\/span>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In many of Baudoin\u2019s books, you see the same woodland paths, the same barren views of Nice harbor, the same faces: his own adolescent self, his parents, his brother.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1654,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[3503,41577,31933,4864,29591,41398,22658,41578,8892,131,41396,865,41571,41570,15942,41569,1067,41562,41572,41573,41397,635,6877,22484,30263,4328,10415,41395,133,17582,41579,41399,14904,41574,41575,41576],"class_list":["post-131225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-album","tag-aline-kominsky","tag-aline-kominsky-crumb","tag-autobiography","tag-autofiction","tag-brother","tag-brothers","tag-brushwork","tag-childhood","tag-comics","tag-edmond-baudoin","tag-france","tag-fred-vargas","tag-french-comics","tag-french-literature","tag-futuropolic","tag-graphic-novel","tag-lassociation","tag-le-voyage","tag-les-quatres-fleuves","tag-matt-madden","tag-memoir","tag-miles-davis","tag-new-york-review-comics","tag-nice","tag-pen","tag-persepolis","tag-piero","tag-r-crumb","tag-robert-crumb","tag-rotring-artpen","tag-sibling","tag-siblings","tag-un-flip-coca","tag-un-rubis-sur-les-levres","tag-weirdo"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOn Edmond Baudoin, an Ink-Stained Proust by Matt Madden<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In many of his books, you see the same woodland paths, the same barren views of Nice harbor, the same faces: his own adolescent self, his parents, his brother.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"On Edmond Baudoin, an Ink-Stained Proust by Matt Madden\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"November 30, 2018 \u2013 In many of Baudoin\u2019s books, you see the same woodland paths, the same barren views of Nice harbor, the same faces: his own adolescent self, his parents, his brother.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-11-30T16:00:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-11-30T19:29:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/20_forlorn_martian.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"712\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Matt Madden\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Matt Madden\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Matt Madden\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/38c289a84cbe3aaeea43dc62e99386c6\"},\"headline\":\"On Edmond Baudoin, an Ink-Stained Proust\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-11-30T16:00:28+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-11-30T19:29:15+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/\"},\"wordCount\":1479,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/20_forlorn_martian.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Album\",\"Aline Kominsky\",\"Aline Kominsky-Crumb\",\"Autobiography\",\"autofiction\",\"brother\",\"brothers\",\"brushwork\",\"childhood\",\"comics\",\"Edmond Baudoin\",\"France\",\"Fred Vargas\",\"French comics\",\"French literature\",\"Futuropolic\",\"graphic novel\",\"L\u2019Association\",\"Le voyage\",\"Les quatres fleuves\",\"Matt Madden\",\"memoir\",\"Miles Davis\",\"New York Review Comics\",\"Nice\",\"PEN\",\"Persepolis\",\"Piero\",\"R. Crumb\",\"Robert Crumb\",\"Rotring ArtPen\",\"sibling\",\"siblings\",\"Un flip Coca!\",\"Un rubis sur les l\u00e8vres\",\"Weirdo\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Arts & Culture\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/\",\"name\":\"On Edmond Baudoin, an Ink-Stained Proust by Matt Madden\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/20_forlorn_martian.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-11-30T16:00:28+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-11-30T19:29:15+00:00\",\"description\":\"In many of his books, you see the same woodland paths, the same barren views of Nice harbor, the same faces: his own adolescent self, his parents, his brother.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/20_forlorn_martian.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/20_forlorn_martian.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"On Edmond Baudoin, an Ink-Stained Proust\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/38c289a84cbe3aaeea43dc62e99386c6\",\"name\":\"Matt Madden\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c9d0dddba6af5185b4d91f7e7a3f1e0591b354b3a51f90f663ad3c61e2b9424e?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c9d0dddba6af5185b4d91f7e7a3f1e0591b354b3a51f90f663ad3c61e2b9424e?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Matt Madden\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/mmadden\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"On Edmond Baudoin, an Ink-Stained Proust by Matt Madden","description":"In many of his books, you see the same woodland paths, the same barren views of Nice harbor, the same faces: his own adolescent self, his parents, his brother.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"On Edmond Baudoin, an Ink-Stained Proust by Matt Madden","og_description":"November 30, 2018 \u2013 In many of Baudoin\u2019s books, you see the same woodland paths, the same barren views of Nice harbor, the same faces: his own adolescent self, his parents, his brother.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2018-11-30T16:00:28+00:00","article_modified_time":"2018-11-30T19:29:15+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1000,"height":712,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/20_forlorn_martian.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Matt Madden","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Matt Madden","Est. reading time":"7 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/"},"author":{"name":"Matt Madden","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/38c289a84cbe3aaeea43dc62e99386c6"},"headline":"On Edmond Baudoin, an Ink-Stained Proust","datePublished":"2018-11-30T16:00:28+00:00","dateModified":"2018-11-30T19:29:15+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/"},"wordCount":1479,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/20_forlorn_martian.jpg","keywords":["Album","Aline Kominsky","Aline Kominsky-Crumb","Autobiography","autofiction","brother","brothers","brushwork","childhood","comics","Edmond Baudoin","France","Fred Vargas","French comics","French literature","Futuropolic","graphic novel","L\u2019Association","Le voyage","Les quatres fleuves","Matt Madden","memoir","Miles Davis","New York Review Comics","Nice","PEN","Persepolis","Piero","R. Crumb","Robert Crumb","Rotring ArtPen","sibling","siblings","Un flip Coca!","Un rubis sur les l\u00e8vres","Weirdo"],"articleSection":["Arts & Culture"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/","name":"On Edmond Baudoin, an Ink-Stained Proust by Matt Madden","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/20_forlorn_martian.jpg","datePublished":"2018-11-30T16:00:28+00:00","dateModified":"2018-11-30T19:29:15+00:00","description":"In many of his books, you see the same woodland paths, the same barren views of Nice harbor, the same faces: his own adolescent self, his parents, his brother.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/20_forlorn_martian.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/20_forlorn_martian.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/30\/on-edmond-baudoin-an-ink-stained-proust\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"On Edmond Baudoin, an Ink-Stained Proust"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/38c289a84cbe3aaeea43dc62e99386c6","name":"Matt Madden","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c9d0dddba6af5185b4d91f7e7a3f1e0591b354b3a51f90f663ad3c61e2b9424e?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c9d0dddba6af5185b4d91f7e7a3f1e0591b354b3a51f90f663ad3c61e2b9424e?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Matt Madden"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/mmadden\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131225"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131348,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131225\/revisions\/131348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}