Man, now Maurice Sendak is dead. The very first book I read by myself was Hector Protector and As I Went Over the Water.
What were your favorites, not counting Where the Wild Things Are?
When a friend of mine was growing up in NYC she got to see him tell and draw stories in person for an audience.
What a brilliant guy, who took children very seriously.
On day 8 of book tour. I’ve been reading lev grossman’s wonderful meta-Narnian fantasy book “The Magicians,” and am very struck with the way his Neitherlands, his version of Lewis’s Wood Between the Worlds, resembles an airport. I am trying hard to see the magic in the daily security lines, crowded planes, luggage mishaps, and ever-shifting array of boarding procedures. A young woman soldier across the aisle just told her father she loves him. I guess that’s a kind of magic.
There was a great crowd at my reading in Philadelphia last night, including a bunch of Bryn Mawr students who burst out at the end with the Bryn Mawr cheer (in Greek of course) Anassa kata, kale kale. Ia ia ia Nike! Later in the signing line a nice woman gave me a gift but not her name or any way to contact her, so on the off chance that she’s reading the blog, thank you for the amazing watchwork cufflinks!
I was also very happy to see Dr. E and Aunt Soozie again! Soozie passed on notes from some of you–thank you Meg W, and Ian for saying hello. Here’s a pic of the three of us: (I didn’t ask Soozie or Dr. E for their permission, so let me know if you want me to take this down)
(here we are in 2007 at the Philadelphia Library last time I was in town.)
Okay. Onward to DC!
Here’s the current window display at 57th Street Books in Chicago. (Thank you, Hannah!)
And here is a picture of dinner in New York last week following the Publishing Triangle Awards, at which my amazing erstwhile publisher Nancy Bereano, of Firebrand Books, presented me with the Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award.
That’s Nancy on the left. My lovely girlfriend Holly Rae Taylor on the right. My friend Sarah Van Arsdale next to Holly. (go to Sarah’s blog for an illustration of the awards ceremony) And in the background, the poet David Groff and his partner Clay Williams, and the novelist Sion Dayson.
Are You My Mother? has been getting some very good press. Here’s an interview with the redoubtable Maud Newton on the Barnes & Noble website. And a very wonderful review in Entertainment Weekly.
I’m starting off on an intense book tour next week, a city a day. Unfortunately it launches on May Day in NYC, when Occupy Wall Street is calling for a general strike. But if you’re not busy blockading the Manhattan Bridge or the Holland Tunnel, and/or you get out of jail early, come on up to Bunns and Noodle.
Here’s the tour schedule. Please come to a reading!
Are You My Mother? book tour, May 2012
Tuesday May 1, New York City
Barnes & Noble, 7pm
2289 Broadway @ 82nd St.
Wednesday May 2, Cambridge
The Brattle Theatre, 6pm
40 Brattle Street
Sponsored by the Harvard Bookstore
Thursday May 3, Philadelphia
Free Library of Philadelphia, 7:30
1901 Vine St.
Friday May 4, Washington, DC
Politics & Prose, 7pm
5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Saturday May 5, Toronto
Toronto Comic Arts Festival
Sunday May 6, St Louis
Left Bank Books, 4pm
321 N. 10th St.
Monday May 7, Milwaukee
Boswell Book Co., 7pm
2559 N. Downer Ave
Tuesday May 8, Berkeley
Books Inc, 7pm
1760 Fourth Street
Wednesday May 9, San Francisco
The Booksmith, 7:30
1644 Haight Street
Thursday May 10, Los Angeles
Los Angeles Public Library, 7pm
Format: On-stage interview with Deborah Vankin
Mark Taper Auditorium—Central Library
630 W. Fifth Street
Friday May 11, Seattle
University Bookstore, 7pm
4326 University Way NE
Saturday May 12, Portland
The Bagdad Theater, 5pm
3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd
Sponsored by Powell’s
Wednesday May 16, Chicago
Swedish American Museum, 7:30pm
5211 N. Clark St.
Sponsored by Women and Children First Bookstore
Man. I have been trying and trying to find time to write a blog post, but I have never been so busy in my life. Thanks to Mentor and others for noting some of the recent developments around here—the Guggenheim, The joint review of my new memoir and Jeanette Winterson’s new memoir in New York Magazine. And also this week’s New Yorker profile—which the author Judith Thurman is having a live chat about on Wednesday.
Here’s a small close-up of the illustration I got to do for The New Yorker piece.
Any one of these items would have sent me to bed for a week, but they’re all happening at once. Plus this week I’m traveling from Chicago (where I’m teaching at the University of Chicago until June) to NYC to attend the Publishing Triangle Awards where I will be receiving the Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award. I protested that I am too young to receive a lifetime achievement award, but by the end of all this I may have aged into the proper bracket.
Here’s what I’ve done since finishing Are You My Mother on February 3rd: Took my mother on a trip to Las Vegas. Uprooted myself and moved away from my home to teach in Chicago. Co-curated an exhibit of my work with my colleague here, Hillary Chute. Had an opening for the show. Did multiple public talks, including a Graphic Novel Symposium at Colorado College last week with Hillary and Chris Ware. Drew a self portrait to accompany The New Yorker profile. (below are some studies.) Received copies of my book hot off the press and spotted billions of tiny errors, and some not so tiny, which took me a long time to recover from. Did many publicity interviews, with very fancy people like Lev Grossman at Time Magazine, and Maud Newton, though these are not out yet.
But the big thing has been teaching a class twice a week, on autobiographical comics, with Hillary Chute. These kids are very smart and it is hard staying even half a step ahead of them. Plus Hillary has us reading all kinds of dense, difficult autobiographical theory that I barely understand.
I want to return to Jeanette Winterson for a moment. In some interview I read with her recently, she said that she feels ill if she can’t read every day. And I would say that I start to feel a little ill, or at least hollow and insubstantial, if I can’t write every day—at least a very minimal diary entry or blog post about what I’ve been doing. And I haven’t been able to do that in many weeks now.
I hope that this post makes me feel better.
Here are some of my studies for The New Yorker illustration. It was very helpful to have a drawing to work on while I’m living in this strange faraway place.
My old pal Sarah Van Arsdale has a book coming out this month, Grand Isle, her third novel. Check out her funny, illustrated blog. Her latest post is a short tribute to Adrienne Rich which links to this great essay about Rich by Susan Stinson on Lambda Literary. Susan describes very eloquently the deep, encompassing way that Rich’s work shaped her own writing and thinking.
I just heard that Adrienne Rich died. The NY Times obituary ends with this:
What she and her sisters-in-arms were fighting to achieve, she said, was simply this: “the creation of a society without domination.”
Of course her work had a huge influence on me. In fact a chapter of my new book revolves around her. The excerpt above is from a lecture I heard her deliver when I was 23. I wrote down practically everything she said in a notebook.
I wish I had time to write more now but I have just begun my fellowship at the U of Chicago and am so busy I can’t breathe. But here’s another Rich reference. Back when I was still struggling with my book I wrote about a dream I had, and our blog friend Alex K realized that the image came from Rich’s poem Diving Into the Wreck.
Thank you all for your kind congratulations on finishing my book. I’m starting to dig out my office out now. I’ve been working on this new memoir ever since Fun Home came out six years ago. So a lot of matter has accumulated. Not just related to the book itself, like this pile of drafts and sketches.
But all kinds of other detritus like a camcorder that died four years ago with a cassette still inside it. I couldn’t bring myself to throw a $500 object away, but fixing it would cost hundreds more. Plus I had to get the tape out. So today I took a screwdriver to it. It was not as satisfying an experience as I had hoped. Plus I cut my finger.
The disorganization has brought me to a standstill. To take any action I have to move something and there’s nowhere to put anything. I know it doesn’t look too bad in this photo, but it is.
But the most disorganizing thing is that my email is not working. I very wisely waited until I finished the book to upgrade my Mac to the new Lion OS, and switch from using their old synchronization service, MobileMe, to the new one—iCloud. Ever since I effected this “migration” on Friday morning, my new email is being sent to another galaxy, or into a black hole, or perhaps it has migrated to a parallel universe where it hasn’t been written yet, or has already become obsolete. Irksome as email can be, not having it is much worse. I feel completely unmoored. Even the Apple tech, with whom I spent three hours on the telephone, kept saying, “Weird.” He has now passed my problem along to “the engineers.”
I guess I’m coming online to tell you all this because I feel so offline.
I finished my book last night!
I finished writing it months ago, and the Advanced Reading Copy went out weeks ago. But I still had a million things to do before it was actually finished. Hundreds of little drawing corrections, plus new art for the title page and endpapers and the case of the book. It was a long, hard, isolated slog. And now I’m done.
Here is my cat’s latest favorite spot. We bought this rotisserie thing to make chicken with because Holly loves rotisserie chicken but you can never get happy rotisserie chicken. We took it out of the box and immediately the cat got on the box and she hasn’t left. This is unfortunate because we discovered that the rotisserie thing is damaged and we need to return it but we can’t because the cat is on it.
It’s 12 below zero this morning. I was just trying to heat up my frigid basement office with the space heater I’ve been using since 1987. I’m always a little nervous about this aging appliance and feel like I should probably replace it, but it works fine and so I don’t. But this morning I left the room for a couple minutes and when I came back the thing was in FLAMES. Flames and black smoke. I unplugged it and put it outside in the snow. Back in my office, noxious fumes and a scattering of black ash over everything.
Now I have lugged my computer upstairs, and set up a little office in the living room. I already have a drawing station here.
I’m very glad I did not burn my house down.