RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewFashion fans might come to this memoir expecting a primer on the journey from street style to couture, and there is certainly a bit of that in the book ... Detailed descriptions of his family’s tragic journey through poverty, the changing nature of his beloved and cursed neighborhood, and his adventures as a hustler are riveting. His recollections of his early career as a master gambler and the characters he met along the way, as well as his examination of the psychology of the profession, are perhaps even more compelling.
Michael Tisserand
MixedThe New York Times Book Review...a fascinating and frustrating biography ... Absent any direct commentary on Herriman’s dual identity, Tisserand promises to sift through the cartoonist’s work to parse his relationship to race...Though Tisserand does a truly exhaustive job detailing Herriman’s private and public lives, the promised analysis of race in his vast catalog of Krazy Kat cartoons is more fleeting than intricate. It feels scattershot even when he identifies potentially relevant material ... I wonder if a critic more sensitive to the nuances of race would have found more fodder in the Krazy Kat catalog than Tisserand. That said, Krazy is absolutely an essential companion to any deep dig into Herriman’s work.
