Giraffes in My Hair

This graphic novel by Bruce Paley illustrated with gorgeous charcoal-y drawings by Carole Swain tells short stories and anecdotes from Bruce's life as a teenager and drifter who turns 18 in the Summer of Love and hits the road to discover America.

Through poignant and touching tales of lost love and lost souls to the more hilarious and scummier moments like an affair with a married woman, a night squatting in an army camp tent and travelling desperately endlessly to see The Who, there's a feeling of time and place, of an America decades ago dripping in naivety and innocence. There's also a tale about sleeping at Black Panther HQ during a Democratic Convention and dropping acid in Disneyworld. It's a funny and nostalgic look back at snapshots in Paley's life with the centrepiece being the tragic story of his drug-relationship with doomed New York Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders.

Kerouac's spirit looms over Paley's lonely drifter and there is a sense of a driven nervous desire to escape and go on the road. Paley's ultimately unhappy protagonist cuts a sympathetic figure over the years, lurching from wide-eyed irresponsible and carefree teen to regret-filled adult with ease and the static spaces of the drawings add to the sense of loneliness.