Shalom Auslander on Courage

Another good distraction from writing is reading about writing, and one thing nobody seems to discuss much is courage. Tone, character, structure, voice. But not courage. Maybe that’s why I also don’t read many books that seem all that courageous; on the contrary, most new books I read seem pandering, desperate for respect and admiration, but nothing that seems like a risk, nothing that seems like the author just went out there and said, “Fuck it, this is what I feel. Be it sick, be it wrong, be it contrary to everything I ever wrote before.” Maybe I’m reading the wrong books. Maybe we talk about plot and character because we can’t talk about courage, because there’s nothing we can do about it, because no amount of pages or instruction is going to help you when you sit down at the computer with all your pride and dreams and insecurities and fears, with all the faces of all the people you’ve ever met staring over your shoulder and waiting to see what you do. Because no book or article is going to get you to crawl out from under that bed, thin skin and all, and walk with your head up through this horrible shithole of a world.

The whole thing is here.

Art Spiegelman Fills Out Questionnaire

Stuff he's been saying in one form or another for 30+ years in public. I was lucky enough to get turned on to the original Breakdowns via a review in The Comics Journal when I was in high school. Still the real deal, check it out here.
via The Comics Journal

Update: Bookworm podcast interview here.

David Levine

Berry Gordy by David Levine

"Erica Jong, Woody Allen, Christopher Isherwood, and Sontag were all unhappy with Levine. So was Philip Roth, whom Levine encountered one day outside Bergdorf Goodman shortly after one of his nine caricatures of the author had appeared. “What did you do to my sweet little goyish shtik [Christian and small] nose?” Roth complained. Truman Capote also feigned indignation. “You’re the man who did my dewlaps like this!” he remonstrated, tugging at the excess skin around his neck. Levine says he may have saved Norman Mailer’s life, spotting and then restraining him when, engrossed in a conversation, he had been about to walk into traffic near his home in Brooklyn Heights. Afterward, though, Mailer apparently could think only about all the unflattering portraits Levine had done of him. “Oh. It’s you” was the only thanks Mailer could muster. Others, though, including Arthur Schlesinger Jr., actually appreciated what Levine had made of them. “He was a particularly homely man,” Levine recalls. “He must have expected something much worse.”"

David Levine is losing his eyesight. Vanity Fair has a really good article and interview with him here.
Amazing Levine gallery here.

Via The Comics Reporter

Junot Diaz Video Interview

Gene Colan

Gene Colan, genius penciller of the Silver Age, is in poor health right now. More info here.
(via Comics Journal)

Gene Colan! I only know the work and not the man, but in some ways I feel like I do know him via the humanity of those pages and pages of his art which I have pored over.

His women are among the least stereotyped, even when wearing an all black unitard like the Black Widow did. But they were often sexy as well. How did he do it?

And what about the shadows in Dr. Strange, Daredevil and Nathaniel Dusk for example? How were they all so atmospheric and yet different shadows?

Here is a man who can make a pencil sing.

So, I don't know Gene Colan. But man, do I know some things about Gene Colan.

My deepest heartfelt best wishes for the Genial One and his family.

PS: (quote from Comics Journal):
Tom Spurgeon alerts us to the fact that the family of Gene Colan are having immense difficulties paying his medical bills. Caring readers who would like to assist them have two ways to do so:

1. You can bid in one of the Colans’ eBay auctions, which would not only put money in their hands but also net you a nice piece of art, to boot.
2. Do as I did, and make a direct donation via Paypal, where the Colans are registered as genecolan@optonline.net — just log into your account, hit the “send money” button, and insert said email address and the amount you wish to donate into the appropriate boxes. Oh, and you might want to mention the word “donation” prominently in the comments box, so the Colans don’t have to sort through a bunch of listings to find the eBay payments.

Goodbye Jim Mooney

Mark Evanier & Comics Journal have details, but Jim Mooney died this past week. It may be facile to note that this comes so close to Steve Gerber's death, and heaven knows I don't believe in an afterlife, but it is kind of nice to imagine that there are more issues of Man-Thing and that final issue of Omega The Unknown in heaven. And maybe a Supergirl story or two.

I met Gerber back in 1976 and I remember talking with him about how Mooney's art was perfect for the subversive Omega b/c it was so redolent of those innocent 1960's DC's. Nevermind some nice looking, slightly well-fed Peter Parkers. Yes, I am talking to you, James Michael Starling.

Thinking about those comics it is hard to believe in a way that the images beamed into my cerebral cortex were created by human beings. Man, Mooney drew alot of that stuff!

Rest in Really Well Drawn Peace(where you ink your own pencils), With No Short Cuts or Swipes, Jim Mooney.

Siegel and Schuster Created Superman in 1938, MF!

From Joe Schuster's wiki page

Neal Adams on the late-1970s settlement from DC Comics for which he and other comics creators fought: "Others made millions while Superman's creators lived in near-poverty. Jerry was a clerk and Joe was a legally blind man who lived in his brother's apartment, slept on a cot, and worked as a messenger. I met and fought for their small remaining rights when they both turned only 60 years old. Not 'old' by any definition. The battle took months and the settlement was meager, but it let the men live the remaining years of their lives with dignity. You know what they cared about most? They cared about having their names, once again, associated with their character, Superman! Why? Because it was what they were as people. They were their work."

When Jack Kirby went to DC, he actually called up the creators of Superman to get their blessings before doing his version of the character. (From Ronin Ro's Tales To Astonish.)

Court ruled finally in Siegel and Schuster's favor this week. More here. (Via Comics Journal)

John Waters, Role Model

"Waters is unusually regimented. He wakes up at exactly 6:10 every morning and reads newspapers and drinks tea until 8. He starts writing 'right at eight o’clock—not 8:01, not 7:59,' and works until lunchtime. Waters is rigidly devoted to these morning sessions, and his hired wife plans his travel accordingly. He will go somewhere a day early or stay a day late rather than fly in the morning, even if it means staying at an airport hotel, 'because I need to write five days a week,” he says firmly. 'As far as I can remember I have done that, at least for 25 years. I most never miss a day. When I was young and went out every night—like during the days of Multiple Maniacs and Pink Flamingos—I don’t know how I did it. I took pills and smoked pot every day, but I still made those movies. I don’t think I was as stringent in my Swiss personality, as I call it, but I did make those movies.' "


NY Magazine

Can you look I.B. in the eye today?

“We must believe in free will, we have no choice” I.B. Singer

This is my favorite pic of I.B.

Steve Ditko is 80 Today

Steve Ditko is 80. (Thanks, Comics Journal for the reminder!)
Here is a J.J.J.J. Jolly Jonah Jameson Jpeg to celebrate the event.

Defending Zissou

I am eagerly awaiting The Darjeeling Express, by Wes Anderson. Hotel Chevalier is definitely worth seeing--13 economical, poetic minutes. (Go to iTunes for the free download.) Chevalier reminded me of Love at Twenty/Antoine and Collette (now at Film Forum) in some ways.

But nearly every writeup of Darjeeling makes a point of slamming The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, one of the finest films ever made. Ah well, the film exists, it is a great meditation on life, death, age, fatherhood, sonhood and lighting fast rescue missions. It hardly needs another blogger to defend it, it stands on its own.

"Jesus Christ, he whispered. I'm a Morlock"

Just burrowed through Junot Diaz's "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao". Ok, so I am one of the readers who will get all the Lee/Kirby references & will need help w the Spanish & Elvish passages.

Still feel like I o.d.'ed on words & oxygen. Wow.

$200 is just a down payment on enlightenment!

Open Letter to Fake Steve Jobs:

FSJ,

What the media don't get is that the iPhone tech pricing was the followup to
your Stanford speech. You are transcending tech to administer a swift THWACK of
the bamboo stick to the shoulders of your grasshopper-disciples.

The iPhone release & pricing swap are at once performance art and an act of enlightening the faithful.

"The real function of a spiritual friend is to insult you"

p134
The Myth of Freedom
Chogyam Trungpa

Namaste--I honor the place where I treasure my 1st gen Shuffle while watching
the newbie grasshoppers get burned, not without a certain nostalgia.

Paul Pope: as Good as Mazzuchelli

Just read Paul Pope's Batman Year 100. Newsflash: the guy is a killer cartoonist. Plus his take on Batman is just... so... NEAT!

He remembered something that the last 20 years of bad xeroxes of Miller and Moore missed: the damn book is FUN as well as having all the dystopic paranoid shit worked out so well. Gotta go out and find everything else this guy worked on now.

Richard Serra interview on Leonard Lopate

I am going to see the Richard Serra retrospective at MOMA in the next week (like everyone else). I got to at least hear him at his book signing at the Strand last week and he was great. The primacy of work, the respect for the work and studio process of others, even when he was not sympathetic with their artistic orientation, the lack of horseshit... all came through even in a crowd so dense that I never actually got to see the man.

It was great to see a book launch at The Strand rather than Barnes and Noble. Also: thanks to friend Suzanne who relayed the info about the appearance from S.F.

Plans to edit & post my notes are taking a backseat to my own work (what's the point of getting inspired if you use the energy up in rabbit-trail detours?--Actually, I am unfortunately a lab rat in that experiment often enough.). Here is a pretty good Leonard Lopate interview with Serra to check out.

"Laptop Like You" song

I have jumped on the Jonathan Coulton bandwagon. I _did_ know about him before the NYT article, thanks to Merlin Mann and Ze Frank. But you may
not, go check this article:

But, more importantly, check out his geek love song, "Laptop Like You". I
truly can say that, as an artist, he voiced my deepest emotions concerning
my MacBook Pro.

Go here, scroll to Other Experiments at
the bottom and click "Hear". Then click "Buy"!

Reasons to Be Cheerful 2/14/07

Time to clear the decks with a "shopping list" post in no particular order. The nature of this blog is that I might not develop all ideas or lists but part of the experiment is the simple act of posting.

Lots of quotes rambling around my head today...

-The Search by John Battalle - (book) Think of an act we have always been engaged in, now refined to the point where it is a new context for hunting and gathering. The Tesla connection, aka "The lessons of Tesla":

"I wanted to invent things, but I also wanted to change the world. I wanted to get them out there, get them into people's hands so they can use them, because that's what really matters." Larry Page p.66

This is another interation of "Real artists ship" (Steve Jobs).

Bill Gross' IdeaLab story is also worth reading.

"...he was fascinated with the way Spielberg ran movie sets. 'He walks around all day long using his brainpower to creatively enhance things around him...

'I'd always thought you had to take the good with the bad. How audacious to think your job could be perfect all day long.' " Bill Gross p. 99

-Bruce Nauman at the Berklee Art Center-What would I be doing today if I had seen this stuff instead of the Giacometti in Dec. 1979?Manipulating the T-Bar, Get Out of My Mind, Abstracting the Shoe, Legal Size all very, very good.

-Guston, Lichtenstein and modern posters at SF MOMA. Guston Red Sea, The Swell, Blue Light. Paintings hung together like comics panels. Man, this is it.

The Lichtensteins look hard and brittle, but just right. Mirror, 1970 hits me now in a way that the Rothko and Giacometti there don't. I feel far away from those masters right now.

Too Much to Take: Cornuto! or How it all feels a little too Fassbinder in here. (If there were a link to Elvis Costello's version of The Specials' "What I Like Most About You Is Your Girlfriend" I would definitely list it here.)

-Shadows and Fog quote, "Like our illusions? No, they NEED our illusions!"

-Steven Shaw Turning The Tables (book). Great critiques and expertise-oriented understanding of the food business. Shaw got turned onto fine dining while being wined and dined by law firms in NYC. (Will cite page when I get my copy back.) Right on critique of the "cult of authenticity". Even though I appreciate Saveur/Slow Food for their contributions, this is a handy bit of sharp thinking from the FatGuy aka eGullet.com guy.

-Tickle Me Almo (dovar):Here is a Pete Townsend quote I would throw at the reverential NYRB reviewer who likes "Cinema master" Almodovar more than "speed freak" Almo. Just substitute "Pedro" for "Pop" in the quote below.

"Pop has become solemn, irrelevant, and boring. What it needs now ismore noise, more size, more sex, more violence, more gimmickry, more vulgarity. Above all it desperately needs a new messiah who will take things right back to the glamour, power, and insanity of the Elvis Presley age."

-Shit testsOK, it is ridiculous to rationalize all clumsy conversational moves as intentional. But hey, being ridiculous is not so bad. I can keep it up for awhile longer.

"Hey baby/I'm out of favor/Can't always be/The right flavor" Graham Parker Nobody Hurts You (Harder Than Yourself)

OTOH, as a waiter I can talk to people, why is it that as ME I cannot? There are a few rules, I am selling something, it is a work interaction. Imagine giving someone free cookies if they don't like your flip comment about feminism, the war, your swearing habit, your love, your hate, your indifference... Maybe I need to carry a few "comps" in my backpack and just treat everyone, everywhere as if they were my "customers".

-Marvelmania, or just mania as an aesthetic. Or an anaesthetic? I notice that many posts are about creating a state of mania. Art that triggers this is GOOD. Everything else is just OK.

Anyhow, I liked that Brice Marden show, didn't I? But even then I was drugging myself on Sweet and ignoring museum guards who were in my face...

I'd Rather Feel Like Shit Than Be Numb

Wig Wam Bam: a meditation

If all I do is spread the irresistable gospel of The Sweet at their peak I will occasionally feel fulfilled. The calculated bubble-gum AM trebly sound of Wig Wam Bam on "repeat" puts me in touch with 1972. That is, it is a time machine that evokes ALL of being 11 years old listening to glam and glitter rock, reading Marvel Comics and Lester Bangs' Creem magazine.

As far as Creem and Marvel were concerned, punk rock had already been invented. Gil Kane inked by Johnny Romita Spider-Man howling in pain, ostensibly about Gwen Stacy getting pitched, but more globally for me as a zinger of expressionistic URGH or AARGGH lasered its way into my cortex, displacing Curt Swan gentility for the next decade or more. That inking style and those Artie Simek handlettering was an analogue to festering pubescence, hormones, awkwardness... The SHINY SURFACE of bubble-gum was gleaming Neal Adams draftsmanship all over Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Batman, X-Men.

Where is the Hernandex Bros. Comics Journal interview #1, where Gilbert says, "That's the way it was with me...the Batman TV show meant everything and long division didn't mean shit."?

Not only does the literal meaning of that sentence ring true, but the essential vibration of that sentence is a touchstone.

Listen again to the opening chords and candy coated lyrics...

Hiawatha didn't bother too much
'Bout Minnie Ha-Ha and her tender touch

Till she took him to the silver stream

Then she whispered words like he had never heard

That made him all shudder inside when she said

Wig-wam bam, gonna make you my man
Wam bam bam, gonna get you if I can
Wig-wam bam, wanna make you understand

Try a little touch, try a little too much

Just try a little wig-wam bam

"When These Guys Cut and Paste, They Really Cut and Paste!"

I revisited the Comics show at the Jewish Museum today and the flow between the Kirbys, Kurtzmans, Wolverton and Crumb was striking once again.

Tammy Wofsey, painter and maker of books, accompanied me and is the author of the above quote, referring specifically to a Chris Ware page of original art with heavy reworking.

(Examples of her work can be found online here and here by the way.)

Her great aphorism also applies to most of the art in the comics show since it was all made for reproduction and blue-pencil, white-out and overlays are common since the "real thing", so to speak, was the reproduction, not these originals now exhibited behind glass, but once carelessly piled in back rooms or summarily disposed of.

The physicality of the marked up originals just adds to their vitality (same as the Rouault prints at the MET and for much the same reason).

The reworked cover for MAD #1 and 2 Kurtzman shorts, '"Corpse on the Imjin" and "Three Dimensions" were standouts for me today. A lean, unglamorized war story and a wild parody of the 3-D glasses fad mixmastered with a critique of the comics form itself--each story 6 pages--a reminder that this master cartoonist was expansive in scope and economical in means.

Guston at McKee II

Finally got to the show (which is now extended through Jan 10th). A well selected group of Guston drawings, 1950's-1980's. Woody Allen called poems "movies for intellectuals", that's what the later, gruff cartoony ones feel like to me. There's a pencil doodle called "WHAT I LIKE TO EAT" (no pic on the McKee site, though they have a good amount available) which has roughly drawn bottle of bourbon, bowl of spaghetti, loaf of bread with a knife, bowl of cherries. Each is not only drawn, but is tagged with the name of the object.

Why is this so liberating to see pictured? Why do I get the feeling of an artist willing to picture, image, even play with the crud and the sacred on the same shameless level? Ginsberg's Kedusha of "holy, holy, holy" comes to mind, so too Albert Ellis' profane and sympathetic voice.

Go see this show if you can!