Giraffes in my Hair: A Rock 'N' Roll Life - Hardcover

Carol Swain... portray[s] Paley's excursions as a sort of anecdotal graphic short story collection in many ways, albeit a graphic short story collection with a bunch of recurring characters) in a scratchy, pencil, black and white style that somehow perfectly sums up the stories - just as Bruce scratches around for money, so Swain's pencil scratches around at the background detail.... [I]f you're a fan of rock'n'roll, if you dig the Beats, if you like grimey tales of excess and the underbelly of success, this is for you.

[H]is remembrances are clear-eyed, vividly portraying the era in a fashion recognizable to those who shared it and revelatory to younger (or older) readers. His low-key approach to the sometimes shocking episodes finds perfect complementation in the understated black-and-white art of alt-comics veteran Swain, whose skillfully unadorned style and powerfully bold compositions starkly convey his often tumultuous story. Paley's blunt depiction of his path from '60s naiveté to '70s punk nihilism constitutes a welcome corrective to the recent wave of dewy-eyed fortieth anniversary Woodstock nostalgia.--Gordon Flagg

A pleasure to read. The insights are genuine and the humanity is quite bare. Once I started reading, I didn't stop until the book was over. This survivor's tales were well worth the journey, once again, through two well-trodden decades.--John Hogan

Bruce Paley turned 18 in 1967 during the Summer of Love. Paley's tumultuous journey took him from being a hippie in the 1960s to a heroin addict for much of the 1970s. These stories are vividly brought to life in Giraffes in My Hair: A Rock 'N' Roll Life by the compelling visual storytelling of Bruce's partner, the cartoonist Carol Swain. Swain's trademark visual approach to comics, typified by exquisitely composed panels that vividly capture both anomie and pathos, is perfectly suited to dramatizing Paley's life during that confusing, tumultuous period of American history - a life lived in the countercultural margins, amidst personal chaos and social dissolution. Swain's storytelling rhythms are contemplative and breathe inner life into Paley's turbulent stories, creating a perceptive prism to view the vast possibilities and endless pitfalls as experienced by a kid growing up in America in the late 1960s and early '70s.