By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 2/19/2013
TweetThe Infinite Wait by Julia Wertz Koyama Press I have a complicated and knotty relationship with auto-bio comics, beset by apprehension and cynicism. There’s no doubt the genre produces some interesting material- Art Spiegelman, Seth, Robert Crumb, to name but a few, but more recently I’ve found a lot of it to be, quite frankly, boring. The [...]
By: Ingrid Sundberg,
on 2/19/2013
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the intimacy it takes to write.
I’ve been re-reading the lectures of Robert Olen Butler and he talks about how honest writing doesn’t come from thinking or ideas, but from feeling and dreaming. This is a difficult concept for many of us because there is a lot to think about when we write. But it’s possible we protect ourselves through that thinking and never really dig deep into the white-hot center of our work.
Butler quotes Akira Kurosawa, who says, “To be an artist means never to avert your eyes.”
There’s two ways I interpret this quote in regards to my writing. The first is to be brave. To face the intimacy it takes to write. I think we write to explore the human condition, but often we don’t want to look at the hard truths that make our characters who they are. Or we don’t want to let our characters move honestly through their worlds. We protect them. In many ways we are protecting ourselves. We avert our eyes, because really looking means facing secrets about ourselves. These can be personal secrets or larger truths about humanity that challenge our beliefs. Writing forces us to look at issues we may not be ready to face.
It’s scary. It takes courage.
My second interpretation of Kurosawa’s quote is about experience. We interact with our world sensually through our bodies: the taste of papaya, the texture of soft gooey fruit, the tremble of a lip in the face of bad news. The writing I love to read (and strive to write) grounds us in our bodies and its interaction with the physical world. To never avert your eyes is to be in the body of your character from moment-to-moment. It means never glazing over the emotion, but being present to feel the world through your character’s skin. It’s easy to analyze when we write and pull back and summarize. The second we step back and look at the character from the outside, discussing emotion rather than allowing a character to sensually feel it, we’ve averted our eyes from the experience and are labeling it. Controlling it. I think we do this because to truly feel something with our character means we must make ourselves vulnerable.
Robert Olen Butler says: “If I say art doesn’t come from the mind, it comes from the place you dream, you may say, ‘Well, I wake up screaming in the night. I don’t want to go into my dreams, thank you very much. I don’t want to go to the white-hot center; I’ve spent my life staying out of there.”… Here’s the tough part: you have to go down into that deepest, darkest, most roiling, white-hot place … whatever scared the hell out of you down there – and there’s plenty – you have to go in there; down to the deepest part of it, and you can’t flinch, can’t walk away.”
I believe there’s a point in your writing when you will be ready to do this. It’s not something anyone can force on you. It’s your choice. But when you decide to open up and enter this dark place – it will scare you. You might reject it and want to stop writing.
Don’t.
Be fearless. Face the intimacy and bravery your work demands. Don’t avert your eyes. This is the place where your best work will come from.
Photo Credit: Beth Retro Photography, Digital Vision
By: Ingrid Sundberg,
on 2/19/2013
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the intimacy it takes to write.
I’ve been re-reading the lectures of Robert Olen Butler and he talks about how honest writing doesn’t come from thinking or ideas, but from feeling and dreaming. This is a difficult concept for many of us because there is a lot to think about when we write. But it’s possible we protect ourselves through that thinking and never really dig deep into the white-hot center of our work.
Butler quotes Akira Kurosawa, who says, “To be an artist means never to avert your eyes.”
There’s two ways I interpret this quote in regards to my writing. The first is to be brave. To face the intimacy it takes to write. I think we write to explore the human condition, but often we don’t want to look at the hard truths that make our characters who they are. Or we don’t want to let our characters move honestly through their worlds. We protect them. In many ways we are protecting ourselves. We avert our eyes, because really looking means facing secrets about ourselves. These can be personal secrets or larger truths about humanity that challenge our beliefs. Writing forces us to look at issues we may not be ready to face.
It’s scary. It takes courage.
My second interpretation of Kurosawa’s quote is about experience. We interact with our world sensually through our bodies: the taste of papaya, the texture of soft gooey fruit, the tremble of a lip in the face of bad news. The writing I love to read (and strive to write) grounds us in our bodies and its interaction with the physical world. To never avert your eyes is to be in the body of your character from moment-to-moment. It means never glazing over the emotion, but being present to feel the world through your character’s skin. It’s easy to analyze when we write and pull back and summarize. The second we step back and look at the character from the outside, discussing emotion rather than allowing a character to sensually feel it, we’ve averted our eyes from the experience and are labeling it. Controlling it. I think we do this because to truly feel something with our character means we must make ourselves vulnerable.
Robert Olen Butler says: “If I say art doesn’t come from the mind, it comes from the place you dream, you may say, ‘Well, I wake up screaming in the night. I don’t want to go into my dreams, thank you very much. I don’t want to go to the white-hot center; I’ve spent my life staying out of there.”… Here’s the tough part: you have to go down into that deepest, darkest, most roiling, white-hot place … whatever scared the hell out of you down there – and there’s plenty – you have to go in there; down to the deepest part of it, and you can’t flinch, can’t walk away.”
I believe there’s a point in your writing when you will be ready to do this. It’s not something anyone can force on you. It’s your choice. But when you decide to open up and enter this dark place – it will scare you. You might reject it and want to stop writing.
Don’t.
Be fearless. Face the intimacy and bravery your work demands. Don’t avert your eyes. This is the place where your best work will come from.
Photo Credit: Beth Retro Photography, Digital Vision
By: Alice,
on 1/16/2013
“Our country is divided.” “Congress is broken.” “Our politics are polarized.” Most Americans believe there is less political co-operation and compromise than there used to be. And we know who is to blame for this situation—it’s our political opponents. Democrats know that Republicans are to blame, and Republicans know that Democrats are to blame. Not only do we know that our political opponents are to blame, but we are suspicious of their motives, of why they take the positions they take. Bottom line: we can’t trust them.
This is a serious problem for our country. One source of the problem is a misperception of what really motivates people’s political opinions, judgments, and actions. People often assume such opinions are all about self-interest or all about “carrots and sticks.” As Romney recently put it, “What the president’s campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote, and that strategy worked.” Plenty of commentators criticized the reference to minorities, the poor, and students as essentially being paid off for their votes, but few if any disputed the overall assumption that the “carrots” candidates offer voters determine the vote. Indeed, the field of ‘public choice’ in economics assumes just this, that voters are guided by their own self-interest and “vote their pocketbooks.”
What does it mean for our political conversation to assume that the opinions, judgments, and actions of our political opponents are motivated by self-interest? It means that their stands on political issues are selfish rather than being in the best interest of our country. We can’t trust them to be concerned about what is best for the rest of us because our interests are different than their interests. We assume that they do not have good will. But what if people are not primarily motivated by self-interest (by “carrots”) in the political domain or in any other domain of life? In fact, there is substantial evidence from research on human motivation that what people want goes well beyond attaining “carrots” (or “gifts”). What they want is to be effective.
Brian Deese, right, Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, and Economic Advisor Gene Sperling confer as President Barack Obama calls regional politicians to inform them of the next day’s announcement about General Motors filing for bankruptcy, Sunday night, May 31, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Yes, one way of being effective is to have desired outcomes, which can include attaining “carrots” (and avoiding “sticks”). But there is much more to being effective. People also want to be effective at establishing what’s real or right or correct (being effective in finding the truth), as when people want to hear the truth about themselves or what is happening in their lives even if “the truth hurts.” Indeed, people want to observe, discover, and learn about all kinds of things in the world that have nothing to do with their attaining “carrots” (or avoiding “sticks”). And people also want to manage what happens, to have an effect on the world (being effective in having control), as when children jump up and down in a puddle just to make a splash. Indeed, people will take on pain and even risk injury to feel in control of a difficult and challenging activity, as illustrated most vividly in extreme sports.
It is establishing what’s real (truth) and managing what happens (control) that often are our primary motivations — rather than self-interest — and this is both good news and bad news if we are to change the political conversation. The bad news is that humans, uniquely among animals, establish truth by sharing reality with others who agree with their beliefs (or with whom they can establish agreed-upon assumptions). And when they do create a shared reality with others, they experience their beliefs as objective — the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This means that when others disagree with these beliefs, as when Democrats and Republicans disagree with each other, each side is so certain that what they believe is reality, that they infer that those on the other side must either be lying about what they truly believe or they are too stupid to recognize the truth or they are simply crazy. These derogations of our political opponents don’t derive from our self-interests being in conflict with them. It is more serious than that. It derives from the establishment of a different shared reality to them, a shared reality that we are highly motivated to maintain because it gives us the truth about the how the world works.
This is bad news indeed. But if we understand that out political opponents just want to be effective in truth, there is a ‘good news’ silver lining. The good news is that we need not characterize our political opponents as being selfish, or liars, or stupid, or crazy. We need not question their good will. Instead, we can recognize that they, like us, want truth and control, and they want truth and control to work together effectively. They want to “go in the right direction.” They, like us, want our country to be strong. They want Americans to live in peace and prosperity. Yes, they have different ideas about what direction is the right one to make this happen, but this is something we can discuss. In order to establish what’s real, manage what happens, and go in the right direction — which are ways of being effective that we all want — we need to listen to one another and and learn from one another. This is a political conversation worth having. Let us have that respectful, serious conversation in the New Year and search for common ground. Good will to all.
E. Tory Higgins is the author of Beyond Pleasure and Pain: How Motivation Works. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He has received the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, the William James Fellow Award for Distinguished Achievements in Psychological Science (from the Association for Psychological Science), and the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions. He is also a recipient of Columbia’s Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching.
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By: Mayra Calvani,
on 10/24/2012
By: Neil Gaiman,
on 9/17/2012
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By: Matthew Cheney,
on 4/2/2012
My latest Strange Horizons column is about John D'Agata and Jim Fingal's book The Lifespan of a Fact, which has been provoking a lot of discussion.
My favorite of the responses to the book is Ander Monson's "The Skeptical Gaze", because not only has Monson read Lifespan with some care (which cannot be said for many of the people punditing about it), but he's also done some wonderful work himself to explore the possibilities and boundaries of fact and fiction (I wrote about his excellent book Vanishing Point a couple years ago for Strange Horizons). (Pardon another parenthetical, but I also want to add that comparisons between Mike Daisy and John D'Agata are superficial and fundamentally wrongheaded, as Josh Voorhees pointed out at Slate. Daisy hid his lying and worked hard to do so, D'Agata has put his fictionalizing front and center and let the world respond. I wrote the column before the Daisy scandal broke, however.)
Anyway, my own take on The Lifespan of a Fact was written about a month ago, but for scheduling reasons couldn't be published till now, so it feels a little bit superfluous to the conversation. I'm glad it's out there nonetheless, because I don't think mine is quite the same perspective as many of the others.
By: Matthew Cheney,
on 10/19/2011
My previous post about The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction noted that it is in beta-text mode and so quite obviously incomplete. Among the lacks are entries on either Jeff or Ann VanderMeer. I am not a contributor to the encyclopedia nor am I in any way affiliated with it, but I do have a great interest in all things VanderMeer.
Earlier this year, I wrote a biography of Jeff for Fogcon, where he and Ann were honored guests. (Eric Schaller wrote the biography of Ann, which I hope he will allow me to reprint here, but he's not returning my calls or email at the moment, probably because I suggested that for Halloween he should dress his dog as a character from Twilight.)
I hope the information provided below will prove useful to the encyclopedists and any future scholars. My only goal in life is to be helpful. Jeff VanderMeer will, I expect, deny the accuracy of some of it, but I believe such denials only confirm the truths I am here able to provide to the world...
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By: Little Willow,
on 10/14/2011
Last month, we posted about Demi Lovato's grateful and encouraging statements as she thanked her fans for supporting her through her recovery. Then we watched her appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, where she was very candid about her struggle with eating disorders and with cutting.
Sometimes, the truth can be the hardest thing to admit - but it's the most important. If you find yourself in an unhealthy situtation, don't be afraid to reach out for help. The people who truly love you will be there for you, no matter what, and they can help out. If you are hurting in any way, reach out to someone you trust and take the first step towards a brighter tomorrow.
If you don't see the video below, click here to watch it on YouTube.
By: Matthew Cheney,
on 9/22/2011
By: Molly Blaisdell,
on 9/11/2010
Hello, friends, hope you had a creative week. I've been thinking a lot about honesty lately. Here is a thing I've learned -- if I am brave and write down the things that I'm afraid to write down, then I find that my writing stretches beyond me. Locked doors open inside me as I let the deep things I think live on the page. I find this whole bravery thing snowballs into my work. My vision clears. Writing what I think helps me. I see what is right and true. And if anything is wrong with what I am thinking that comes out to. Putting my thoughts on the page helps me get at heart of things.
I've also found all this honesty spills into my work. I am more willing to take risks. I don't feel the weight of censors or critics, and I get to the business of shaping my stories the way they want to be shaped. I'm able to make my way into the deepest water of understanding. Emily Dickinson wrote a little poem that sticks with me. "I never saw the moor. I never saw the sea. Yet know I how the heather looks and and what a wave must be. I never visited God, nor visited in heaven, but sure am I of the spot as if the chart were given." Her assurance of things unseen gives me boldness. Her truth changes me. I hope you are getting the sense of the absolute power of writing what needs to be written.
So this week, write down your secret, write down that thought you don't write down because you know it will offend others, write down your anger, your grief, write down something hidden. See what happens when you open wide the door of honesty. I'm just saying, try it. Seize the day. See you next week.
My doodle this week is a little collage. I call it "Sunrise".
The highest compact we can make with our fellow is - "Let there be truth between us two forevermore." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 7/15/2010
Unconventional advertising for 'Sorcerer's Apprentice' (To promote this week's opening of the adventure film, Disney rolls out an interactive window display at the 34th street Macy's, as well as purchased ad space on Twitter) (Adweek) (AdAge, reg.... Read the rest of this post
By: Rebecca,
on 5/25/2010
A few weeks ago I had the honor of attending BEA2010 (no not the BEA happening this week) which was part of the 2010NAB conference. I was there to celebrate the launch of the BBC College of Journalism Website (COJO) a collaboration between OUP and the BBC. The site allows citizens outside of the UK access to the online learning and development materials created for BBC journalists. It is a vast resource filled to the brim with videos, audio clips, discussion pages, interactive modules and text pages covering every aspect of TV, radio, and online journalism. At the conference I had a chance to talk with Kevin Marsh, the Executive Editor of COJO, and I will be sharing clips from our conversation for the next few weeks. To start us off I have posted a clip which emphasizes the value of truth in journalism. Read Kevin’s blog here.
Click here to view the embedded video.
By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 4/7/2010
'Glee' returns (and critics are still singing its praises. Hurrah. Also MTV shows Green Day dude-sical "American Idiot" promotional love, boosting the show's profile before its Broadway debut. MTV launches jerseyshorecasting.com, (a site dedicated... Read the rest of this post
By: Matthew Cheney,
on 11/28/2009
I must admit some surprise that the best book I've read about judgement, taste, and aesthetics is a book about Céline Dion. Carl Wilson's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste
I don't know where I first heard about Wilson's book -- probably via Bookforum -- but it's gotten plenty of press, including a mention by James Franco at the Oscars and an interview of Wilson by Stephen Colbert. The concept of the book is seductive: Wilson, a Canadian music critic and avowed Céline-hater, spends a year trying to figure out why she is so popular and what his hatred of her says about himself. I kept away from the book for a little while because I thought it couldn't possibly live up to its premise, and that in all likelihood it was more stunt than analysis. Nonetheless, the premise kept attracting me, because I am fascinated by the concept of taste and I, too, find Dion's music to be the sonic equivalent of a Thomas Kinkade painting.
What makes Wilson's approach so effective and insightful is that it avoids the fanboy defensiveness marring everything from internet discussions to scholarly studies such as Peter Swirski's From Lowbrow to Nobrow
By focusing on Céline Dion, Wilson is able to discuss a wide range of topics: the details of Dion's career, of course, but also the history of popular music, the globalization of certain styles and tastes, the power of local cultures, the role of class and aspiration in forming and policing personal taste, the demonization of sentimentality and excess, the promotion of irony and transgression, etc. Wilson also provides a good, basic overview of histories and traditions of aesthetic philosophy, showing that even the most eminent thinkers and critics tend to do little more than construct elaborate sleight-of-hand routines. Because his goal is not to debunk so much as it is to explore, Wilson is able to use the best of what he encounters -- most fruitfully in his clear-eyed application of ideas from Pierre Bourdieu's
3 Comments on Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste by Carl Wilson, last added: 12/9/2009
By: DGLM,
on 11/13/2009
Recently, former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, addressed the W&L Journalism Ethics Institute for its 48th anniversary. This prompted a debate around the water cooler and on blogs and made its way to discussions on news programs. For, if you remember, Blair resigned from the New York Times in 2003 following an investigation that found he had plagiarized and fabricated a lot of the stories he had written for the paper. Some of his reporting was on the Iraq war and the Beltway sniper attacks. It was understandable that people were surprised that Blair would be addressing the Journalism Ethics Institute because we trust reporters to tell us the truth. We don’t expect them to fabricate or edit stories to make them more entertaining, as Blair did.
What about memoir authors who fabricate stories? James Frey and the debacle involving A Million Little Pieces comes to mind. Frey received a lot of attention from his book when it was published--Oprah praised him, A Million Little Pieces was in a million little bookstores, everyone talked highly of this new talented writer. But upon investigation, Frey’s story was proven to be inaccurate in parts, and some readers who had once been fans of the memoir wanted their money back.
Some authors don’t really care about the difference between fiction and nonfiction. A story might just be a story. But is it unfair to truthful memoir writers when an author, such as James Frey, fabricates tales to sell books? Does it prove that Frey is a talented writer that we believed his tales? Or is it infuriating to have loved a book as a memoir and find parts of it to be complete fiction?
How much tweaking should be allowed in memoirs to make them entertaining these days, and do you care about the difference between fiction and nonfiction storytelling?
-Rachel
By: Camille,
on 3/20/2007
OK, I want this house. Going out to measure the back yard now.
By: Matthew Cheney,
on 3/9/2008
The story is true. Kafka simply wrote a completely verifiable, journalistic account of a neighbor by the name of Gregor Samsa who, because of some bizarre medical condition, turned into a ‘monstrous vermin.’ Kafka assured us that he’d made the whole thing up. We now know that to be completely false.I wonder if Penguin will offer me a refund for the new Michael Hofmann translation of the stories that I bought a few days ago?
By: Anastasia Goodstein,
on 2/12/2009
Webosaurs (the latest virtual world for tweens from Reel FX Entertainment. Plus COPPA Kids, a really funny site with quotes from kids who have been age blocked - thanks Andrea! And more news from the kids online world) (via Izzy Neis) (COPPA Kids... Read the rest of this post
By: yesisedit,
on 4/16/2009
There used to be a middle class, strong and upwardly mobile, many house holds only needed one bread winner and divisions between the classes were blurred most times.
This system did many things good for our nation, it gave the poorest of our people a thought that there was a way forward and out of their poverty by degrees. The fact that they may not be instantly rich was tempered by the fact the a comfortable life was attainable and they didn’t have to be a Basketball star or drug dealer ( these days one in the same some times) to get out of the slums and grip of poverty. With no middle class the view from the bottom seems imposable unless you go for the only channels left for you to advance in with no middle resting place. Greed will, it seems , always be with us and lead to gang mentality among the rich as well as the poor if there is no buffer. Them or us leads to gangs on one side and hired mercenaries on the other for protection, neither of which is a healthy way to live, just ask them in Iraq or Afghanistan, Mexico, you name the country.
With no middle class there becomes a giant pool of potential soldiers with no other options and a dangerous environment.
Creating and maintaining a large and stable middle class is the best way to stabilize societies in my view. Giving them enough wealth so that one person in the partnership can physically stay with the children and raise them in communities where all the parents have a say and control of their lives and know that values are taught not from the school where you send them but at home with a parent there to provide support and strength when children go astray. A society where it doesn’t matter if God is taught in school because he is taught at home by parents who have the time to watch their children and instill the values they want their children to have. Schools need more wood shops, home economics classes, metal shops , all the classes that teach ways to work. They need art and athletics as well to keep their students well rounded and give more opportunities for them to find things that they like and do well in that are constructive.
Government needs to stop the well-fair state mentality and start the work ethics again. Stop regulating safety and make it the responsibility of the people as individuals. We may have some stupid mistakes made and innocent people hurt now and then but we will not have to have a camera on every corner or prisons overflowing with poor that had no place to advance. Government will naturally shrink with no need to legislate rules when the people are given adequate room to live lives that have meaning and attainable realistic goals.
Just my thoughts.
I am so tired of people saying truth is stranger than fiction. First of all I’ve read some pretty strange fiction. Try reading a little Terry Prachett or Kurt Vonnegut or Neil Gaiman etc… and then tell me truth is stranger than fiction.
But, hey, I’m a reasonable man. Let’s say that it is sometimes true that truth is stranger than fiction. I will be the first to admit and even celebrate the capacity of humans to do absurdly foolish things. Absurdly brave sometimes, absurdly everything really. I will say this: fiction is restrained by the need for believability; reality has no such constraints.
My world, the one I’m creating, has to have certain rules. If you’re writing realistic fiction those rules will generally be resistant to absurd coincidences. Naturally, absurd coincidences happen all the time in the real world, but we accept these after a bit of head shaking. If they happen in fiction we cry, “foul” and slam the book shut. Is this fair? No, I say. A thousand times no. But it’s true that we will not tolerate in our fiction what we will tolerate in our real lives or in our non-fiction. So, it seems, we hold our fiction to a higher standard of believability than our non-fiction. Go figure.
I get around this “fiction cannot be as strange as truth” problem by writing absurd fiction. I have little green men who actually do invade Earth. What are you going to do with that? If your world, the one you create, is fantastical you can of course be as strange as you want. In other words, the truth has nothing on me. In my world FICTION IS STRANGER THAN TRUTH.
that I bought a few days ago?
, will soon be revealed to be not a memoir of a family's amusing exploits down digestive tracts (as we've all thought for years), but rather a microeconomic study of the effects of household income as a determinant of natural gas consumption. Keep your eyes out for further revelations!
A huge fan of Wertz and I loved this book. Interesting thought on autobio comics, a much maligned and yet inarguably great comics genre, as well.
Thanks for the review. I didn’t even realize Wertz had a new book out. I immediately bought this.
Yep, I’m a big fan. I think another(!) thing that bothers me with auto-bio comics -and this may be just my experiences- is that it seems to have become the genre of choice for indie/small press creators, and with diary comics, the net it’s all a bit ubiquitous. I don’t think it helps the image of indies as arty, cliquey and a little self-absorbed. I would love to see more imaginative and ‘original’ work- world building, great characters, story- weaving. People like Wertz are incredible though, she manages to blow away all cobwebs.
“Interesting thought on autobio comics, a much maligned and yet inarguably great comics genre”
Huh. I thought that, in fact, this was exactly the point the reviewer was arguing.
A bare handful of great works doesn’t constitute a genre, let alone a great genre.
@Zainab Akhtar
“I think another(!) thing that bothers me with auto-bio comics -and this may be just my experiences- is that it seems to have become the genre of choice for indie/small press creators, and with diary comics, the net it’s all a bit ubiquitous.”
Hmmm…I have no idea what indie/small press comics you’re reading, and try as I might I can’t read the entire field, but with the exception of Eddie Campbell’s books, I can’t think of an autobio indie/small press book I’ve read in years…unless you count Sammy the Mouse or that How I Made it to Eighteen, but that’s by a woman and not what you were talking about.
I just bought a pile of mini-comics this past weekend and they’re all sci-fi or goofy stories about ridiculous characters. I’m not questioning your assertion, it’s just I haven’t come across much autobio indie/small press stuff in years.
Maybe my library of books by women creators is just too small? I’ve been trying to grow it, but all my favorite women creators do either stuff almost exclusively for the web or mini-comics.
But yeah, I’d be interested to know what books you’re reading that make you feel like it’s the genre of choice, because I honestly thought that genre just about died out.
Hey Chris:
Here’s some by female creators of the top of my head(not sure whether you wanted both men and women, couldn’t make it out from your post). Most of these are excellent:
Flocks by L Nichols
Sunday in the Park with Boys by Jane Mai
Single, The Monkey in the Basement (and other minis) by Corrine Mucha
Please God! Find Me A Husband by Simone Lia
Radiator Days (and other books) by Lucy Knisley
Gray is not a Colour by Sally Madden
But I Really Wanted to be an Anthropologist by Margaux Motin
Dotter of her Father’s Eyes (mixture of auto-bio and bio of historical figure) by Mary Talbot
Persepolis, of course, by Marjane Satrapi etc etc
Best,
Z
Ooh! Good list! Jane Mai is one of my absolute favorite cartoonists! I’ll look into the rest. I have a bunch of minis by various talented women, but I don’t know how many of them are still making comics. Like the funniest comics I’ve ever read were by a woman named Lauren Burnett. I haven’t come across a comic from her in a while, which is a real shame.
My question was more what are all these autobiographical books you’re reading that make you feel like it’s the genre of choice? Because, honestly, that genre appears near dead to me with the exceprion of a few women cartoonists. But honestly, I could read autobiographical stuff from women all day because they’re better. Women seem to focus more on the emotional connection between people and I like that. Like, they mine the humor out of human interactions much better than men do. I dunno…I could probably word that better.
BTW – I forgot to tell you this article was awesome! Please review more stuff! You’re really good at it!
[...] Posted on Mar 1, 2013 in News The Infinite Wait and Other Stories by Julia Wertz (9780987963024 | September 2012 | $15.00 | Trade Paper) has been reviewed by The Comics Beat. “With an internal gaze that’s unflinching and unforgiving, Wertz blows all comers out of the water. Her honesty is searing, caustic, strengthening and yet not without fear. Her truths are coated in an equally zingy humour, a cloak that makes them less scary and more manageable.” – Zainab Akhtar, February 19, 2013. http://comicsbeat.com/review-the-infinite-wait-by-julia-wertz/ [...]