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And Here's the Kicker: Mike Sacks's Conversations With Humor Writers.- - - - McSweeney's Internet Tendency contributor Mike Sacks' new book, And Here's the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers On Their Craft, is in stores now. The figure "21" is a bit of a misnomer, as Sacks wanted 25 interviews to be included in the book. The publisher, however, felt otherwise. Why? Oh, money. What follows is one of the interviews that was left out of the book. It was no more deserving of being cut than any of the others. So, if you will, please look at this as a sort of special "bonus" feature from the book.- - - - C O N V E R S A T I O N 4 DANIEL CLOWES.By Mike Sacks- - - - Clowes, who was born in Chicago in 1961, was by his own estimation a "shy, loner, bookworm kind of kid." After studying art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, Clowes graduated in 1984 with few career prospects. He discovered the Hernandez brothers' brilliant and influential Love and Rockets comic-book series at a local comics store and decided to send some of his drawings to their Seattle-based publisher, Fantagraphics. The editors there recognized his talent and quickly signed Clowes to their stable of artists and writers in the mid-eighties. His most famous series, first published in Eightball #11-18 and then reprinted as its own comic in 1997, was Ghost World. Set within a suburb with no name and no distinctive characteristics, beyond the usual detritus produced by chain stores and fast-food restaurants, it followed the lives of two teenage girls and best friends, Enid Coleslaw (an anagram of "Daniel Clowes") and Rebecca Dopplemeyer (an anagram of seemingly nothing, even though it was attempted), after their graduation from high school as they grapple with the melancholy that's inevitably a byproduct of the late-teen maturation process. When Clowes collaborated with director Terry Zwigoff on the movie adaptation of Ghost World, released in 2001, he approached the task with the same all-encompassing devotion he gave to his comics − it took more than five years and nearly two dozen drafts before they finally got it right. - - - - SACKS: Is it true your first professional published work appeared in Cracked magazine? CLOWES: It's true. I contributed to Cracked from around 1984 to 1989, though I think I only published one piece under my own name. After that, I was "Stosh Gillespie" − Stosh was the name my father originally wanted for me. Any particular reason? He worked in a steel mill when I was born, and several of his Polish co-workers had that name. Also, I think he was trying to bum out my mom. As for Gillespie, it's my middle name. Were you even a fan of Cracked? No one was ever a fan of Cracked. Growing up, my friends − okay, "friend" − and I used to think of Cracked as a stopgap. We would buy Mad every month, but about two weeks later we would get anxious for new material. We would tell ourselves, Okay, we are not going to buy Cracked. Never again! And we'd hold out for a while, but then as the month dragged on it just became, Okay, fuck it. I guess I'll buy Cracked. It was like comedy methadone. Right. Then you'd bring it home, and immediately you'd remember, Oh yeah, I hate Cracked. I don't understand any of the jokes, and [Cracked mascot] Sylvester P. Smythe is the most unappealing character of all time. I don't know if you've ever seen Sick magazine − just one of many Mad rip-offs over the years* − but they actually had an even uglier mascot: Huckleberry Fink. He was just so ineptly drawn that you didn't know what the hell he was. I think he was a freckled hillbilly. And instead of "What, me worry?" [Mad's Alfred E. Neuman's motto], his was something like: "Why try harder?" * Some Mad rip-offs since 1959: Blast [mascot: Mr. Muggles]; Bughouse, Crazy [mascot: Obnoxio the Clown]; Humbug [mascot: Seymour Mednick]; Madhouse [mascot: Clyde Diddit]; Snafu [mascot: Irving Forbush]; Thimk [mascot: Otis Dracenstein]; Trash [mascot: Norman Nebish]; Trump [mascot: Jack of Spades]; and Whack, Wild [mascot: Orton Leffield]. Were you given free reign at Cracked? Maybe too much. My friend Mort Todd was the editor-in-chief for several years, and we created some truly ridiculous material. We did parodies of TV shows that nobody our age, much less the nine-year-olds reading the magazine had ever seen − stuff like Ben Casey [ABC, 1961-1966] and The Millionaire [CBS, 1955-60]. I don't think we ever bothered with a show from our own era [the 80s], or even the 70s. Did any Cracked readers complain? Oddly enough, nobody ever wrote in to say, "What in the hell are you doing parodying Dragnet and [1950s sitcom] My Little Margie?" Cracked was a strange place. They had a consistent, revolving audience of nine- and ten-year-old kids who would innocently pick it up at the grocery store for a year or two before moving on. In the front section of each issue there would be photos of children holding up their issues of Cracked, or posing in front of giant Sylvester P. Smythe birthday cakes. The kids always had these confused, lukewarm smiles. Cracked did achieve one note of distinction: it managed to somehow convince Don Martin to leave Mad and join them in 1987. Mad is still upset about this. I know. There was some below-the-radar talk about lawsuits, but I don't think they had any real claim. They were furious. Don had been at Mad for more than thirty years. I remember Cracked throwing this big, fancy dinner for Don and Mrs. Martin in an attempt to woo them over to the other side. Don's wife was really a character. She acted as his agent and was furious about the way Mad had treated him. She thought they paid too little, and she was angry that they wouldn't allow Don to own the rights to his own work. Companies would call Don and ask, "Can we make a calendar or T-shirts with your work?" And he'd have to say no. Both were very happy to jump ship. Don received a little more money per page − I think $100 more − and he retained the rights to his own work, which was more important to him. How happy was he at Cracked? As far as I could tell, he was happy. He never seemed to notice that Mad was somewhat respected, while Cracked was thought of as the lowest rag imaginable. I left as soon as my comic Eightball started to catch on a bit. I began to receive freelance offers from the Village Voice and Entertainment Weekly and other magazines. When did you start writing for Esquire? In the late 90s. Dave Eggers, who was an editor for Esquire then − but who had not yet written his first book or published the first issue of his literary journal McSweeney's − wanted me to create a comic for Esquire's fiction issue in '98. The story was called "Green Eyeliner," about a slightly unhinged young woman who was arrested for pulling out a gun in a crowded movie theater. The fact that Esquire would even publish a comic for adults in their fiction issue was really a big deal. No one remembers the actual specifics of that comic, only that it was published. I wonder why it was such a big deal − your comics had been out for years by that point. It was one of the many "comics aren't just for kids and fat collector creeps anymore" moments in what has become never-ending fodder for journalists. Did you ever imagine that you'd one day have a serial comic strip in the New York Times Magazine? Back in the early Eightball days? Never in a million years. Your strip, "Mister Wonderful," about a shy middle-aged man on a blind date, ran in the New York Times Magazine in nineteen installments, beginning September 2007 and ending February 2008. How was it received? I've received more of a response to Christmas cards that I've sent. The New York Times doesn't have a comments section on their website. The editors did tell me that they received some nice letters − although I never saw any of them. And there was apparently one letter from some touchy crank about halfway through the run of the strip objecting to the use of the word "Jesus," so of course the editors stood up for me by instantly forbidding the word "Jesus," even though it had been used frequently throughout the first ten episodes. Were you given free reign by the Times to write whatever you wanted with "Mister Wonderful"? As far as subject matter, they never said a word, but as I said they were very touchy about language − their little "stylebook" is very important to them. Aside from "Jesus," for instance, I wasn't allowed to use the word "schmuck." Mad's been using the word for fifty years! It's not as if I were using it in the Yiddish sense: "Wow, that guy has a huge cock!" I could have acted like an asshole and told them I was going to end the strip halfway through, but this was a really good assignment for cartoonists. I didn't want to be the guy who killed it for everyone else. I suppose you have to play the game. Sometimes that can be a good thing, I suppose. I was restricted − but this restriction ultimately helped the comic. I wasn't allowed to use the word "Jesus," but once I was faced with having to replace it, I got more focused on what the character was actually trying to say − or not say − and I realized how much of a crutch the "Jesuses" had become. The central character was a repressed guy who was terrible with women, so any time he was further repressed by not being allowed to fully relieve his frustration it only helped. When I worked on the movie Ghost World, there were restrictions that you wouldn't believe. For instance, we weren't allowed to show a painting of Don Knotts − unless we had Don Knotts give us permission. It's all about rights, clearances, lawyers. We wanted a character to sing "Happy Birthday to You" − but we couldn't unless we paid something like $10,000, so we just cut the scene. In comparison, not being allowed to use certain words in a comic strip became no big deal. You have to work with the situation you're given. I assume you never had any interest in creating a syndicated strip for newspapers? No, that's a whole different genre − an entirely different genus of cartoonist. The ones I've met tend to be these odd, suburban, country-club types. And just because the format worked with audiences in the 1920s doesn't mean it's still the greatest idea today. Early in your career, did you find that people had a difficult time labeling you? The type of work you produced wasn't your typical style of comic. They still have a difficult time. I've been called everything from a "graphic novelist" to a "comic-strip novelist" to just a "cartoonist." I've always preferred "cartoonist," because that seems the least obnoxious. I used to tell people I was a "comic-book artist," but they'd look at me as if I'd just stepped in dog shit and walked across their Oriental rug. I never knew what to call myself, but I was always opposed to the whole "graphic novelist" label. To me, it just seemed like a scam. I always felt that people would say, "Wait a minute! This is just a comic book!" But now, I've given up. Call me whatever you want. At what point did you notice that people were beginning to understand what a "graphic novel" actually meant? For me, there was a sea change by 2001 or 2002, around the time the Ghost World movie was released. Average citizens like my parents' neighbors started to say things like, "Oh, you do graphic novels! I love [Art Spiegelman's] Maus!" A few years earlier, they would have thought of me as the lowest pornographer. What were some of your comic influences growing up? I have a brother who is ten years older than me, and he gave me his stack of comics from the late 50s and the early 60s − a lot of horror and sci-fi and crappy superhero comics. Which did you prefer, Marvel or D.C.? I liked D.C. comics, such as Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen and Superman's Girl Friend Lois Lane, because they were about "real" people, with the superhero stuff in the background. I never quite got into superheroes − except on kind of a Pop Art level. I just never got into the fighting. What I found more interesting was the romance and the attempts at conveying some kind of reality in this absurd universe. Like Superboy's dad still working at the general store, even though his son could take over the world − things like that. My friends were the exact opposite. They used to say, "God, who cares about this romance? Get to the punching!" And, actually, you know what I liked even more? Regular people yearning to become superheroes. And perhaps failing? Oh, that I would have found especially fascinating. What were you looking for when you were young and first began producing comics? Some kind of connection to the world. And, for some unfathomable reason, I felt like the best way to achieve this was to produce my own comic books. Do you think that the generation who grew up with the Internet will find this connection in other, less creative methods? You mean, to write a banjo blog instead of actually learning how to play a banjo? You would think that there would be no good artists or writers or musicians anymore, but there are plenty out there who are just as good as anyone from any other generation. And yet there was something to be said for the learning process in the pre-Internet era. If you were really interested in an obscure movie or a little-known artist, you would go out and research on your own, and every little tidbit of information had such power and weight. Nowadays, you can just click on Wikipedia and learn everything in five minutes. The thrill of discovery is greatly lessened. To what degree do you think the Internet has changed comics? I'm not really sure. There are comics now being created on the Internet, but I'm not interested in reading that sort of thing. I'd just rather wait until it's printed. I don't like the aesthetics of seeing something like that lit up on the screen. That's just my personal take on it − I don't expect anybody else to not read Internet comics for that reason. But I can tell you that if I had had a computer in high school, I would no doubt have become obsessed and literally thrown away twenty years of my life. I would not be here talking with you. I would have done nothing. Why would I ever have bothered with comics? I can't imagine . . . Do you now work alone? Yes. You don't have assistants at your disposal, like Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield, has? I'd love to hire an assistant, but only to do the lowest shit work. I don't have the right temperament to have an assistant. I'd feel bad criticizing them, and I'd wind up accepting work I wasn't happy with. I do like the idea of having a whole studio of artists and forcing them to draw in my style and cranking out these huge books every year, but I know I'd never be happy with that. They'd never get it right, and I'd wind up doing everything myself anyway. Whom do you bounce your ideas off of? I don't − that's part of the fun. I've tried in the past to gauge people's reactions as to whether something works or not, but nobody is really honest. Even when they're being brutally frank, there's always some other agenda at work. I have to go by my own instincts. Also, the work becomes more specific if you work alone; more singular. I'd think that as a comic-book artist, you have to really commit to an idea. Once you put an idea down onto paper, it would be difficult to tweak it − unless you worked on a computer. No, I draw everything by hand. But that's right − to drastically change it once you start the process is close to impossible, unless you just start over from the beginning. I'll usually start with an outline. I try to get the beats of the plot figured out, and from there I just wing it. After drawing comics for a certain number of years, a cartoonist will have a sense of how long the strip should be, and the rhythm and tone come instinctively. You don't really need to break it down further than that. Often, when I'm partway through a story, I realize that if I were to go in a different direction the strip would be a lot more interesting. When that happens, rather than starting over I try to go with that and make it work. I try to keep things loose enough so that there's always that potential. It's exciting to work that way. It's one of the few things about drawing comics that actually is exciting. You never stop once you start? I've abandoned a few things, but most of the time I try to keep going. That's the thing: you can't go back and re-do it over again, because that'll just dissipate your creativity; you lose everything that's interesting and spontaneous. I could spend the rest of my life re-drawing everything I've done, but it would just kill everything that's good about it. That would be a total waste of time. Isn't that a strong creative urge, though − to want to make a work perfect? Whenever a musician isn't happy with the quality of an early record and records it again with a "better" band, it's never better. It's like when Paul McCartney re-recorded "Eleanor Rigby" in the [1984] movie Give My Regards to Broad Street. Did "Eleanor Rigby" need to be re-recorded? The original work is connected to a specific moment of time; it's never going to become "better." Even when I do a new cover for one of my old books, it always seems sort of condescending to the material. I can certainly understand that sort of impulse, though. I'd love to go back and re-do my earlier work. I recognize the crudeness of it, as well as the unfulfilled potential, but I know that it would not be better − it would only be slicker. Actually, that was the great appeal of writing the scripts to Ghost World and Art School Confidential. The process is so open to drastic changes. The ability to do something as minor as changing a character's name is something that no comic-book artist would ever bother with. It would be such a pain in the ass to go through and re-letter the name three hundred times that you'd just think, Forget it, and move on. In Ghost World, I made a million changes right up until the very last minute. We changed Steve Buscemi's character's name from Sherwin to Seymour the day we handed in the script for the first time, and I'm still not used to it. How was Ghost World green-lit? It was unlike any other Hollywood movie dealing with teenagers I'd seen up to that point − with maybe the exception of Fast Times at Ridgemont High or Heathers. Who knows how that film ever happened? It was the most cobbled-together financial arrangement in the history of film. It was held together by spit and Kleenex. It was very low-budget. There's a million Sundance films made every year with that kind of money. The script is not your typical Hollywood fare. Even the action descriptions are different than what one would normally find in a script. For instance, this is from the very first page: "A large, hirsute man, wearing only Lycra jogging shorts, watches the Home Shopping Network while eating mashed potatoes with his fingers." [Laughs] When Terry and I wrote the Ghost World screenplay, we would take turns handing it back and forth to each other. We were adding detail upon detail to crack each other up. We showed one of our producers the first ten pages, and it was packed with descriptions: "The high school graduation banner should be sponsored by Dunkin' Donuts" and things like that. Never in a million years could we have afforded the rights to Dunkin' Donuts. The producer said to us, "You know, guys, perhaps you should have looked at another screenplay before you started." It's really a miracle this movie ever got made, quite frankly. A lot of people sort of missed the point of it.* Both Terry and I were so green when we were pitching it. We would tell executives we wanted to make another King of Comedy or Scarlet Street (1945) or Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). Big mistake. The executives would look at us as if we were insane. It's like saying, "We'd like to take $6 million of your money and shred it for an art project we're doing." The people who make the decisions in Hollywood are never the oddballs or creative types, so you have to tell them what they want to hear. It didn't take long for us to start saying things like, "We want to make another There's Something About Mary. We had no intention of doing that, but you must at least make the effort to be reassuring. * The Netflix DVD cover summary of Ghost World: "Geeky humor that really snarls pervades this movie riff on the legendary underground comic/graphic novel by Daniel Clowes...But when Enid begins to bond with one of [her] targets, watch out − teen angst might give way to real feeling." You just mentioned a movie I'm not familiar with: Scarlet Street. What is it about? It's a strange movie. People always think of film noir as a genre of violent action. To me, noir is more about a state of anxiety and profound loneliness − an awareness of the quotidian grimness of the postwar world. Scarlet Street is about a poor, ugly loser [Edward G. Robinson] who gets hoodwinked by a horrible woman and her pimp, almost willingly so, since even this cheap thrill is preferable to his emasculated existence with his harridan wife. The original version, directed by Jean Renoir, is even better. The [1931] movie is called La Chienne, which translates to "the bitch." I'm not even sure "the bitch," in this case, refers to the prostitute as much as life itself. What is it about The King of Comedy that you like so much? I think it's Scorsese's best movie − just a perfect little film. I admire that he was able to achieve an ending that's satisfying for the characters but bad for the rest of humanity. That ending knocked me to the floor the first time I saw it. I really wasn't expecting it. I also like any movie that deals with the ugliness of the relationship between star and fan. And, of course, Jerry Lewis was so amazing in that role: constricted, angry, very close to losing control. I read an interview with the Asian actor [Kim Chan] who played Jerry's butler in the movie, and he said that the scene when Jerry is yelling at him from outside the house to open the front door was not an act. Jerry was pissed off at the guy for not being able to open the door smoothly, and Scorsese had the genius to keep it in the movie. This next question may very well be the most specific in the entire book, if not in the history of humankind − but here goes anyway. There's a scene in The King of Comedy that has always fascinated me. It takes place when Robert De Niro is eating in a dim sum restaurant with a date. There is an extra in the background who stares directly at the camera for about a minute. Have you noticed this? I have, actually. From what I've heard, this extra was a friend of De Niro's who was just hamming it up. But why would Scorsese have allowed this to happen? It makes no sense. It might be the only time that an average viewer will ever notice an extra. But it somehow adds to the unreality of the film; the scene is very dreamlike. He's perhaps the most successful extra ever. Or at least the one extra who will ever be remembered. I can tell you from having been on a few film sets that all extras try to do that. They are horrible! They stare at the camera and perform these really weird, mannered movements to try to attract attention. They think that acting like that will get them into the film, but it never does. What do they think the director is going to say? "Hey, look at this guy! Look at his weird movements. Let's bump him up to a speaking part!"? Were you into teen films growing up? I never connected with that sort of film. I couldn't relate to the problems of average suburban teens at all. I never really considered Ghost World to be a teen film. To me, it was more about these two specific characters working through something −l something very personal to me. I wasn't necessarily trying to communicate with teenagers, and I never really imagined they would be as much of our audience as they have. You say you weren't necessarily trying to appeal to teenagers, but you did manage to capture teen-dialogue extremely well. I wasn't exactly a teenager when I wrote that movie, and I couldn't have told you what an average 17- to 18-year-old sounded like or what slang they used. It was a total mystery. So I used a modified version of the slang I knew, and I tried not to take it in a too-specific direction. I really wanted the script to be read by somebody of just about any age and not seem dated or corny or overly mannered or overly screenplay-ish. All writers want to achieve that, but how did you manage to pull it off? I was really interested in the secret life of girls from the time I was in high school. I've always been fascinated by this alien species. I loved the rhythms of their speech, but I wasn't overly familiar with it. As I got older and actually had girlfriends, I'd always ask them specific stories about what it was like behind closed doors. It also helped that I had a very special place in my heart for Enid. I have great affection for that character, even though a lot of the audience saw both the movie and the comic as an indictment of Enid. I've always found that strange. Why do you think that is? Perhaps they found Enid too judgmental. Also, she's a part of a leisure class and her problems are hardly matters of life and death, yet she still complains about every little detail. To me, Enid tries to create an interesting life out of a potentially dull existence by uncovering − or actually manufacturing − the strangeness beneath this seemingly sterile world. I find that heroic. If Enid were truly cynical, she would have just gotten a retail job in her town and given up. Her friend Rebecca [played by Scarlett Johansson] gets a job at a coffee place. Enid thinks there's something better out there for herself, and she searches to find it. That has to count for something. What should also count is Enid's utter disdain for the commercialization aimed at teens her age. How many teen girls her age are even aware of it? I find it horrible. I find the commercialization and the suburbanization of this country really, really depressing. I'm lucky enough to live in a rarefied part of the country − here in the Bay Area − where there aren't too many strip malls. But every time I go back to the Chicago area, where I was born and raised, it's just the same thing over and over again. It's constant and never-ending. Did you learn anything from your experience as a screenwriter that you later used in writing comics? I've learned basic rules of dramaturgy that you don't necessarily pick up from doing comics. I've learned about the nuances of a bigger plot arc, where characters have to travel longer distances emotionally. I've learned to get rid of absolutely everything that doesn't work, even if you put a lot of time and effort into it. I've always noticed a cinematic flow with your comics. When I'm doing the comics, I don't think in terms of cinematic flow. Great comics have their own rhythm − that's what they're all about. It's the beat to the storytelling that makes them come alive. Look at "Peanuts." Charles Schulz had a perfect rhythm in every single strip. Each of those strips had their own beats, and they always worked. Robert Crumb also has that talent, as did Harvey Kurtzman. If you really want to succeed as a cartoonist, you have to do more than create cool eyeball kicks. What does "eyeball kicks" mean? If you're drawing detailed, tricked-out images and your only concern is how they look, then that only goes so far in telling a story in comic form. It's just a series of kick-ass images. How does one learn to create rhythm that's appropriate to comics? You have to get to the point where the rhythm is in your head. You can't over think it, because if you do the comic becomes fussy and stupid. It has to appear to arrive with no effort at all. Do you recognize your own rhythm when you read your comics? Not so much with my own work, but I can see it with other people's. I can also see when another cartoonist has been inspired by something I've done − not so much by the drawing style, but in the way the story is told. I'm not implying that this a bad thing, necessarily, but I do see it. It might be very subtle, and they might not even know they've done it. It can just be a way a punch line is delivered. We all do this. There are a million places where I've found inspiration − a movie, a Robert Crumb comic, anywhere. Really, in the end, each cartoonist has to develop their own rhythm − as well as their own reality. How do you capture your own reality? For me personally, I have to be mindful of my own way of seeing the world. I'm not trying to reproduce the way the world actually looks as much as the way I imagine that it looks. Years ago, cartoonists would have a "morgue file," which contained photos of every imaginable reference: cars, radio sets, boats, buildings. But I don't want anything like that. To me, it's much more valid to remember what something looks like. For instance, if I wanted to draw a Starbucks store, I could take a photo and then trace it. But what I really want is an internal impression of what a Starbucks feels like. When I interviewed Al Jaffee for this book, he said basically the same thing: That when he's drawing he'd rather imagine what a car looks like than actually finding a reference book and copying it in great detail. Doing that adds value to something like this. The finished product may not be perfect, but it won't be dead on the page, either. Do you find that you have to go through all of the choices in your head before you choose one that finally works? I often find it best to just go with the first thing that pops into my head. If you deliberate over every little choice it will become hours and hours of doing nothing. I try to spend only a few minutes really thinking about it. Then I do whatever feels right, because it will usually come back to that, anyway. The real trick is getting into the frame of mind where this is possible. I mentioned Charles Schulz, but I'll mention him again. He said that a real cartoonist has to be able to sit down and − in five minutes − create a product that is totally usable. That's when you do your best work. Just because you're a perfectionist doesn't mean you're perfect. I find that I have to be really careful when I'm putting final touches on a comic. I can get very anal and crazy − say, the re-drawing of the tiny curl of a lip that might make an expression more effective. That's the kind of thing you really have to watch out for, because it'll drive you mad. Can you have too much freedom as a comic-book writer and artist? If so, can this freedom become debilitating? The number of choices you have to make is incredible, endless. It's almost too much freedom. Any time I'm working on an assignment and an editor says, "You can only use two colors," I'm just thrilled; it makes life a lot simpler for me. You had an unusual childhood, and I was wondering if that later affected your writing. When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandparents. My grandfather, James Cate, was a history professor at the University of Chicago, and he had a lot of interesting friends. His next-door neighbor was Enrico Fermi, who helped create the atomic bomb. Saul Bellow was a colleague, as was Norman Maclean, the author of A River Runs Through It and Other Stories [University of Chicago Press, 1989], who was his best friend for many years. These guys would sit in the apartment until god knows when − it could be two or three in the morning − and just talk. It certainly didn't hurt to listen to these brilliant people endlessly converse with each other for hours upon hours. Beyond that, my grandfather was a very funny guy − and very different. He was born in a tiny little town in Texas, and he somehow made himself into this world-class history professor. His whole shtick was that of a backwoods rube, and he used it to disarm people. Each year at the university he used to perform in a series of skits called The Rebels. He'd write and perform in campus parodies − I loved this as a kid. On the other hand, my mother was an auto mechanic, so there was this duality in my life. In fact, she used to fix Saul Bellow's car, though as I recall she hated books. My stepfather, who was a stock-car racer, died in a crash in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, when I was about five. I guarantee you that the crash today would be nothing − he'd walk away from the car just fine. Back then, though, cars were not padded as well. I never forgot the details of that horrible day. I suppose it gave me my first taste of mortality − I knew even at a young age that things could go very badly, very quickly. It seems that you remember your childhood with great clarity. I think most cartoonists remember every little slight, every playground insult. I was telling somebody the other day that I can remember the name of every person in my second-grade class. They were astounded by this, but how could anyone not remember them? Do you remember your classmates out of anger? No. I was perfectly happy in second grade. It's not really based on holding a grudge. On the other hand, I can't remember somebody I had dinner with two years ago. It's just the intensity of childhood. It was being with the same group of thirty kids every day for a year and trying to figure out who you are in relation to them. Everything that's happened to me as an adult seems like a fantasy. For a long time, if someone were to wake me up − this is just hypothetical − and ask me how old I was, I would give an age of about eighteen. I think it's now up to twenty-seven, but that's only recently changed. I still identify with that period between being a kid and an adult, when you're confused about how you fit in with the rest of humanity. If you woke up and were eighteen again, how long would it take to convince yourself that everything that's happened since was only a dream? Not long at all. Ten minutes. Do you think this is the heyday of the graphic novel? I hear this a lot from journalists and fans of the form. I think so − certainly in terms of current work, narratively and aesthetically. It would be hard to find an era that was much better. There were certainly people who could draw a lot better in the old days, but it was very rare to find a great writer who could also draw. What do you see as the future of the graphic novel? I don't know. When I started out, nobody − none of my peers or anyone else − would have thought of this as a viable career. They wouldn't have said, "I am going to write and draw a graphic novel." Classmates from art school said they wanted to work on children's books. Everybody thinks they can write a children's book − it's semi-respectable work. I never − not once − heard anyone say they wanted to write a graphic novel or comic prior to a decade ago. I receive letters from young writers asking for advice about a "career" in comics. If somebody asks me, I always say not to do it unless you can't not do it. If you need encouragement from a stranger, then you shouldn't do it. Once you are a cartoonist, the best advice I ever received was from Robert Crumb. He told me to just get away from cartooning for a while. He told me he wished that he had taken up some other form of art, like sculpture; that it was important to do more than just sit at a desk and perform the same repetitive act over and over again. That it was fantastic just to be able to get away from the drawing board, to actually talk to other human beings and to gain some perspective on the many freedoms you take for granted as a cartoonist. It's great advice. When I worked on the Ghost World movie, I found this break to be very helpful in understanding how the world works in a way that it doesn't on paper. After fifteen years in a room alone, you can start to feel as if you've unwittingly sentenced yourself to solitary confinement. It's no wonder that pretty much every cartoonist over fifty is totally insane. Do you ever see yourself not doing this? If I get old enough and my eyesight gets really bad or I can't hold a pencil, maybe. Outside of that, I don't see ever stopping. Do you feel more pressure now to be a perfectionist and to appeal to a wider audience? I don't know that I've ever appealed to a wide audience. I have never done anything that caught on with more than a cultish niche. You don't think Ghost World or Art School Confidential or your strip for the New York Times appeals to a wide audience? I guess it depends on your definition of "wide audience." There's a book that came out more than ten years ago − a 50th-anniversary index of the members of the National Cartoonists Society. It's a book of photos and short bios of hundreds of old-time American cartoonists, and for some reason a few "younger" − I was thirty-seven at the time − non-members, such as myself, were included. There are dozens of photos of these old codgers smiling with these stupid grins on their faces. But you can see the sadness underneath. It's such a grim document. My friend [and fellow cartoonist] Chris Ware told me he had to actually hide his copy of the book, because he can't bear to look at it. What did you both find grim about it? All these lives spent behind the drawing board; decades on a daily strip that no one remembers. What is the lesson for you − that you don't want to end up like that? I sort of do want to end up like that − that's the pathetic part about it. I look at that book and I am thrilled to be a part of it. It's sort of like the ending to The Shining, when the camera zooms in on that group photo with Jack Torrance at the black-tie party in the 1920s. There is something so great about becoming that guy. - - - -
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