{"id":8874,"date":"2011-02-24T08:50:01","date_gmt":"2011-02-24T13:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/?p=8874"},"modified":"2011-02-24T08:50:01","modified_gmt":"2011-02-24T13:50:01","slug":"lynda-barry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/?p=8874","title":{"rendered":"Lynda Barry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Late last year, I met with Lynda Barry to discuss her new book, Picture This<\/em>, for The Paris Review<\/a><\/em>. But Barry is an inveterate talker, and in addition to the book itself, we covered bad editors, the glory of Drawn & Quarterly, gaps in comics history, and her giant crush on Charles Burns. That part of the conversation continues here.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Where did the near-sighted monkey in Picture This <\/em>come from?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I like to draw monkeys. I had been drawing a lot of the meditating monkey\u2014I talk about it in my book\u2014and then I started drawing that monkey with glasses on it. It\u2019s definitely a self-portrait. So I had drawn one and we were broke, so I was trying to figure out stuff to sell on eBay. People will buy monkeys and I like to draw them, so this seems like a natural. I did this little near-sighted monkey and asked my husband if he would do some of the watercoloring. (My husband\u2019s a brilliant watercolorist. He\u2019s so good. He can draw everything far away. We always say I can draw stuff close up and he can draw stuff far away.) So when I got it back, the stuff he had done in the background was just like, Whaaa! We probably did about twenty of them back and forth, and I\u2019d sell them on eBay. Then I was sending them to Drawn & Quarterly, just because they were funny and cute, and I think it was Peggy who really liked them, so they wanted to do a little book of just those pictures. But I had this whole other idea. So the book kind of expanded out of just the monkey pictures.
\n
\nThe pages in What It Is<\/em> are heavily collaged and the images in Picture This<\/em> are much simpler. There are obvious reasons for the difference\u2014you\u2019re showing readers how to draw in the latter\u2014but do you find another kind of inspiration for your prose writing in the very layered, textured drawings?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There isn\u2019t any difference for me. There might be a difference in the way that, you know, some days I\u2019ll just mostly paint and other days I\u2019ll collage. I could collage all day long, it\u2019s my favorite thing, but I just felt like I couldn\u2019t just do that, people would feel ripped off. [laughs<\/em>] I wanted to make a book where you really made it from stuff you have around the house or you can get at the drugstore. So it\u2019s just white glue, scissors, and paper from the garbage, and glitter glue, because I do love me some glitter. And there\u2019s other stuff in there that no one will ever see: I love using glow-in-the-dark paint, and no one will ever see it but me.<\/p>\n

And you know, there\u2019s no other publisher who would let me do what they let me do. I can tell you, because I tried to find \u2019em. I don\u2019t think either of those books would exist if I hadn\u2019t found Drawn and Quarterly, because there\u2019s no way to explain that book before you make it. You need a publisher to just trust you and give you a big skating rink, and that\u2019s how I felt. Chris [Oliveros] would say, How big of a rink do you need for this one? Well, I\u2019d like a rink that is 100 or 224 pages long. So that made a big difference.
\n
\nHad you shopped the book around elsewhere?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No. In 2002, after I did One! Hundred! Demons!<\/em>, that publisher didn\u2019t want to do another book with me, and then nobody did, so I didn\u2019t have anybody until 2008. I realized that if I waited for someone to offer to find me a publisher, the likelihood was I would have to conform the book to whatever they wanted. So I thought, I\u2019m just going to start anyway with this idea that I had about collage and images, and that\u2019s when Chris contacted me to reprint all my work that\u2019s out of print. And I said I had this other book and it really looked crazy as hell, I mean, crazy, and I sent it to him and he was like, Okay. I had him on the phone and had to look at myself in the mirror, had to hold the phone to the mirror and was like, Really? Okay, well, I\u2019ll get it done. <\/p>\n

And because of that, this whole book happened\u2014both of \u2019em. I just don\u2019t think they coulda happened if I\u2019d had a traditional publisher; they would have made me at least outline it, or they\u2019d need to know what it is, and that didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n

What did you show Chris?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I had some collage stuff, and then I just sort of explained it to him, but mainly he trusted me\u2014which was amazing, I mean, he really trusted me, and he never made me feel stupid, which, I have to say, my other publisher . . . I mean, editors can be crazy. The reason the guy at my previous publisher didn\u2019t want any more of One! Hundred! Demons!<\/em> was because he said my work was remedial. I\u2019ll show you something remedial! I got my boot cocked in remedial mode! Yeah, remedial<\/em>. And the editor at Simon and Schuster told me that this book I wrote called Freddie<\/em> . . . he goes, \u201cI just need to tell you, I think this book is stupid.\u201d I mean, without hesitation, they\u2019ll tell you that stuff.
\n
\nThen why did they publish it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, he didn\u2019t want to. There was another guy who was my editor there who jumped ship. And then I inherited this guy.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard bad stories about inheriting editors.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you love your editor, you can have it in your contract that if they go, you go, too. But this guy hated the book, and he really made it hard. It was almost done, and he made it very, very difficult. And he was a reference guy; he\u2019s like one of those guys that has some ideas about lit-er-a-ture. So he talked about it being a picaresque novel. He goes, it\u2019s not quite picaresque. And I made some comment, you know: I\u2019m not as educated as you. What does that word mean? And I knew exactly what it meant. And he goes, Oh, that\u2019s okay\u2014because he really did assume that I was that dumb.<\/p>\n

I finally met him and we had lunch, and I swore that I was just going to look at him like this [staring unblinkingly] the whole time, like no matter what, like I never took my eyes off of him\u2014kill him with my little eyes. Cause it\u2019s unnerving, right? But he couldn\u2019t say, Stop lookin\u2019 at me! That was fun.<\/p>\n

But those are people who have no attachment to the work. And before Drawn and Quarterly I never had an editor that was attached to my work, at all, ever. I had people who\u2019d publish it and sort of liked it, but they didn\u2019t have any curiosity about it. When Cruddy<\/em> came out, the guy who was my editor, the one who liked the book, wrote a description of what the book was about, and he wrote something about a white father with a black child. Nothing<\/em> that he described is in the book. And he had this whole idea that it was a book about race; it\u2019s not, it\u2019s about a serial killer, it\u2019s not about race at all. But what was amazing is when I get the manuscript and the copy editor or someone sends it back, she read the back description and just assumed that it was about race. There\u2019s a character called the \u201cspooker\u201d in it, and she says, \u201cIf she\u2019s black, she would never use that term spooker<\/em>.\u201d She is not black!<\/em> Find a place in this book that says she is black! <\/p>\n

The great thing, though, is that you get a Dewey decimal number at the library, and that rocks, that totally rocks. When What It Is<\/em> came out, Amazon didn\u2019t know where to list it, so they put it under science fiction, which is so boss. I was like way into it. I was so excited that they listed it under science fiction. Because if I was gonna write a science-fiction story, I\u2019d think this was a damn good one, a society that shames people out of doing the very thing that will make them sane. <\/p>\n

I like that Picture This <\/em>deals so much with a kind of art that we all already do\u2014doodling. It\u2019s an unconscious act: when you\u2019re talking on the phone, you hear a voice but you don\u2019t have anything to attach it to, so you end up walking around or rearranging things or doodling\u2014doing something concrete.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You\u2019re right, you\u2019re right.<\/p>\n

And in doodling on a piece of paper, it\u2019s always a little surprising to see that you\u2019ve made a picture, that there\u2019s something there.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s in a sort of transitional phase: it\u2019s not completely in you, it\u2019s out into the world but it\u2019s some other thing. You\u2019re absolutely right about that, that\u2019s so interesting. Especially now that everybody has their wireless phones. It is wild, like at an airport, you see people having to move and gesture while they\u2019re talking.<\/p>\n

I think often, too, we want to assign meaning to abstract shapes, like Arna and Marlys staring at the ceiling looking for pictures in the shadows and stains.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s wild, isn\u2019t it? And that\u2019s why I\u2019m sort of upset or curious\u2014I try not to be upset\u2014about everybody looking at these little screens now. Remember how you had to find ways to cope with boring time when you\u2019re on a road trip? And now everybody has these little DVDs so the kids can watch some stupid thing instead of having to find a way to cope with time, with the passage of time. Chris Ware did the best<\/em> Halloween cover for The New Yorker<\/em> last year. It was the little kids going up to the porch to trick-or-treat and the parents are all looking at their devices in the blue light. That was brilliant<\/em>, wasn\u2019t it? I love him. He\u2019s so smart and very sweet and he thinks he can\u2019t draw. So if he<\/em> thinks he can\u2019t draw it turns out that\u2019s the normal state of things. <\/p>\n

I was on a panel with Chris, and Dan Clowes, Kaz, and Charles Burns. We all had had a couple drinks and I was feeling a little mischievous. So when we were talking about drawing, I said, \u201cYou know one thing I always wondered about you guys is why there\u2019s always a page in your sketchbooks, where you draw yourself with a huge dick and then you\u2019re jacking off and then you look depressed afterwards.\u201d I said, \u201cI was really confused by that, until last night, I drew myself with a huge dick, jacking off, and I was depressed afterwards, and then I understood.\u201d Cause you know they all have that moment, Oh no, I jacked off and I\u2019m depressed. It was so funny giving them shit about it. They were all mortified [laughs<\/em>].<\/p>\n

You\u2019re of the generation with Burns, Gary Panter, and Matt Groening. There are formal and thematic connections between your work, but do you feel a kind of generational relationship with them?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s a good question. I don\u2019t really feel that separate from those people, but I also feel there were other cartoonists like Matt and Charles and me and Gary that are almost never mentioned. There were the people at the Village Voice<\/em> who were kick-ass: Mark Alan Stamaty, Stan Mack, Jules Feiffer. In the National Lampoon<\/em> there was Mary Kate Bishop. They always talk about me being this first woman cartoonist. No! There were two <\/em> really amazing women who were big influences for me. One is M. K. Brown\u2014Mary K. Brown\u2014and the other is Shary Flenniken, and she did this wild strip called Trots and Bonnie<\/em>, that looked like almost a Krazy Kat<\/em> strip, really naughty and wild. And Trina Robbins! So there were all these people, and I think what\u2019s really strange is how they\u2019re left out of the history of comics. It\u2019s like there\u2019s this huge gap. I can\u2019t believe that none of those guys are in the books, that none of those guys are in the histories. So I feel like I was a generation\u2014not necessarily a generation, but they were seniors when I was a freshman. And that\u2019s how I feel about the other cartoonists: it\u2019s like we went to the same high school, but I was a senior when some of these people were a freshman. <\/p>\n

Who were the freshmen when you were a senior?<\/strong><\/p>\n

People who are doing comics now, like Chris Ware. I feel like we went to the same school. I was the older chick who kept hanging out by their lockers: [batting her eyelashes] \u201cOh hey, Chris.\u201d <\/p>\n

I love to give Charles Burns shit; he loves to be teased a little, he does. He could totally draw like that in high school. Our high school had a staircase that was in a hallway. He painted this mural that wrapped around two floors. It was fabulous, and he had this kind of big Art Garfunkel afro, right? I was just smitten, I mean wrecked, over this guy. It was just a head-on collision, but I was two years younger. So I go up, like, \u201cHi, Charles. What are you painting today?\u201d He said, \u201cYou know, I remember you.\u201d I figured he was thinking, Oh no, it\u2019s that girl. So for me it\u2019s like Charles, Charles<\/em>, and for him it\u2019s like this mosquito bzzzzzzz<\/em> and he\u2019s scared. But I love to give him shit about that because it makes him really embarrassed\u2014and happy, I think.
\n
\nYou knew each other at Evergreen, too.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I<\/em> knew him [laughs<\/em>]. He knew there was a mosquito that seemed to show up constantly.
\n
\nHow did you come to meet Matt Groening at Evergreen?<\/strong><\/p>\n

He took over the school newspaper, and I always loved newspaper and journalism. But even in our little junior high\u2013school paper I was really into it. So he took it over and when he took it over he printed a thing in the paper that said, I will print anything that people submit, and I thought, Ooohh, okay, let\u2019s see how wild I can get. And he did! I would sneak stuff in at night, just through the slot in the door. I wrote fake letters to the editor, being outraged over something that happened to me when I was six, like on some camping trip. He would print everything. And then I started doing comics and submitting them, and he would print them. This was a hippie school in the seventies, but Matt looked like the straightest, squarest guy ever. I mean, he wore a buttoned shirt, he had hard shoes, we were all like, Who is this square? If you know The Simpsons<\/em>, he\u2019s somebody who loves to figure out what will drive the people around him the craziest, and that outfit, totally. It was hilarious to him.
\n
\nHe dressed that way on purpose?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, to mess us up. And he would always be playing this crazy music. It turned out it was Nino Rota, the Fellini soundtracks. But I\u2019m like, What is this damn music! And then we had this fight\u2014we fight about it all the time. See, I really was kind of a person that you had to \u2026 you had to ditch me if you really wanted to have a good time in the evening, because I was just like, I\u2019m here, I know where you\u2019re going. So I remember one time\u2014Matt was pretty groovy, he had groovy fruits\u2014and I remember one time they were going to play bridge. And I didn\u2019t really want to come and play bridge. Then it turns out he was lying. He was just giving me shit. But he swears up and down he never said that. But how could I make that up? You can\u2019t make that shit up. You\u2019re in a hippie school, but no, it\u2019s our bridge night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Late last year, I met with Lynda Barry to discuss her new book, Picture This, for The Paris Review. But Barry is an inveterate talker, and in addition to the book itself, we covered bad editors, the glory of Drawn & Quarterly, gaps in comics history, and her giant crush on Charles Burns. That part of the conversation continues here. * * * Where did the near-sighted monkey in Picture […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[214,235,377,817,870,1042,1367],"class_list":["post-8874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-burns","tag-oliveros","tag-drawn-and-quarterly","tag-barry","tag-groening","tag-picture-this","tag-what-it-is"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}