IFOA 2011: Daniel Clowes & Seth

Conversation: Daniel Clowes

International Festival of Authors (Brigantine Room). Friday, October 21, 2011.

Down to Harbourfront to lead off another year at the International Festival of Authors.¹ One shouldn't try to stereotype the comic book crowd too narrowly, but this looked beguilingly like a comic book crowd — smart and equal parts slouchy and well-turned-out.²

Which would be a good match for the pair taking their seats on stage, who both were dressed about exactly as you would have expected them to — even if you only knew them from their work. Seth was natty as ever in a vintage-styled suit and plaid tie, while Daniel Clowes was dressed down in black jeans and shirt. One suspects that though they would blanch at the very idea of it, they know the value of their personal brands. They also played with the basement-dwelling/social outcast stereotype: "Cartoonists are not performers," cautioned Seth at the outset.

"It's basically like lifting up a log and expecting the worms to entertain you," Clowes confirmed, in his wryly deadpan manner.

That said, this was an engaging conversation, generally even-handed though it was officially billed as interview of Clowes by Seth. The latter, of course, is well-known as an illustrator and writer of Palookaville and such titles as Clyde Fans and It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken, and is celebrating at IFOA both the recent release of a new "sketchbook" graphic novel The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists and the receipt of the $10,000 Harbourfront Prize. Clowes, meanwhile, is the author of the seminal Eightball comic, from which the the recently released The Death-Ray was drawn — as well as Ghost World, which, in its film adaptation might be his most prominent foray into the mass consciousness.

Seth led off with some basic questions like what led Clowes to become a cartoonist. After a youthful obsession with comic books, "I just never had any other ambitions," he commented.

An aspiring visual artist, "I became a writer of my comics completely by default." he turned out to have a natural ability as a storyteller: "the drawing was always a terrible struggle, but the writing... I didn't even have to think about that." Asked, if the writing was the easy part, why he persisted with the drawing, he replied, "to me writing is just the utility – there's no fun in it at all... you write to get to the stage where you can draw."

That led to some interesting back-and-forth with both agreeing that the more physically mechanical parts of the long process of cartooning give a space to let the brain be unoccupied, where the mind can wander and new ideas can be birthed. Seth asked about Clowes' artistic guideposts along the way, invoking Robert Crumb. Both agreed he was, in their youthful view, just "filth" — but ultimately, in the longer run, an inspirational figure. Clowes, however, was more immediately inspired by others like R. O. Blechman, whose minimalist, doodle-like cartoons appeared in book form in the 50's — "proto graphic novels", aimed at adults, and not sold in comic book stores. This was his lofty goal, but after frustrations in trying to break into the orthodox world of commercial illustration, he ended up in the comic book world, publishing Lloyd Llewellyn.

In the 80's there was a struggle against the mainstream comic world (which was much smaller back then than the multimedia corporate monolith it is now), with Clowes identifying as "a barnacle on the side of these big companies... thrown in the back of the store in that little cardboard box marked 'adult'".

"We were the 'alternative' guys who hate superheroes," was the self-perception of the time, which is rather unlike the situation today where there's more of a continuum, where people can comfortably like both realms. Commented Seth: "the superheroes won... everybody knows who the X-Men are now." But at the same time, the "serious" cartoonists managed to gain some cultural respectability, moving from comic book stores to book stores, and from being comic book writers to being authors.

All of that past struggle — being outsiders to literature for not being serious enough and outsiders to mainstream comics for being too serious — meant it was mildly ironic that Clowes was at a literary festival celebrating The Death-Ray, a superhero comic. He suggested that came about because the medium is now mature enough that the "alternative" guys don't need to define themselves against the superhero comics. And as for why, there was the challenge of doing a non-ironic superhero comic, one that doesn't wink at its own absurdity: "the worst idea," and therefore a perversely compelling one "you could ever have would be to do an earnest superhero story."

Moving from there, Seth poked into the darker corners of Clowes' misanthropic worldview: "you seem like a nice, well-adjusted guy. But in your work you clearly really hate people. What the hell is that all about?"

"I'm really the last person to discuss... I've always felt that deep down that I was actually a very optimistic person at a certain level, and that I've always been continually disappointed." That lead into a discussion of his character Wilson, who for him embodies that underlying optimism, as he constantly puts himself into the orbit of other people, even though it never works out.³

That led, at the close of the first part of the programme, to more discussion on the evolution of the comics medium: was it better to work in obscurity on one's own vision instead of swinging for the fences of mainstream commercial success? A couple decades ago, "there was no money in it, why could anybody tell you what to do?" The balancing act between creative freedom and the pitfalls of obscurity and insecurity is a conundrum that any kind of artist can probably appreciate.

There was a variety of topics in the Q & A, such as the tale of Clowes' youthful encounter with Steve Ditko and the intellectualization of cartooning and analyzing it as high art — in that regard, both were in favour of Ivan Brunetti over Scott McCloud. And interestingly, someone asked about how the transition from book to movie was different between Ghost World and Art School Confidential, politely leaving unspoken the large gulf between how excellent the former was and the latter was not.

"When we made Ghost World, everything worked out well, and when we made Art School nothing worked out well," was Clowes' honest response, describing how with so much going on in the film-making process, there's just a lot of luck in how things work out, and it's hard to get an overview of what it's going to be like until it's done.

And perhaps best of all was this exchange, which summarizes the whole thing rather well:

Audience member: Do either of you feel like you've contributed something negatively to this society?

Clowes: I actually think about that a lot.

Seth: Do you know what you would consider negative?

Clowes: I think there's some bad vibes I'm putting out there.

Seth: Well, I'm certainly not giving any positive vibes about the future, that's for sure. I know I couldn't be less encouraging of the culture around me.

Clowes: I'd like to think we amuse a few people —

Seth: — on their way to the grave.

Photo credit: readings.org.

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¹ As I shuffled into the Brigantine Room with the crowd, it felt like things hadn't changed too much from last year — in fact the PA was still playing, as it was a year ago, Emily Haines' solo album.

² And in women's fashions, anyone with an affection for those 50's style upturned librarian glasses would have enjoyed themselves in this crowd.

³ "Why not create worlds you'd want to be in?" asked Seth, acknowledging that he can't do that either in his own work. He's no stranger to artistic depictions of self-hatred (as revealed at the close of his Palookaville comic) and the pitfalls of relating one's insecurities.