Comics to Cut Through Everything
I was standing at my kitchen counter at some ungodly hour the other morning drinking coffee and reading One Hundred Demons (Sasquatch, $24.95), a collection of full-color autobiographical comic strips by Lynda Barry, and suddenly I was crying. It was the first time in my life a comic made me cry. What I have always loved about Barry is her perfect pitch for the pre-adolescent and adolescent voice: so exactly right, you can hear the echo of the old you and all those kids you used to know, still trapped in your head after all these years. Anyone who’s thinking of writing memoirs should read her for inspiration because she makes you see how getting the language right is the key to it all. Right behind Barry’s renditions of children’s voices is her tenderness toward their banged-up, bewildered young hearts. All of her work, including the horrifically amazing novel Cruddy, is one big rescue mission for those hearts, now still brokenly beating away in all of us. In One Hundred Demons the mission takes on new poignancy because she speaks directly about her own life, with baby Lyndas and grown-up Lyndas (all carrot-topped and covered with lice-like freckles) in every story, as well as Filipino mother and grandmother and bearded husband, too. It was when I finished the strip called “Dogs” that I started to cry, but the preceding “Magic Lanterns” and “Cicadas” were as much responsible. These tiny, simple stories, which are about security blankets, suicide, and canine obedience training, contain such pure sadness and clarity — yet have such an unexpected happy ending — that they cut through everything. To me, that is as much as any writer or artist can hope to do.This article appears in December 6 • 2002.