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Carpet Sweeper Tales
The iconic author of My New York Diary returns with a collection of dreamy, collaged photo comics
Julie Doucet is an artist who has mastered many voices and styles, from her landmark and medium-defining early work in comics with her comic book series Dirty Plotte and the classic graphic novel My New York Diary , to her linocut and collage work in Lady Pep and Long Time Relationship . Most recently, Doucet has focused primarily on collage, crafting impeccable zines, prints, and other ephemera. In Carpet Sweeper Tales , her first new book in almost a decade, we see this multifaceted artist combine her many talents into one genre-defying masterwork.
Though Doucet stopped drawing comics more than ten years ago, here she revisits the art form, pulling images from 1970s Italian fumetti or photonovels to create her own collage comics. Using vintage women's and home decorating magazines, Doucet collages a unique dialogue of love and travel between characters sitting in classic cars, driving through cities and pristine countryside. This book is the first to combine Doucet's love of collage with her gift at comics storytelling. The result is a collection of lighthearted stories that play upon the disconnects between 1970s imagery and our modern world. Lost in translation, the dialogue is stilted, the characters alien, the mood always playful. Carpet Sweeper Tales is a milestone in a career filled with milestone achievements.
Julie Doucet is an artist who has mastered many voices and styles, from her landmark and medium-defining early work in comics with her comic book series Dirty Plotte and the classic graphic novel My New York Diary , to her linocut and collage work in Lady Pep and Long Time Relationship . Most recently, Doucet has focused primarily on collage, crafting impeccable zines, prints, and other ephemera. In Carpet Sweeper Tales , her first new book in almost a decade, we see this multifaceted artist combine her many talents into one genre-defying masterwork.
Though Doucet stopped drawing comics more than ten years ago, here she revisits the art form, pulling images from 1970s Italian fumetti or photonovels to create her own collage comics. Using vintage women's and home decorating magazines, Doucet collages a unique dialogue of love and travel between characters sitting in classic cars, driving through cities and pristine countryside. This book is the first to combine Doucet's love of collage with her gift at comics storytelling. The result is a collection of lighthearted stories that play upon the disconnects between 1970s imagery and our modern world. Lost in translation, the dialogue is stilted, the characters alien, the mood always playful. Carpet Sweeper Tales is a milestone in a career filled with milestone achievements.
184 pages, Paperback
First published March 29, 2016
About the author
Julie Doucet
64 books190 followersJulie Doucet is a Canadian underground cartoonist and artist, best known for her autobiographical works such as Dirty Plotte and My New York Diary.
Doucet began cartooning in 1987. Her efforts quickly began to attract critical attention, and she won the 1991 Harvey Award for "Best New Talent".
Shortly thereafter, she moved to New York. Although she moved to Seattle the following year, her experiences in New York formed the basis of the critically-acclaimed My New York Diary (1999). She moved from Seattle to Berlin in 1995, before finally returning to Montreal in 1998. Once there, she released the twelfth and final issue of Dirty Plotte before beginning a brief hiatus from comics.
She returned to the field in 2000 with The Madame Paul Affair, a slice-of-life look at contemporary Montreal which was originally serialized in Ici-Montreal, a local alternative weekly. At the same time, she was branching out into more experimental territory, culminating with the 2001 release of Long Time Relationship, a collection of prints and engravings. In 2004, Doucet also published in French an illustrated diary (Journal) chronicling about a year of her life and, in 2006, an autobiography made from a collage of words cut from magazines and newspapers (J comme Je).
In 2007, Doucet published 365 Days, in which she chronicles her life for a year, starting in late 2002.
After a long hiatus, Doucet came back to publication with Time Zone J (2022).
Doucet began cartooning in 1987. Her efforts quickly began to attract critical attention, and she won the 1991 Harvey Award for "Best New Talent".
Shortly thereafter, she moved to New York. Although she moved to Seattle the following year, her experiences in New York formed the basis of the critically-acclaimed My New York Diary (1999). She moved from Seattle to Berlin in 1995, before finally returning to Montreal in 1998. Once there, she released the twelfth and final issue of Dirty Plotte before beginning a brief hiatus from comics.
She returned to the field in 2000 with The Madame Paul Affair, a slice-of-life look at contemporary Montreal which was originally serialized in Ici-Montreal, a local alternative weekly. At the same time, she was branching out into more experimental territory, culminating with the 2001 release of Long Time Relationship, a collection of prints and engravings. In 2004, Doucet also published in French an illustrated diary (Journal) chronicling about a year of her life and, in 2006, an autobiography made from a collage of words cut from magazines and newspapers (J comme Je).
In 2007, Doucet published 365 Days, in which she chronicles her life for a year, starting in late 2002.
After a long hiatus, Doucet came back to publication with Time Zone J (2022).
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
April 28, 2016
This was made in the fumetti style, ransom note lettering over photographs. I liked the photos, evidently vintage Italian. Doucet's captions vary from the bewildering to the bizarre. It's one of those times where I wonder if it's a) really bad, b) just not something I like, or c) some sort of high concept that I'm too dense to understand.
April 12, 2016
So I ordered this from my comic book store going "Cool! A new Julie Doucet! I liked The Madame Paul Affair, so I'll probably like this."
I pick this up at my comic book store and go "Huh... it's fumetti. Well, I like some photocomics..."
I read the beginning about how the comic is meant to be read aloud and go "I hate sounding out words to understand them."
You see, Doucet is making word balloons with syllables in different fonts that supposedly make up words. I say supposedly because in many cases they clearly don't. Fortunately, this isn't a puzzle book where you figure out the dialogue. It's a surrealistic experience where you let the dialogue and images wash over you.
That's not necessarily a good thing. It's often oblique and frequently not satisfying. However, if I had never read this book, I would not have read a short photocomic featuring Italian male bikers from the 1960's where all the dialogue is from advertisements of feminine hygiene products.
So that's something.
Can't say I would recommend this, and even if I would, I'm not sure to whom.
I pick this up at my comic book store and go "Huh... it's fumetti. Well, I like some photocomics..."
I read the beginning about how the comic is meant to be read aloud and go "I hate sounding out words to understand them."
You see, Doucet is making word balloons with syllables in different fonts that supposedly make up words. I say supposedly because in many cases they clearly don't. Fortunately, this isn't a puzzle book where you figure out the dialogue. It's a surrealistic experience where you let the dialogue and images wash over you.
That's not necessarily a good thing. It's often oblique and frequently not satisfying. However, if I had never read this book, I would not have read a short photocomic featuring Italian male bikers from the 1960's where all the dialogue is from advertisements of feminine hygiene products.
So that's something.
Can't say I would recommend this, and even if I would, I'm not sure to whom.
March 11, 2016
Carpet Sweeper Tales is a collection of collages made by Julie Doucet, a Montreal cartoonist/artist who may be best known for her serial Dirty Plotte, My New York Diary, or 365 Days. She does these very intense diary comics, very small black and white, lots of darkly sketched details of her life in cramped space. It is art usually described as "alternative" or underground because it is art associated with that loosely described school, I guess. I find them admirable but tough to read because they are so small and cramped in the versions I am reading, at least.
Doucet once took a hiatus from comics, returned to it, and in 2006 said she was basically done with it. Too much work for too little money. But she has been doing these collages, and in Carpet Sweeper she returns to comics through Italian fumes, or photo comics. She uses 1970s photographs to create short stories and pastes in dialogue or commentary. She tells us, possibly facetiously, that it is meant to be read aloud, but some of it doesn't make sense, and deliberately so, I think. Go here to see one of the stories, an excerpt from the book:
https://www.drawnandquarterly.com/sit...
That description of her work is intriguing, right? Theoretically interesting, for sure, a great idea, but the actual experience of reading it wasn't particularly satisfying for me. Worth a smile, maybe, and worth inspiring collage comics for artists, or for readers to check out photo comics as a subgenre. That would include me, actually. Gonna do that!
Doucet once took a hiatus from comics, returned to it, and in 2006 said she was basically done with it. Too much work for too little money. But she has been doing these collages, and in Carpet Sweeper she returns to comics through Italian fumes, or photo comics. She uses 1970s photographs to create short stories and pastes in dialogue or commentary. She tells us, possibly facetiously, that it is meant to be read aloud, but some of it doesn't make sense, and deliberately so, I think. Go here to see one of the stories, an excerpt from the book:
https://www.drawnandquarterly.com/sit...
That description of her work is intriguing, right? Theoretically interesting, for sure, a great idea, but the actual experience of reading it wasn't particularly satisfying for me. Worth a smile, maybe, and worth inspiring collage comics for artists, or for readers to check out photo comics as a subgenre. That would include me, actually. Gonna do that!
January 5, 2024
No thoughts just Italian vibes
August 29, 2016
Super funny. Since Pop Art, there has been a lot of art/comics works that mesh collage and comics. Therefore the stake is high, but Doucet did an incredible job. She explores what language means in comics using the unique element of collage (catchphrases, repeated words, typography). One of the best comics of the year.
May 23, 2016
A new book by Julie Doucet! Yes! I love her comics. But this book is more art collage than comics, not that that's a bad thing. It reminded me of California artist Jess's "Tricky Cad" series in which the artist cut up Dick Tracy comic strips and reassembled them into nonsensical, Dada-ist ... things. Carpet Sweeper Tales is similar, as the reader will quickly discover. It looks like comics, but the text in the word balloons is largely nonsensical. The jacket flap urges people to read the book aloud, which strikes me as hilarious. Anyone who thinks they can read this aloud is urged to flip to page 118 and give it a try (sample text [not in quotation marks for reasons which should be clear, but it's as verbatim as I can make it without a photo; trust me] " ' ' " ' ", ' ' ' " ' ' ' " " ' " ' ' ' ' ) Some of those single quotation marks should be in different fonts to lessen the monotony, but you get the idea. Some of the reviews have been less than kind to this book, but I think, approached in the right spirit--i.e. as an art project rather than a straight up graphic novel--this is actually kind of fun. When the scene shifts to the guys on motorcycles talking about, "Dddddolls," I laughed out loud. This is not my favorite Julie Doucet book, but it's definitely fun, and even interesting.
April 25, 2016
Dug this concept and the wild verbal sound poetry... but I just couldn't absorb the story.
The problem exists between the book and the chair.
The problem exists between the book and the chair.
July 1, 2025
a bunch of motobikers: "ddollls BBABY gggirls BRA" - that sounds about right😂
Ok, this is a really WEIRD one, but for some reason, I liked it! I understand why a lot of people don't. It's quite an original piece of art, though. I still don't know why the author intended for it to be read out loud (it says so in the book). I thought that perhaps when I read some of the gibberish out loud, the words would somehow transform into meaningful sentences, but this didn't seem to be the case. I think it's more about letting go of our need for things to always have a purpose/meaning. It's sort of an immersive, surreal experience - you give a voice to the dialogue bubbles, you gaze at the photos, you travel back to the 70s and forget yourself for a little while.
This graphic novel is a feeling, a mood... rather than a series of stories. However, if you are looking for a bit more meaning... I will confess that I read it twice - on my second read, I started to notice certain words/associations that actually make sense and give a special flavor to the black-and-white, collage-cut vignettes.
Not everything is complete gibberish. There are "keywords" that allude to certain social contexts, societal norms, and stereotypes that still ring true today. Some of the stories are really funny and delightfully ironic - we see men and women in different day-to-day circumstances; old, romantic movies are parodied - love stories are ludicrously trivialized (a woman may seek to avoid s*x by repeatedly mentioning her migraine, car names are mentioned in a "dialogue" between a man and a nun thus desacralizing the latter, brand names contain se*ual allusions, a bunch of bikers have a prolonged "discussion" about girls and babes, etc).
My favorite bit was the "resurrection" scene where the dead woman meets the caretaker. We have a bit of real, profound dialogue here:
" and WHERE DO THEY... where DO WE GO?
You ALL GO BACK to living your life, only this time, you have to do it backwards.
You mean, all the way down to my birth?
As far as when you were merely a globule."
It's like the editor (?) says: "a collection of lighthearted stories that play upon the disconnects between 1970s imagery and our modern world. Lost in translation, the dialogue is stilted, the characters alien, the mood always playful."
Ok, this is a really WEIRD one, but for some reason, I liked it! I understand why a lot of people don't. It's quite an original piece of art, though. I still don't know why the author intended for it to be read out loud (it says so in the book). I thought that perhaps when I read some of the gibberish out loud, the words would somehow transform into meaningful sentences, but this didn't seem to be the case. I think it's more about letting go of our need for things to always have a purpose/meaning. It's sort of an immersive, surreal experience - you give a voice to the dialogue bubbles, you gaze at the photos, you travel back to the 70s and forget yourself for a little while.
This graphic novel is a feeling, a mood... rather than a series of stories. However, if you are looking for a bit more meaning... I will confess that I read it twice - on my second read, I started to notice certain words/associations that actually make sense and give a special flavor to the black-and-white, collage-cut vignettes.
Not everything is complete gibberish. There are "keywords" that allude to certain social contexts, societal norms, and stereotypes that still ring true today. Some of the stories are really funny and delightfully ironic - we see men and women in different day-to-day circumstances; old, romantic movies are parodied - love stories are ludicrously trivialized (a woman may seek to avoid s*x by repeatedly mentioning her migraine, car names are mentioned in a "dialogue" between a man and a nun thus desacralizing the latter, brand names contain se*ual allusions, a bunch of bikers have a prolonged "discussion" about girls and babes, etc).
My favorite bit was the "resurrection" scene where the dead woman meets the caretaker. We have a bit of real, profound dialogue here:
" and WHERE DO THEY... where DO WE GO?
You ALL GO BACK to living your life, only this time, you have to do it backwards.
You mean, all the way down to my birth?
As far as when you were merely a globule."
It's like the editor (?) says: "a collection of lighthearted stories that play upon the disconnects between 1970s imagery and our modern world. Lost in translation, the dialogue is stilted, the characters alien, the mood always playful."
February 17, 2025
She is in a very small group of creators who could hand this mess to a publisher of repute and not be laughed at- then actually see it printed to a wide audience!
This showed me her power in that regard but her desperation artistically to hand in such a thing. Maybe she lost her ability to write and doesn't enjoy drawing for others? I imagine many a-grade scriptwriters would love to have her art moving their stories, whether she wanted it in detailed guided thumbs or leaving her complete freedom with just text, yet this madness is what she decided to add to her illustrious bibliography that I adore.
She certainly has power over me because I won't even sell this shelf|space|waster since I am compelled to have the full careers of certain creators (that I can afford/acquire). I'm just curious if this was a cash-grab to just get something on shelves or her failing miserably trying to make something unique in a second language. Why, when so many of us love her art, did she use Italian photographs from the 1970s?
Yes, I did follow the directions to read it aloud and I'm angry about it. I normally have no problem doing such a thing but this involves speaking in almost complete nonsense with insane repetitions of syllables and awkward sounds that's really annoying. There's even dialogue in punctuation that is absolute nonsense! I only understood one of the nineteen "stories" in twenty one chapters. Those quotations are because I would never define them as such.
I'd give this only ¹* no matter how many the grading involved because, even to my highly lenient sensibilities, this doesn't qualify as even worthy of printing for any imagined audience.
This showed me her power in that regard but her desperation artistically to hand in such a thing. Maybe she lost her ability to write and doesn't enjoy drawing for others? I imagine many a-grade scriptwriters would love to have her art moving their stories, whether she wanted it in detailed guided thumbs or leaving her complete freedom with just text, yet this madness is what she decided to add to her illustrious bibliography that I adore.
She certainly has power over me because I won't even sell this shelf|space|waster since I am compelled to have the full careers of certain creators (that I can afford/acquire). I'm just curious if this was a cash-grab to just get something on shelves or her failing miserably trying to make something unique in a second language. Why, when so many of us love her art, did she use Italian photographs from the 1970s?
Yes, I did follow the directions to read it aloud and I'm angry about it. I normally have no problem doing such a thing but this involves speaking in almost complete nonsense with insane repetitions of syllables and awkward sounds that's really annoying. There's even dialogue in punctuation that is absolute nonsense! I only understood one of the nineteen "stories" in twenty one chapters. Those quotations are because I would never define them as such.
I'd give this only ¹* no matter how many the grading involved because, even to my highly lenient sensibilities, this doesn't qualify as even worthy of printing for any imagined audience.
December 18, 2025
this is garbage. there's no talent, no inspiration, and there's minimal effort involved; this is bad. the inside jacket says, "this is a milestone...." what? this isn't even kindergarten art; whomever wrote that is a fan, a lunatic, or overly impressed with subpar abilities. doucet's drawings are superior to her collaging; she should not attempt more collage; it doesn't work and/or it's not very good.
January 27, 2017
A bit dada, this collage book of film stills mixed with words from vintage ads is at turns funny and social commentary, (like the motorcycle gang shouting Kotex! Tampax! Modess! Staydry!), and at turns confusing and artsy, (like when there's multiple pages where the "dialogue" is just a string of letters or punctuation marks).
Not for everyone but I enjoyed it.
Not for everyone but I enjoyed it.
December 17, 2017
It’s not great. There is a lot of fun and even art to be made with repurposed photos and collage captions. This book rarely feels artful or entertaining. The motorcyclists saying “gggirls! Ddddoollls! Bbbabbby!” were pretty funny though.
March 15, 2022
my love of collage art gives me a soft spot for this book; a fun piece of surreal art with a feminist bent. my favorite sections of this book are "the ossutheagsong", "that evenit", and "the bang clock cold"!
August 16, 2019
I can't decide if it's stupid or if I just don't get it.
August 11, 2022
I really did read the whole thing out loud! Anything for you, Julie! A cool experiment that doesn't all come together or have more than a zine-worth of things to say. Still cool!
September 27, 2022
This should never have been published. It’s just nonsense. And not the good kind.
Read
July 2, 2026appealed to my sense of humor the same way a bad lip reading does. besides that, not too much to write home about.
June 25, 2016
So strange.
I really like the idea of a graphic novel done in a collage style, using magazine cutouts to create a narrative, except to me this lacked narrative. The dialogue between the people on each page is in word bubbles, the text of which is also done in the cut-and-paste collage style, like a ransom note...except the words in the word bubbles are often not full words. Inside of the book, the first page says "Read it out loud." So that is tricky, since you can't just read this book as you would any other book. You have to phonetically sound out the words aloud based on the letter jumbles on each page, that form words when heard aloud...or, at least they are supposed to. Some of the dialogue is complete words that can be read easily, but I couldn't make sense of most of the text no matter how I tried to sound it out. It felt dreamy and surrealistic in that way...have you ever seen the episode of the Simpsons where Chief Wiggum has a dream in which Lisa tries to point him to the clues to solve who shot Mr. Burns? "LOOOK it THEEEE clooos. Burnseszoot burnsezoot!" ...and he has no idea what she's saying.
Reading this out loud made me think of that episode. Only the words were much harder to understand. And trying to decipher what each page said took me right out of whatever storyline there may have been. Even just going back over and looking at the pictures, disregarding the text didn't have much story to it.
I like the idea of it, but this book is lost on me
I really like the idea of a graphic novel done in a collage style, using magazine cutouts to create a narrative, except to me this lacked narrative. The dialogue between the people on each page is in word bubbles, the text of which is also done in the cut-and-paste collage style, like a ransom note...except the words in the word bubbles are often not full words. Inside of the book, the first page says "Read it out loud." So that is tricky, since you can't just read this book as you would any other book. You have to phonetically sound out the words aloud based on the letter jumbles on each page, that form words when heard aloud...or, at least they are supposed to. Some of the dialogue is complete words that can be read easily, but I couldn't make sense of most of the text no matter how I tried to sound it out. It felt dreamy and surrealistic in that way...have you ever seen the episode of the Simpsons where Chief Wiggum has a dream in which Lisa tries to point him to the clues to solve who shot Mr. Burns? "LOOOK it THEEEE clooos. Burnseszoot burnsezoot!" ...and he has no idea what she's saying.
Reading this out loud made me think of that episode. Only the words were much harder to understand. And trying to decipher what each page said took me right out of whatever storyline there may have been. Even just going back over and looking at the pictures, disregarding the text didn't have much story to it.
I like the idea of it, but this book is lost on me
July 9, 2022
Had it been released by a European art publisher, Carpet Sweeper Tales would have a much better overall rating and a more receptive readership. While some of the stories here have a pretty straightforward plot (“Me no banana, you apes!”), the text in most sequences is akin to Kurt Schwitzer or Raoul Hausmann's broken sound poetry, with trivial photo-roman images being used as a détournement pretext to explore phonemes (and fonts) rather than meaning. However, this Trojan horse is not entirely out of place in a publisher like D&Q, as it also underlines the function of onomatopoeia in comics and the sequencing of random images to suggest meaning in its interaction with text. A truly special book that deserves to be read multiple times.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews