On my bookshelf: What It Is by Lynda Barry

The first in an informal series

Welcome to the first in a new, probably sporadic series On my bookshelf in which I plan to write about the books that have shaped me as an artist. I’ll open with a bit of my artist origin story, for context:

Growing up, my parents would take us to Mountain Bookshop in Sonora, California, and I would beeline to the back left corner of the store, where the comic books lived. My brothers and I accrued a vast collection, the core of which was Foxtrot, Garfield, The Far Side and Calvin & Hobbes. I loved getting lost in the Fox family’s long, lazy summers and Calvin’s imagined battles with alien creatures. I loved the dark, absurd jokes in The Far Side and Garfield’s adorable drollness.

At school, my teacher would send me home at the end of each week with a grocery bag full of drawings I’d made during class. I filled notebooks with my own comics and made dark, absurd Pokémon comic strips with my brother Nick. I took photographs of our menagerie of animals, made movies, wrote screenplays and published parody newspapers. I made art constantly, but it never, ever occurred to me that I might be an artist. It wasn’t even within the realm of possibility.

As I got into high school, I focused most of my energy on hating myself and art fell to the wayside.

In college, I bounced around and ended up an English major. Raised by two journalists, writing came naturally to me, although I didn’t know what I’d do with it. In my junior year, I took my first-ever art class just to fulfill a requirement. While being introduced to certain art supplies changed my life, I didn’t like anything I made for the class and got a B. Making art for an assignment felt arbitrary, and seeing everyone’s near-identical looking work felt deeply uninspiring.

But my creative practice took on a life of its own outside of class. I realized there were human artists behind all the books I loved growing up. I discovered graphic novels and learned that comics were an art form that went far beyond Garfield. I set out to become fluent in a new language, one that combined words and images.

Now, after more than decade of making art professionally and becoming an author myself, my foray into teaching has me reflecting on the books that have shaped my creative life. I want to write about them here, to express my love and appreciation for them, and to highlight the ways they’ve shaped my life and work.

Today I’ll start with the big kahuna.

What It Is by Lynda Barry

I was 19 or 20, sitting in the café at Powell’s in Portland, Oregon. I’d grabbed What It Is randomly, intrigued by the cover. What was inside astonished me and I read the book in one sitting.

What It Is was unlike anything I’d read before. Part memoir, part existential meditation on creativity, part pep-talk, the entire thing was written, painted, collaged, handwritten, typed, taped, and glued on yellow legal paper. There aren’t panels, formal paragraphs or cleanly delineated sections. The words are often sideways or upside down, so you must occasionally rotate the book to read it.

Time slows as your eyes wander across the rich, intricate pages, weighing words and images, synthesizing meaning with feeling. Her art was powerful beyond what I’d known was possible. In What It Is, Lynda Barry essentially argues, with lavishly illustrated poetry, that you should consider making lavishly illustrated poetry.

I was a creative writing major at the time, but I didn’t feel creative. I felt ambivalent about everything I wrote. I could never tell if my stories were any good, never felt like I knew why I was writing them to begin with. My writing felt like it could exist or not, and either way it wouldn’t matter to anyone, possibly even me.

Something shifted after I read that book. I began to acknowledge my own creativity as valid and worthy of expression.

At school, I started to submit illustrations with my fiction and poetry assignments. When I drew, I let go of logic long enough to allow other, more mysterious instincts to dictate the pen’s movement across the page. I gravitated towards certain colors, certain shapes, and the preference was often so strong I couldn’t question its validity. It was such a relief after years of doubt-plagued writing.

Through the rest of college, I drew constantly. I’d spread art supplies out on my bedroom floor, turn down the lights, put music on and disappear to a realm of intense focus and play. Then I’d come back to earth to check out what had shown up on the page. Lynda Barry helped me understand that perfection wasn’t the goal, and that thinking about art as “good” and “bad” was entirely missing the point.

Art showed me a pathway to my inner self, one I had frequented in childhood but abandoned in my transition to adulthood. Art was something to do with my hands. Art was a powerful communication tool. Art was a fun activity. Art made me feel alive. Art gave me a purpose, an identity, and a lens through which to view the world.

Some people thought my art was good. Some people definitely thought my art was bad, or at least weird. I’d get the occasional raised eyebrow, puzzled look, or backwards compliment. I still remember how scared most people looked when they’d ask me what my plans were after graduation and I said I wanted to make art.

I get it. I was terrified, too. I had no formal art education, and I’d only been pursuing art for a couple years. Yet I was telling people, with a straight face, that I wanted to pursue art after graduation.

Looking back now, I’m amazed. How was I able to muster such conviction?

Well, for one thing, I read What It Is.

Thanks for being here,

❤️ Hal

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PS: Want to learn from an artist with no formal art education? There are still spots available in the micro-memoir I’m teaching with Nadine Kenney Johnstone and Molly Wizenberg this fall!

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Notes:

• What It Is (get two copies, you’ll want to give it to everyone you know.)

• Follow Lynda Barry on Instagram

• Shop Lynda Barry’s other books

• Shop my books

• Shop my prints, gifts etc on Buy Olympia.

• A nice thing to do: adopt an NPR station.