People
Ben Katchor
Picture-story writer Ben Katchor on the process of writing a surreal libretto, working from the couch, supervising ballerinas, and how to get lost in New York.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Ben Katchor is the author of many books, including Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer, and has regular picture-stories in Metropolis and the Forward. (There was also a gorgeous spread accompanying an Ian Frazier story, ‘Bags in Trees: A Retrospective,’ in this week’s New Yorker.) His tragicomedy with Mark Mulcahy, The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island, or, The Friends of Dr. Rushower, will open at The Kitchen in March.
Name, Era of birth: Ben Katchor, Postwar America.
Occupation title(s), both real and desired-in-another-lifetime: Picture-story writer, ballet master, waiter, chauffeur.
Can you give us a few hints on what’s to come with The Slug Bearers, and perhaps what it’s like to write a surreal libretto? The sometimes very exact and witty style of your writing for the books and drawings doesn’t seem suited to a libretto’s more typical lyricism… Does Slug Bearers (or music theater) draw on different writing muscles? A different frame of mind?
It’s a sung-through pop musical by Mark Mulcahy, text and projected scenic design by me. The story is very much rooted in this world. The text does not have to be lyrical, that’s the function of the composer: to reveal the music of human speech. I wrote the text for Slug Bearers as I would a strip, keeping in mind the sound of the prose and the images that would accompany the sounds. Unlike a strip, the narrative moves straight from beginning to end without the possibility of literally looking back.
Have you seen the contenders for the WTC memorial? Did any strike a chord with you, or look right in your mind in their responses? Do you feel a personal investment in how the competition and building processes turn out?
The whole city is a memorial site to me. An unobtrusive plaque on the side of a building is enough.
Favorite books: Johnson, Smith catalog 1929; Chicago Red Book (classified telephone directory) 1960.
As a picture story writer, your books and strips seem to have so many novelesque qualities, that the dialogue is taut and strange and moving, and has some seed for action, as dialogue in good novels do, but the pictures have so many more wonderful loose ends, perhaps standing in place for the (non-picture) writer’s paragraphs of description, setting mood by showing details, suggesting other things. Are the two processes merged in your mind and practice—the writing and the drawing—or do they happen separately? Does inspiration come first in one or the other?
The abstract word and concrete image are at two ends of the continuum of meaning. I write first with words because they’re easier to juggle and I can work with them lying on a couch. As I begin to draw, the text is edited in light of what’s better shown than described.
Heroes: None. I don’t want to encourage hero-worship.
What makes you laugh: Laurel and Hardy two-reelers.
You said in your ArtKrush interview that your love for Spider-Man and Doctor Strange (I’m paraphrasing here) helped inspire you to become an artist—were there any authors who inspired your writing? Books that lit the way, perhaps even now that get you excited again?
Nabokov, E.H. Gombrich, William James, Henry Mayhew, Saul Steinberg, Edward Gorey, Poussin, Rembrandt.
Do you have any spots in New York you visit simply to disappear or escape to? The subway system.
Five words that sound great: leydikgeyer, farblondzhet, goupl, lokshn, rozhinkes.
Charity worth giving to: The IRS.
Name, Era of birth: Ben Katchor, Postwar America.
Occupation title(s), both real and desired-in-another-lifetime: Picture-story writer, ballet master, waiter, chauffeur.
Can you give us a few hints on what’s to come with The Slug Bearers, and perhaps what it’s like to write a surreal libretto? The sometimes very exact and witty style of your writing for the books and drawings doesn’t seem suited to a libretto’s more typical lyricism… Does Slug Bearers (or music theater) draw on different writing muscles? A different frame of mind?
It’s a sung-through pop musical by Mark Mulcahy, text and projected scenic design by me. The story is very much rooted in this world. The text does not have to be lyrical, that’s the function of the composer: to reveal the music of human speech. I wrote the text for Slug Bearers as I would a strip, keeping in mind the sound of the prose and the images that would accompany the sounds. Unlike a strip, the narrative moves straight from beginning to end without the possibility of literally looking back.
Have you seen the contenders for the WTC memorial? Did any strike a chord with you, or look right in your mind in their responses? Do you feel a personal investment in how the competition and building processes turn out?
The whole city is a memorial site to me. An unobtrusive plaque on the side of a building is enough.
Favorite books: Johnson, Smith catalog 1929; Chicago Red Book (classified telephone directory) 1960.
As a picture story writer, your books and strips seem to have so many novelesque qualities, that the dialogue is taut and strange and moving, and has some seed for action, as dialogue in good novels do, but the pictures have so many more wonderful loose ends, perhaps standing in place for the (non-picture) writer’s paragraphs of description, setting mood by showing details, suggesting other things. Are the two processes merged in your mind and practice—the writing and the drawing—or do they happen separately? Does inspiration come first in one or the other?
The abstract word and concrete image are at two ends of the continuum of meaning. I write first with words because they’re easier to juggle and I can work with them lying on a couch. As I begin to draw, the text is edited in light of what’s better shown than described.
Heroes: None. I don’t want to encourage hero-worship.
What makes you laugh: Laurel and Hardy two-reelers.
You said in your ArtKrush interview that your love for Spider-Man and Doctor Strange (I’m paraphrasing here) helped inspire you to become an artist—were there any authors who inspired your writing? Books that lit the way, perhaps even now that get you excited again?
Nabokov, E.H. Gombrich, William James, Henry Mayhew, Saul Steinberg, Edward Gorey, Poussin, Rembrandt.
Do you have any spots in New York you visit simply to disappear or escape to? The subway system.
Five words that sound great: leydikgeyer, farblondzhet, goupl, lokshn, rozhinkes.
Charity worth giving to: The IRS.
—Published January 8, 2004
