The Hospital Suite

by John Porcellino

Overview

A mini-comics master's poetic musings on illness&the art of getting by The Hospital Suite is a landmark work by the celebrated cartoonist and small-press legend John Porcellino—an autobiographical collection detailing his struggles with illness in the 1990s and early 2000s. In 1997, John began to have severe stomach pain. He soon found out he needed emergency surgery to remove a benign tumor from his small intestine. In the wake of the surgery, he had numerous health complications that led to a flare-up of his preexisting tendencies toward anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The Hospital Suite is Porcellino’s response to these experiences—simply told stories drawn in the honest, heart-wrenching style of his much-loved King-Cat mini-comics. His gift for spare yet eloquent candor makes The Hospital Suite an intimate portrayal of one person’s experiences that is also intensely relatable. Porcellino’s work is lauded for its universality and quiet, clear-eyed contemplation of everyday life. The Hospital Suite is a testimony to this subtle strength, making his struggles with the medical system and its consequences for his mental health accessible and engaging.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770462472
Publisher:	Drawn & Quarterly
Publication date:	04/22/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	55 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	15 - 18 Years

About the Author

John Porcellino was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1968, and began drawing and writing at an early age, compiling his work into handmade booklets. His acclaimed self-published zine, King-Cat Comics and Stories, begun in 1989, has found a devoted worldwide audience, and is one of the most influential comics series of the past twenty-five years.

Editorial Reviews

★ 08/18/2014
Best-known for his long-running King-Cat mini-comics, Porcellino’s memoir is sometimes brutal but exceptionally honest. The illnesses that plague Porcellino—chronic pain from an unknown cause and OCD—are exhausting and endless. The toll these various health challenges ultimately take on Porcellino’s life range from minor irritations—the avoidance of certain foods, worries about “contamination”—to major disruptions, including stress on his marriage. Porcellino is well aware of his quirks, but like many OCD sufferers, unable to resist them; he’s already a victim of anxiety and a rare disorder called hyperacusis before the afflictions detailed here begin. The ups and downs of his largely undiagnosed ailments and the endless parade of doctors, specialists, and hospitals only heighten his paralyzing anxiety. In King Cat, Porcellino excels at peaceful Zen moments of observation. Here, his simple, black lines and bare-bones drawings have a powerful economy that present the story cleanly, without flourish, detailing a frightening and inescapable spiral into dysfunction without hyperbole. The result is a clear-eyed, penetrating book about the helplessness of illness which should bring Porcellino a wider audience beyond his cult following. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

The Hospital Suite by John Porcellino [is] a memoir . . . of undiagnosed illnesses . . . It's really fascinating and really self-revelatory and very clear-eyed.” —NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour

“Quiet [and] haunting . . . The Hospital Suite is a reminder that the seemingly basic chemistry of words and picture can uniquely, compellingly address the deepest fears that face us—up to and including the ultimate one.” —Entertainment Weekly

“The rawness of Porcellino's work, its unfiltered directness, is the essence of its charm.” —Los Angeles Times

“For an artist who so often picks out the fleeting poetic instant, Porcellino is equally and affectingly adept at tracing the prolonged, prosaic nature of suffering—and especially the tortuous reasoning of his obsessive-compulsive disorder.” —Globe & Mail

“Beautifully crafted . . . [The Hospital Suite is] a rough, occasionally harrowing journey, but Porcellino's dogged determination to keep a grip on his dignity in the face of the most humiliating physical and emotional debilitation is ultimately the very best kind of life affirming.” —AV Club Best Comics of 2014

From the Publisher

11/01/2014
Minicomics veteran Porcellino has published his mostly autobiographical King-Cat Comics for 30-plus years, spinning off collections (Map of My Heart) as well as illustrating other stories (The Next Day, LJ 3/15/12; Thoreau at Walden). This work brings together three overlapping accounts of his roller-coaster health condition, intercut with his appreciation for Zen writings as anodyne. Stomach pain triggers a misdiagnosis of Crohn's disease, then major surgery. Other problems include allergies, pesticide poisoning, and pyroluria, all complicated by anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and leading to family and work difficulties. Porcellino uses a very simple line style of drawing, which does not lessen the impact of his content and indeed makes it more accessible. His evocative lines show an economy of message, as when being "partially crazy" appears as a brain-space divided into plus and minus symbols while repeated small drawings show his compulsion to check and recheck if the refrigerator door is closed. VERDICT Porcellino's art has a Zenlike sparseness, and his highly personal, detailed account of unfortunately common-life roadblocks can help alleviate the loneliness of the rest of us with analogous problems. For high school age through adults.—M.C.

Library Journal