Jokes and the Unconscious: A Graphic Novel

By Daphne Gottlieb

Heard the one about the dying father? In this savagely brilliant graphic novel by slam poet Daphne Gottlieb (Final Girl) and Hothead Paisan creator Diane DiMassa, a 19-year-old woman named Sasha loses her father to cancer and takes a job in the hospital where he had worked as a doctor. Moving from room to room with her clipboard of forms, Sasha encounters the insane, the suicidal, and the brave — then returns to her office to look up all her friends’ and enemies’ medical records. Taking its title from Freud’s Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, Gottlieb and DiMassa’s first collaboration is both moving and darkly funny. Where comedy meets chemo, where mirth meets mortality, Jokes and the Unconscious explores the murky terrain of grief — a shadowland of memory, sexual escape, and morbid snickering.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cleis Press
• Release date: Aug 1, 2006
• ISBN: 9781573446174

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Reviews for Jokes and the Unconscious

[revslick_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A morbidly dark, dark, dark (did I mention dark) graphic novel centered around a young woman's search for meaning in her father's death as well as her sexuality. 19 year old Sasha spends her summer working as a clerk at the same hospital her father worked as a doctor. Along the way she encounters a motley cast both in the hospital and in her life. The vignettes get a few stars for creativity; however, the tale is so fragmented and disconnected as to leave the reader with a big MEH at the END. I'm curious what Gottlieb and DiMassa may put together next, if they collaborate again, because there were signs this could have been great.