Anyway we had a great chat where I just showed him the first 25 pages of my "Meditation" graphic novel, and he happened to have a graphic novel he'd borrowed from a friend, about U.G. Krishnamurti, who was a spiritual teacher related to the advaita/Buddhism side of things.
Anyway Chester was supportive and I'm super grateful to him! Check out his review of our brunch! :) He actually mentions me! HURRAY!
CHESTER'S POST ABOUT U.G. KRISHNAMURTI GRAPHIC NOVEL AND OUR BRUNCH
When I went to Nina’s recently, she lent me this graphic novel, saying that she thought I’d enjoy it. She was right.
It’s a biography about U-G Krishnamurti (1918 - 2007) and an introduction to his thought. (That’s probably the wrong word since Krishnamurti dismissed the importance of thinking.) U-G Krishnamurti isn’t to be confused with the more famous Jiddu Krishnamurti. They weren’t related, but they did know each other and were both wisdom teachers (although U-G rejected that label).
I was vaguely aware of who U-G Krishnamurti was — I picked up his book The Courage To Stand Alone back in 1997 and had read a bit of it, but it didn’t grab me and I never finished it.
This Dog Barking is divided into three parts — the first two contain the biographical material and the third is devoted to his teachings. Here’s a bit to give you a sense of the content:
Grey’s drawing is a bit on the crude side, and the word-balloons contain quite a few “typos", but who cares about those sorts of things when a book is captivating? I’m a bit surprised at its structure — moving from concrete biographical events to abstract ideas shouldn’t have worked, but it did, at least for me. It became more and more engaging instead of the reverse. But you should keep in mind that I have an interest in spiritual matters — those of you who don’t share that interest might have a different reaction to the book.
I have no idea how to get ahold of copies.
I did find myself wondering if Grey deliberately put the thumbs on the wrong sides of the hands on the cover or if that was a mistake.
A few days after finishing the book, I had lunch with Toronto cartoonist (and teacher) Matthew Brown. (We’re not related.) Matthew has a similar interest in spiritual matters, but he’s more interested in eastern approaches to the subject, whereas I’m more focused on Christianity. I wasn’t sure what he’d think about Krishnamurti since Matthew’s into meditating and Krishnamurti thinks that the practice is evil:
Matthew knew a bit about U-G Krishnamurti and had the impression that he was something of a grumpy curmudgeon, which matches the little I now know about the man. Matthew didn’t take Krishnamurti’s opinion of meditation very seriously.
Matthew’s actually working on a graphic novel about meditation and is serializing it at https://www.instagram.com/poopsiepenguin/. He brought out the originals to show me, and it looks like this will be his best book to date. I’ve been telling him for years that he should do this book because I always find it interesting when he talks to me about the subject. He’s finally taking my advice.
We met at the Future Bakery on Bloor. Here’s the meal I ate while we chatted.
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