Austin Kleon – Page 565

THE HEROES IN THIS BATTLE ARE DUMPSTER DIVERS AND PACKRATS

Tuesday, September 5, 2006

$Esquire\'s Things a Man Should Know About Marriage: A Groom\'s Guide to the Wedding and Beyond$

I’ve been thinking lately about paper.

After the Great Powerbook Crash of ’06, I’m growing ever more skeptical of digital media. Even though I do a great deal of my drawing on the computer, I’m rediscovering the joy and permanence of filling notebooks.

And ever since we had to cancel our subscription to the New York Times, it’s been a real treat to head over to the future parents-in-law’s to dirty up my fingers with newsprint.

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What else got me thinking about paper?

Cartoonist Kevin Huizenga (who has a new book coming out soon) had a great post a few days ago about Bill Blackbeard, the history of archiving Krazy Kat strips, and Nicholson Baker’s Double Fold. Here’s the jacket copy from Double Fold:

Since the 1950s, our country’s libraries have followed a policy of “destroying to preserve”: They have methodically dismantled their collections of original bound newspapers, cut up hundreds of thousands of so-called brittle books, and replaced them with microfilmed copies — copies that are difficult to read, lack all the color and quality of the original paper and illustrations, and deteriorate with age. Half a century on, the results of this policy are jarringly apparent: There are no longer any complete editions remaining of most of America’s great newspapers. The loss to historians and future generations is inestimable.

In my brief tenure working in a public library, I’ve witnessed this depressing phenomenon first-hand. Due to budget restrictions, libraries are increasingly being run as retail chains (like everything else in this country, the pull towards privatization is strong), and so, in a bid for more space, the mantra is if you can get it online, drop the paper copies (so we can make room to put in more computers for tax payers to check e-mail and look at porn.)

The problem is, the majority of online references include no layout or graphics. So yes, you can read that Plain Dealer article from 5 years ago, but you won’t see any photography or the graphics that went with it. (Some databases, like the New York Times Historical Database or say, The Complete New Yorker, remedy this problem beautifully by using PDF technology.)

The only reason Krazy Kat survived this coup was through the efforts of a dedicated fan who clipped each and every color strip and donated his run to a historical society in Wisconsin.

Otherwise, the strips would be rotting in a dumpster somewhere.

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Cool fact: 2 hours away, the Cartoon Research Library at Ohio State has six tractor-trailers worth of old newspapers that Bill Blackbeard sold to the university.

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I’m researching a good deal of The Book through microfilm, and therefore, spending a lot of time squinting.

The nice thing about paper? It’s ridiculously high-resolution. No squinting required. And you can stick it in a big file folder to sift through later.

Edward Tufte, in his brilliant tirades against PowerPoint, has repeatedly championed this triumph over digital media:

Overhead projectors and PowerPoint tend to leave no traces; instead give people paper, which they can read, take away, show others, make copies, and come back to you in a month and say “Didn’t you say this last month? It’s right here in your handout.” The resolution of paper (being read by people in the audience) must be ten times the resolution of talk talk talk or reading aloud from bullet lists projected up on the wall. A paper record tells your audience that you are serious, responsible, exact, credible. For deep analysis of evidence and reasoning about complex matters, permanent high-resolution displays are an excellent start.

So yeah. Let’s hear it for paper!

ESTABLISHMENTS OF THE ILLEST REPUTE

Thursday, August 31, 2006

This is yet another page from CALAMITY and my own personal favorite so far.

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It’s my day off. I’m hanging out, playing with my re-animated laptop, and listening to the soundtrack from Jackie Brown.

I saw the movie a year or two ago, but I got the DVD set out from library last week, and I’ve watched it three times since then. The acting is fantastic, the soundtrack kicks ass, the characters are warm and living and breathing. Quentin Tarantino’s best movie, hands down.

It’s based on Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch, and just like any Elmore Leonard plot, as Martin Amis has noted, there’s a big bag full of money and everybody’s trying to get at it. Within this framework, the characters come alive. It’s a simple, genius formula.

Here’s a bit from Elmore Leonard’s website:

When Quentin Tarantino was a kid, he stole a copy of Elmore Leonard’s The Switch and got caught. Unrepentent, he later went back to the same store and stole the book again. Elmore Leonard was a beacon in the direction that he would soon head in his films. He wrote a movie directed by Tony Scott called True Romance which he said was “an Elmore Leonard novel that he didn’t write.” It certainly is an homage; it even opens in Detroit. After Reservoir Dogs came out, Elmore wrote Rum Punch which reprises the three main characters from The Switch. Tarantino read it and wanted to buy it but didn’t have the money. Elmore and his agent Michael Siegel offered to hold it for him. When he did acquire the book, Tarantino did not contact Elmore Leonard for a long time. When he did he said he was afraid to call. Elmore said, “Why because you changed the name of my book and cast Pam Greir in the lead? He said, “That’s Ok, just make a good movie.”

Dutch has said that he thought it was by far the best adaptation of his work. The DVD set includes some great interview with Leonard. (It also includes the hilarious, “Chicks Who Love Guns,” which QT wrote and directed specifically for the film.)

Anyways, if you haven’t seen Jackie Brown or read Leonard, you’re in for a treat.

IN WHICH WE TALK ABOUT THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Somewhere in the past two months I’ve lost the joy of waking up in the morning, and, to paraphrase Donald Barthelme and Lynda Barry, not-knowing. Everything seems forced and planned, and spontaneity is dead, just like the work.

No more! I say. Time to get back to the good stuff. Time to play.

I pulled out my Good Books last night, my James Kochalka and my Lynda Barry, and afterwards just started doodling in my notebook, trying to get back to that state.

Then this morning, I was checking up on Lynda, and in addition to a new page from WHAT IT IS, I came across this magical artifact up for auction her ebay account:

That’s right! An original manuscript page of CRUDDY. As Lydna says, (and I know I’ve quoted this before):

I tried not to think about the book unless I was actually writing it and I tend to write in the first person, in the character of someone, and that someone was Roberta….My goal was to not think about things at all. To dream it out instead, trying very hard not to edit at all as I went. The first draft really took shape when I found that I needed to slow way down and distract myself at the same time so I used a paintbrush and Tuscan red watercolor and painted the manuscript on legal paper, trying to concentrate on the calligraphic aspect of writing rather than trying to craft beautiful sentences. I figured as long as the sentences looked beautiful, the rest would take care of itself. That draft was seven hundred pages long. I used a hairdryer when I got to the end of each page so I could stack them without smearing. I can do some pretty nice handwriting now. I tried to write it a word at a time like it was being dictated. Cruddy was the result.”

Genius. Check out her interview on Talk of the Nation.

Now back to ~~work~~ play!

IT SEEMS A SHAME TO CHOOSE

Monday, August 28, 2006

“When you have the talent to be able to write and to draw it seems a shame to choose one. I think it’s better to do both.”

– Marjane Satrapi

I love to draw portraits. In every human face, there’s a story, only you don’t have to necessarily tell the story, you just look at the face, and there it is. The only trouble with drawing portraits: it’s hard to get people to sit still for you. That’s why I tend to draw my best portraits in conference rooms–when people are trapped in badly-lit rooms in front of Powerpoint presentations. (If I rode the subway to work, it’d probably happen there.)

These two might become part of an ongoing project that I’ve dubbed “A Life Spent.” It would be rough portraits of people accompanied by an educated or imaginative guess as to where they’ve spent (or where they look like they’ve spent) the majority of their time. Maybe we could get some audience participation involved, and I could draw the portraits, and you guys could guess where they spend their lives…

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Satrapi’s quote has become my new motto. Why do you have to choose? Well, the answer could be, because how will you ever get in to grad school if you don’t? I think I might be able to make a career out of starting an MFA program in visual storytelling…

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Here are some links: trace the evolution of speech balloons, learn how to copy the New Yorker DVD set (I’ve been thinking about making my own portable hard drive with the recently reincarnated 2.5 inch notebook drive I have leftover from the Powerbook fiasco–did I tell you the Powerbook is fixed??? Because it is!!!), read an interview with Eddie Campbell, ruminate on The Pitchfork Effect (which I read religiously in college), watch the Islands playing on the streets of Paris (they’re coming back to the Grog Shop!), and listen to Charlie Baxter talk Flann O’Brien on NPR (I read the beginning of THE THIRD POLICEMAN on break…it was nutty. And did you know THE FEAST OF LOVE is being made into a movie starring Morgan Freeman?)

Also, the full excerpt of the Osama/Whitney connection from Harpers.

And: if you’ve never read Persepolis, I’ve put up an intro page on the Pizza and Prose Myspace blog. Check it out.

“AFTER THE WAR” PUBLISHED IN BACKWARDS CITY REVIEW #4

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

page from the comic AFTER THE WAR

I’m ridiculously pleased that Gerry and the folks at Backwards City Review will be publishing my 5-page comic, “After The War,” in their fourth issue, which will be hitting the shelves soon. Not only is this my first paper-published comic, it’s also the first longer-format comic I ever worked on (drawn specifically with BCR in mind), and a rougher version of the technique I’m using to do Calamity. If you can tell, I was looking at a lot of Lynd Ward woodcuts, Frank Miller’s Sin City, and the illustrations for Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend:

Next to MOME, BCR is my favorite journal, one I go out and buy after each issue, so this is a real treat. Gerry and I have similar tastes (check out the blog!) and he’s even managed to get graphic work from Lynda Barry, Kenneth Koch, and Kurt Vonnegut.

I really suggest you check it out. Library Journal named it one of the best magazines of 2004, and called it “a flawless mix of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and comics—yes, comics” that “easily surpasses most of the more established literary titles at the local Barnes & Noble.”

For those of you who live in Cleveland, Suzanne carries it at Mac’s Backs in Coventry.

backwards city review