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pages: 1 | 2
I think in those cases [of the British and the French], people looked at it without reading it, so they didn't see it in context. It was kind of this knee-jerk reaction, like, "Oh my God, I can't look at this. This is really bad and criminal." But generally, if people read it, they seem to understand that there's something more there besides the pictures. Your work depicts an actual experience as opposed to a sexual fantasy, which legitimizes it somehow? I guess so, yeah. But suppose what I had drawn had nothing to do with my life, that I just wanted to draw this same story? Then it would become a fantasy, in the sense that fantasies are made up. But would that make it pornographic? I don't think so. Did you tone down the sexual content of the illustrations in Diary to avoid controversy? No. My reason for not making the pictures so explicit was that there seemed to be a lot of that in the text. And I wanted to counterbalance that. I was thinking: suppose I decided to make a film of this story. My instinct would be, "Well, it can have sex in it, and it can be pornographic" I mean, what other people call pornographic. You could show these things, because sex is a part of this experience of this girl, and she's kind of obsessed with it. It only makes sense to show that. I could see it being a very real story with real sex in it. I guess it's a film that would never be made. Which makes me want to make it more. The most invalid criticism you've heard about the book? I could say the most exciting piece of criticism I got, which was also invalid, was written by Mike Patton, who is one of my favorite musicians. He wrote a little review for Jane magazine. He really liked the book he gave it five stars but everything he said was wrong. The review says at the end, "Minnie awakens more or less on her feet as a lesbian and an outright man-hater." [laughs] I don't know if he's serious or not, but that's not exactly what happens. Which authors inspire you? There are authors that wrote about their lives when they were young, like I really liked Violet Leduc, who wrote La Batarde, which I think is out of print. It really is too bad, because it's such a great book. I really like Simone de Beauvoir's fiction, not because of the way she puts words together but because it's just so depressing. Then I also collect books by this black psychologist who wrote about a hundred books about his life, and they're all self-published. He just died about five years ago. Nobody knows who he is, except me. Who was he? His name was Dr. Ira Lunan Ferguson. And his books were titled, like, I Dug Graves at Night to Attend College by Day: The Story of a West Indian Negro and Fantastic Experiences of a Half-Blind and his Interracial Marriage. How did you find them? I happened to meet him once. I was walking down the street, and he just had this storefront psychologist's office. It was ten o'clock at night, and there was this card on the door that said, "Please knock, come in." So I went in there and talked to him for a long time. The interesting thing is that he was so prolific, but he tells the same story again and again. Which is fascinating, because it's always different. And this, to me, proves what I was saying before. The truth always changes, and in the end there almost is no truth. The truth is reduced to a feeling, which is either genuine or it's not. I want to ask you about the depiction of men and boys in the book: they all seem to be jerks who dick Minnie over. Hmmm. I want to think about this, because there's a lot to say, and I want to get it right. I think Minnie had very little experience with men or boys, and so every experience she had was a new one. She's afraid of and fascinated by them. I also think that men make a lot of assumptions about women a lot of the time. About their sexuality, or lack of sexuality. And I think Minnie doesn't really realize that. I think she kind of believes that men and women are equal. I mean "equal" in a kind of abject way, like "all men are created equal." In the '70s, a girl might grow up feeling that, after all this brouhaha about women's liberation, that everything's changed, that she's living in a time when men and women are equal. But I think men didn't believe that. You know, I think there's kind of an in-your-heart assumption that a female writer is a "female writer" and not really a writer.
That's fine. I guess what I wanted to illustrate was the fact that Minnie made certain assumptions about men in total ignorance. She made assumptions about what life was, and kind of acted on them, as I think most people do. I don't know. All the men do seem really shitty. But take Monroe, for example. I don't think he's entirely shitty. He just doesn't reflect on himself, which makes him, if not stupid, kind of a typical person. A lot of people are like that. He doesn't question his motivations, and he doesn't expect his pain. He doesn't know who he is, and he doesn't want to wonder about it. Do you think teenage girls are misrepresented in the media, and did you attempt to correct any of those misrepresentations? The word "attempt" implies intention, like I set out to "set things straight." And I didn't. But there aren't very many depictions of teenage girls that I feel are accurate and ring true. I wanted to make mine as true as possible. I think there are plenty of books about teenage girls that are just filled with false notes and cut corners, and they really sound hollow. And they can be really popular, too. Do you know that book Go Ask Alice? I read it, and it's okay. A lot of people really liked it. I think I even liked it. But it's hollow. You have no sense of who Alice was. All you know is what she did. If you read that, and then read a whole bunch of these other books like that you end up feeling like teenage girls are really nothing. They do things, and people react to them, but they aren't anybody. The New York Times profile of you pointed out that teenage boys generally don't keep diaries. Why do you think teenage girls have a tendency to record their lives and boys don't? Well, the experience of being girl you're so full of emotion. And it just seems like it's just pouring out of you, and the impulse is to express it. And if no one's going to listen to you, or if you're too embarrassed to tell anyone else, you write it down. I think that men feel as much, but oftentimes don't recognize it. They almost don't want to admit it, and writing something down forces a realization of that. Boys are supposed to be outwardly directed: anything he's writing has got to be about someone else, something else. And girls aren't encouraged to be that way. What about you, do you keep a journal? No. Not even a livejournal? Not even a blog. Not even a blog. But aren't those diaries? I think you're right. I read them all the time. So it may be that technology is changing things. Do you keep a diary now? Yeah. There have been times when I haven't touched it in four months, and then I go back to it and write four times a day. So it's inconsistent. I'm not the most disciplined person in terms of writing on schedule or anything. Did your mother really know R. Crumb? Well, of course the book is totally fictional, but she did. And I knew him then too. Do you consider him an influence on your style? Not so much on my style, but on making me feel like I could draw. And making me feel that comics were something good to aspire to. Not because he said that, but just because I knew him and admired him and saw that he was so good. How does your mother feel about the book? Um, I don't know. You want her phone number? [laughs] I'm serious. You don't talk about it with her? I think she's proud of me because I'm her child and I've done something, so she can feel like, "Okay, she's my child and she's completed a project." But when she talks about it, her comments are always very sarcastic and biting, and they border on being mean. So I think she's incredibly conflicted. But she doesn't really invite conversations on it. Did you ever worry that people might read your work and then assume they know everything about you, every sexual secret? No. I don't know why. I guess it's because even if the character is based on my personal experience, I almost become schizophrenic: it's not me. It's almost like something outside of myself. And well outside of myself. And I also know it's not even a belief, I know in my heart that any experience I have has been experienced by other people a million times over. So anything that I'm exposing about myself well, I think it's good. Because maybe people can see themselves more clearly. I guess it's kind of embarrassing, I suppose, but I don't feel embarrassed. Should I? n°
pages: 1 | 2
©2003 Michael Martin and hooksexup.com. 
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