{"id":41631,"date":"2012-11-12T10:42:31","date_gmt":"2012-11-12T15:42:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=41631"},"modified":"2013-01-30T14:02:33","modified_gmt":"2013-01-30T19:02:33","slug":"nimble-surrealism-talking-with-gabrielle-bell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/12\/nimble-surrealism-talking-with-gabrielle-bell\/","title":{"rendered":"Nimble Surrealism: Talking with Gabrielle Bell"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Whether delving into memorable personal stories or exemplifying a sort of nimble surrealism, Gabrielle Bell\u2019s comics are harder to classify than one might think. Reading her work chronologically, one can find her range expanding from sharp day-to-day observations to forays into the surreal and magic realist. The title story of the collection <\/em>Cecil and Jordan in New York follows a young woman who moves to the city and searches for an apartment and a purpose. It’s fairly kitchen sink in its realism, right up until the point where the protagonist matter-of-factly decides to become a chair. It\u2019s a dose of deadpan absurdism that opens up the storytelling possibilities, and keeps the reader on their toes.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Voyeurs is Bell\u2019s latest book, covering several years in her life, and taking her from promoting a film in Tokyo to finding a space for yoga in her Brooklyn apartment to San Diego for Comic-Con. Its introduction comes courtesy of Aaron Cometbus, whose long-running zine suggests certain parallels to Bell\u2019s deftly autobiographical work. We met at a bar near Bell\u2019s apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn\u2014a neighborhood that has provided the setting for much of her work.<\/em><\/p>\n

Lucky<\/strong><\/em> begins as a kind of slice-of-life documentation of your life. By the end of the first volume, though, it\u2019s become less overtly realistic and more expressionistic. When did you make that leap?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was towards the end of writing Lucky<\/em>, when I got to the point about Francophilia, when I talked about talking with Gerard Depardieu. That must have been the first time that I did that. Or maybe it was when I had this fantasy about being an art assistant, and the artist taking all my ideas. I think it must have been the Francophile story, when I was actually doing that. I think it may have come from pure boredom. My boyfriend at the time, Tony, we used to make up funny stories together, hypothetical things that we did together. Or that would happen together, if we took something to another level. It was also conversations with Tony, like that story \u201cThe Hole,\u201d where he goes into the hole\u2014that comes from a conversation. But I think that straight autobiographical work, it’s very problematic\u2014you can\u2019t really get too truthful.<\/p>\n

I was talking with a friend of mine who’s a comics reader and also reads Cometbus<\/em>, and The Voyeurs<\/em> came up. I think the Aaron Cometbus introduction to The Voyeurs<\/em> puts the book into a bit of a different context\u2014he\u2019s not necessarily a comics guy, but there is a kind of aesthetic that goes along with that. <\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve known Aaron for a long time. I think that he really inspired me with his zines\u2014I started doing minicomics in the vein of zines. There are things that I\u2019ve learned from him about writing. Not as much with drawing. He\u2019s also a comics fan.<\/p>\n

A lot of his work is known for being autobiographical, but he\u2019s also written work that\u2019s fiction. There\u2019s still that similarity to some of the fiction that you\u2019ve written.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s true. I may have picked up that kind of tone from him. Also, I used to change the names in my work. In Lucky<\/em>, I think all of the names are changed except for my own. It\u2019s kind of pretentious, but I was thinking of Jack Kerouac. Now that I think of it, I was also following Aaron, because he also does that. I knew him, and I knew his friends. I would try to figure out who was which friend. Because it was basically just straight autobiography, except for the names changed. When I did The Voyeurs<\/em>, I decided that it would make more sense to have everybody be who they were, so people wouldn\u2019t have to play that game.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of literary references in your work. In <\/strong>Cecil and Jordan in New York<\/strong><\/em>, you have a piece adapted from a Kate Chopin short story. Where did you get the idea to do that\u2014and to make it more contemporary?<\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

I think it was because it was so short, I knew I wouldn\u2019t have to leave much out. When I was younger, I was doing a lot of literary adaptations. My first book has some of them in there, too. I think I originally wanted to be a writer. Sometimes, I would read a story and wish that I wrote it, and that would be my way of feeling like I wrote it. But also, \u201cThis would make a good comic.\u201d And also, \u201cI can\u2019t think of a good story on my own.\u201d<\/p>\n

In The Voyeurs<\/em>, you wrote about seeing Lorrie Moore speak at a conference. And you did an event with Jami Attenberg at WORD a few months ago\u2014have you written fiction at all?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think I tried to, when I was young. But it never worked out. I mean, I tried a lot of things when I was young. The only thing that really worked out was comics. Originally, when I was a teenager, I really wanted to write. At this point, I think in terms of comics. So when I think of a story, I imagine in my head how I would draw it. The part of my brain that would write fiction has completely flatlined.<\/p>\n

In terms of your comics, are you still working on fictional work in addition to the more autobiographical pieces?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the past year, I\u2019ve just been working on The Voyeurs<\/em>\u2014coloring it and doing all the production and, recently, promoting it. And editing it. A lot of meetings with my publisher. It\u2019s a lot of work. So I didn\u2019t have a lot of time to work on my fictional work. I am working on a graphic novel. But it\u2019s been shelved for a while. I\u2019m finally getting back to work on it. It\u2019s … semi-autobiographical. I changed all the names and I took liberties with what happened. I made up things that I didn\u2019t know. I think out of my life, I\u2019m always trying to write fiction, and I just do autobiography because… It doesn\u2019t come easily or naturally, actually. But it\u2019s less difficult.<\/p>\n

In The Voyeurs<\/em>, you talk about reading Blake Bailey\u2019s John Cheever biography. Is most of what you\u2019re reading nonfiction or fiction?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My reading is kind of haphazard. I\u2019ll read all of the fiction in The New Yorker<\/em>. I keep rereading Alice Munro. I can\u2019t get over Alice Munro\u2014I\u2019m stuck on her. Like on some sort of loop. I\u2019ll keep rereading it. I\u2019m just glad there\u2019s a new book of hers coming out soon! I\u2019m so tired of rereading her entire body of work. But then, I just discovered that this one book of hers that I had forgotten that I hadn\u2019t finished.<\/p>\n

The Voyeurs<\/strong><\/em> opens with a prologue that sets up the theme of voyeurism, but there\u2019s also a sense of a lot of your life throughout the book. Is that done to implicate the reader in voyeurism? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if it was quite so calculated. I do notice that, throughout the whole book, there was a lot of looking through peepholes, looking through windows, looking in at things from outside, or looking out at things from inside. Like when I\u2019m peeping out the door, or when me and Tony are looking out the window at all the people at San Diego Comic-Con. That feeling of outsiders looking in. Whether it\u2019s a salacious thing… I think there\u2019s a sort of shame to it, but there\u2019s this feeling of envy or left-out. Or objectivity, in a way\u2014how you can look at a thing. But there\u2019s also, when they\u2019re looking in at the party\u2014the John Cheever thing.<\/p>\n

By the time we reach the period described in The Voyeurs<\/em>, the fact that you keep and publish your journals has become a plot point. At what point does your work begin to become its own reference point?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There needs to be that reason\u2014if you draw a self-portrait, are you going to draw a picture of yourself sitting there with your hands on your lap, or are you going to draw a picture of yourself with your paper and your pencil and your hand? I don\u2019t know, because it does seem very self-referential. My friend Tony advises a lot on my work, and he\u2019s always telling me to leave that stuff out. And maybe he\u2019s right, but I keep getting compelled to do it. Something about it feels honest and richer. But I do feel kind of weird about it, too.<\/p>\n

I think it feels like a presence\u2014if you\u2019re writing about yourself, that is a part of your body of work. It feels like an organic part of the whole.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But at the same time, there are so many things that I leave out. So why should I put that in? I don\u2019t know why.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of comics people mentioned in The Voyeurs<\/em>, but there are also a lot of other artists as well. There\u2019s a question of your work relating to other people\u2019s work, whether it\u2019s you at a fiction conference or the scenes depicting press junkets in Tokyo. Is that a question that you think about a lot?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah. As a cartoonist, there\u2019s a certain inferiority complex. There\u2019s a whole thing about the graphic novel\u2014there\u2019s Maus<\/em>, but it hasn\u2019t really gotten a solid foothold in the arts. It\u2019s got not much of a foothold. And with that comes a kind of inferiority complex, even though\u2014if comics aren\u2019t art, I don\u2019t know what is. It\u2019s a very young art. With the Tokyo junket, I was the sort of girlfriend who did comics, which were not as important as movies. And with fiction\u2014that was the Rain Taxi <\/em>festival\u2014there\u2019s some kind of feeling that comics are less important than fiction. Which is probably true, because fiction is much more established. And then there\u2019s my own personal inferiority complex.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve been making comics for a while now. Do you think that it\u2019s gotten better?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s gotten better. Much better. But it\u2019s hard to say. I\u2019ve been doing comics for so long, and I myself have changed so much. I remember when I first started, there were so few women doing it, for one thing. And there was this attitude about it\u2014it was much more insular. Nowadays, there are so many classes\u2014it\u2019s really accepted at the university. Then, it was an outsider thing. But in that outsider thing, it was kind of an elite thing\u2014\u201cThe masses don\u2019t understand, so we\u2019re just going to do our own thing!\u201d kind of thing. It\u2019s hard to say what\u2019s changed, given that I\u2019ve changed so much myself. But it seems like the standards of comics have gone down a lot. The drawing standards and the writing standards. Maybe I could get in trouble for saying this, but\u2014the standards going down has also made it an art form that can be condescended to, or isn\u2019t taken as seriously.<\/p>\n

That said, Building Stories<\/em> is really great.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whether delving into memorable personal stories or exemplifying a sort of nimble surrealism, Gabrielle Bell\u2019s comics are harder to classify than one might think. Reading her work chronologically, one can find her range expanding from sharp day-to-day observations to forays into the surreal and magic realist. The title story of the collection Cecil and Jordan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":438,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[907],"tags":[9187,262,35,131,8500,5127,9189,1810,9188,6437,8499,1947],"class_list":["post-41631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-work","tag-aaron-cometbus","tag-alice-munro","tag-art","tag-comics","tag-gabrielle-bell","tag-jack-kerouac","tag-jami-attenberg","tag-john-cheever","tag-kate-chopin","tag-lorrie-moore","tag-the-voyeurs","tag-tokyo"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNimble Surrealism: Talking with Gabrielle Bell by Tobias Carroll<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"November 12, 2012 \u2013 Whether delving into memorable personal stories or exemplifying a sort of nimble surrealism, Gabrielle Bell\u2019s comics are harder to classify than one might\" \/>\n<meta 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