A fast-paced semi-memoir about diners, drugs, and California in the late 70s. After being denied financial aid to cover her last year of art school, Margaret takes a waitressing job at local Oakland fixture: the Imperial Cafe. Here an impressionable young woman transforms into the worldly Madge as she is introduced to the wisecracking, fast-talking, drug-binging cooks, dishwashers, and waitstaff in her new life. At first she mimics these new and exotic grown-up friends, trying on the guise of adulthood with some awkward but funny stumbles. Gradually she realizes that these adults she idolizes are a mess of contradictions, misplaced artistic ambitions, sexual confusion, dependencies, and addictions. Over Easy is equal parts time capsule of late 1970s life in California with its deadheads, punks, disco rollers, casual sex, and drug use and bildungsroman of a young woman who grows from a naive, sexually inexperienced art-school dropout into a self-aware, self-confident artist. Mimi Pond's chatty, slyly observant anecdotes create a compelling portrait of a distinct moment in time. Over Easy is an immediate, limber, and precise semi-memoir.
About the AuthorMimi Pond is an American cartoonist, humorist, and writer. She wrote the pilot episode of The Simpsons, 'Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire' . She is the winner of the PEN Center USA award for Graphic Literature Outstanding Body of Work. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the artist Wayne White.
Reviews;A sublimely evocative depiction of California in the 70s.' Rachel Cooke, The Guardian
Book InformationISBN 9781770468030
Author Mimi PondFormat Paperback
Page Count 272
Imprint Drawn and QuarterlyPublisher Drawn and Quarterly