Get a Life
"Get a Life" is an English translation of the first three volumes of the Monsieur Jean series, created by French artists Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian. This graphic novel follows the life of Monsieur Jean, a successful yet solitary Parisian novelist, as he navigates the complexities of adulthood, relationships, and creative challenges. The narrative draws heavily from the creators' own experiences, blending humor with the everyday struggles faced by the protagonist, including difficult friendships, romantic misadventures, and the scrutiny of his quirky concierge, Madame Poulbot.
The stories are presented in a visually rich style, employing color to differentiate between Jean's mundane reality and his imaginative daydreams. Each character, from Jean's best friend Felix to the critical Clement, adds depth to the exploration of themes such as loneliness, self-doubt, and the quirks of modern life. Notably, the series diverges from traditional graphic novels by focusing more on internal experiences rather than action-driven plots. "Get a Life" has received acclaim in both French and English-speaking markets, contributing to the recognition of Dupuy and Berberian as prominent figures in contemporary graphic literature.
Get a Life
AUTHOR: Berberian, Charles; Dupuy, Philippe
ARTIST: Charles Berberian (illustrator); Philippe Dupuy (illustrator)
PUBLISHER: Les Humanoïdes Associés (French); Drawn and Quarterly (English)
FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION:Monsieur Jean, 1991-2005
FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2006 (English translation of first three volumes)
Publication History
Get a Life is an English translation (by Helge Dascher) of the first three volumes of the Monsieur Jean series by Philippe Dupuy and Charles Berberian. Dupuy and Berberian began their collaborative career in 1983 when they met while working on the French comics fanzine Plein la gueule pour pas un rond (full mouth treats), also known as PLG. They created Monsieur Jean in 1990 and published a few strips about the character in the monthly comic book Yéti.
In 1991, Dupuy and Berberian released their first graphic novel depicting the life of Monsieur Jean, Monsieur Jean: L’amour, la concierge, with the French comics publisher Les Humanoïdes Associés. They published the second volume, Monsieur Jean: Mes nuits les plus blanches, in 1992, and the third volume, Monsieur Jean: Les femmes et les enfants d’abord, in 1994, also with Les Humanoïdes Associés. The Monsieur Jean series ran through 2005 and comprises seven volumes.
The Canadian company Drawn and Quarterly published Get a Life in 2006. An English translation of Dupuy and Berberian’s graphic novel Journal d’un album (2002), which recounts the creation of the Monsieur Jean series, was also published by Drawn and Quarterly in 2006 under the title Maybe Later. Drawn and Quarterly continues to publish English versions of Dupuy and Berberian’s work, with Haunted, an English version of Dupuy’s solo work Hanté (2005), appearing in 2008.
Plot
The Monsieur Jean stories in Get a Life, derived from Dupuy’s and Berberian’s own experiences, portray the life of a young Parisian man as he advances in his career and, with maturity, leaves bachelorhood to become a husband and father. The stories, which are intended for an adult audience, recount the daily life of Monsieur Jean, a successful novelist. They include stories of his annoying encounters with his concierge, Madame Poulbot, who is referred to as “my beloved concierge.” Madame Poulbot distrusts the quiet, reclusive young man who lives upstairs and is visited by strange-looking friends. He does not leave for work each day, and she believes he is living a dissolute life at the expense of his parents. When she sees him on a television program discussing his successful novel The Ebony Table, she changes her opinion of him, but this discovery does not really ease their relationship. A typical French concierge, she continues to pry into his life and take offense at the smallest complaints.
Felix, Monsieur Jean’s best friend, is a constant source of frustration, frequently imposing on Jean while bemoaning his fear that someday Jean will abandon him in disgust. Felix is always late and never has any money, but he is always ready to take Jean out for a meal. He asks Jean to help him write and illustrate product-information copy but falls asleep and leaves Jean to do all of the work. At the last minute, as he is about to leave for several days, he brings his demanding cat, Theo, to stay with Jean. When Felix asks Jean to help him move a few items from his parents’ home, everything, including large boxes of books and a kitchen stove, turns out to be cumbersome and almost impossible to carry up to Felix’s apartment.
Jean’s friend Clement is sympathetic but critical, playing the role of devil’s advocate. When Theo stays with Jean, Clement tells him what a nightmare awaits him. Clement always has opinions and criticisms regarding Jean’s love affairs, his social life, and almost every other aspect of his existence.
Jean’s love affairs frequently go astray. He falls in love at first sight with a woman he does not know, then watches as her significant other arrives. When he does establish a relationship with a woman, he has problems communicating with her, is afraid of commitment, and loses her. In such cases, he often encounters his former girlfriends again in the company of their husbands. Jean also innocently gets involved in his friends’ marital problems and suffers for his attempts to help.
In his professional life, Jean is also besieged with problems, as he deals with negative literary critics, demanding publishers, the bumbling agents who arrange his appearances and book signings, and unscrupulous movie producers. Intermingled with the episodes of Jean’s daily life are his dreams and daydreams, many of which place him in combative situations. At times, he is a medieval warrior in a castle; at others, he is a military commander fighting a battle against a pizza-firing enemy.
Characters
•Monsieur Jean, the protagonist, is a successful novelist who lives in Paris. He is tormented by loneliness, self-doubt, unsuccessful relationships, and the daily challenges of life.
•Felix is Jean’s best friend, with whom he occasionally works on advertising copy. He is also Jean’s nemesis, as he is perpetually late, broke, and planning grandiose projects that require Jean’s help.
•Theo is Felix’s cat who stays with Jean when Felix is gone. Jean is very uncomfortable with Theo.
•Clement is Jean’s other friend, always supportive but also critical.
•Madame Poulbot, Jean’s concierge, is his major antagonist, suspecting him of all sorts of disreputable activities.
•Chantal is one of Jean’s former girlfriends. When he meets her again at an art exhibit, she is with her oversolicitous husband, Michel, and expecting a baby. She reminds Jean of how he destroyed their relationship.
•Veronique and Jacques are married friends of Jean who have trouble finding time for each other and embroil Jean in their marital difficulties.
Artistic Style
Dupuy and Berberian maintain a consistent drawing style throughout Get a Life. The visual style of the first volume of Monsieur Jean established certain expectations for the subsequent novels in the minds of readers, and Dupuy and Berberian have emphasized that the series’ popularity has restricted their creativity and opportunities for experimentation in that area. Since the publication of Dupuy’s solo graphic novel Haunted, they have become interested in exploring different drawing styles and have indicated that when they publish another volume of Monsieur Jean, it will not be done in the style of the previous ones, even though many readers will be upset.
Get a Life makes extensive use of color. The everyday world in which the stories are set is realistically colored, with soft tones that stress the mundane, repetitive nature of Jean’s world. Dupuy and Berberian also use color to signal a change of setting from Jean’s real-world life to his mental life. Dreams, daydreams, and thoughts are imbued with a reddish-brown coloration. When Jean is angry during these sequences, the color changes from a reddish-brown to a more intense red.
Dupuy and Berberian use a page layout that mixes panel sizes and shapes, with framed and unframed panels that often crowd the pages. The layout reflects Jean’s jumbled, confusing, and difficult daily life. Because Get a Life anthologizes three volumes of the Monsieur Jean series, it is divided into three sections. Between the stories that demarcate volumes 2 and 3, there are two pages, each of which depicts an unframed character. On the first page, the concierge, Madame Poulbot, is depicted as having devil horns, flying with red wings, and drawing a bow armed with a “broom arrow.” The following page features a blue image of Jean seated in an armchair, with a cat perched on the back of the chair, a girlfriend sitting on the floor, and a record player spinning a vinyl record. The second image represents Jean’s dream life, contrasting sharply with the adventures he has in the second volume. The third image, colored in red and green, depicts a child-sized Jean surrounded by items from his life that symbolize his ongoing frustration with his existence.
Get a Life contains little author commentary; the text is presented almost entirely in dialogue bubbles. Much of the humor of Get a Life derives from its depiction of the characters, each of whom has a distinctive and often-exaggerated feature. Jean has a large nose and a sad-looking face; Felix has a sharp nose and a small face that radiates optimism; Madame Poulbot always has an expression of mischievous delight.
Themes
Get a Life is the humorous story of a young man experiencing life, with all its problems, puzzlements, successes, and failures. Monsieur Jean is a solitary individual in the process of forming relationships, discovering himself, and developing his ideas about what is important and possible in life. He has much to learn about himself and about interaction with other people. The episodes of Get a Life create a portrait of an individual who is by nature pessimistic, sensitive, self-doubting, well meaning, and likable. Jean finds life difficult despite his success as a novelist.
A second major theme of Get a Life is the little tragedies and negative serendipity of everyday life. For example, Jean’s attraction to the woman taking a survey in the supermarket results in his having to buy identical groceries twice. Felix insists on going to the Matisse exhibit, intending to meet a girlfriend, but leaves when he does not find her, while Jean meets his former girlfriend Chantal and her husband there. Forgetting to feed Theo and listening to Clement’s horror stories about the cat’s temper result in Jean being arrested while Theo is peacefully waiting at the apartment.
Daydreaming and dreaming as a means of coping with life is another recurring theme. Jean escapes from boring situations and disappointing events by fantasizing, although at times his dreams also intensify his bad experiences.
Impact
Dupuy and Berberian have brought a new dimension to the creation of graphic novels with their close collaboration on the Monsieur Jean series and its English-language version, Get a Life. The two writers/artists share every aspect of their work, so much so that it is impossible to assign certain characters, story lines, or a specific artistic style to one or the other. Typical of the experimental Modern Age of graphic novels, Get a Life departs from traditional formats, instead emphasizing Monsieur Jean’s psyche. The story line of Get a Life contrasts sharply with the earlier, more traditional French graphic novels, such as René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo’s Asterix (1961-1979) and Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin (1929-1976), which depict characters in historical contexts and focus on action. Monsieur Jean has been immensely popular in France, and Dupuy and Berberian were recognized as major French graphic artists in 2009 when they were awarded the Grand Prix de la Ville d’Angoulême at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. Get a Life has enjoyed an excellent reception in the world of English-language graphic novels and has been instrumental in introducing Dupuy and Berberian’s work to English-speaking countries, especially the United States.
Further Reading
Dupuy, Philippe. Haunted (2008).
Dupuy, Philippe, and Charles Berberian. Maybe Later (2006).
Bibliography
Dauncey, Hugh, ed. French Popular Culture: An Introduction. London: Arnold, 2003.
Fosdick, Charles, Laurence Groves, and Libbie McQuilan, eds. The Francophone Bande Dessinée. New York: Rodopi, 2005.
Groensteen, Thierry. The System of Comics. Translated by Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.