{"id":80358,"date":"2014-12-05T14:26:21","date_gmt":"2014-12-05T19:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=80358"},"modified":"2014-12-05T19:34:52","modified_gmt":"2014-12-06T00:34:52","slug":"staying-out-of-trouble-an-interview-with-julia-wertz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/05\/staying-out-of-trouble-an-interview-with-julia-wertz\/","title":{"rendered":"Staying Out of Trouble: An Interview with Julia Wertz"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

I met Julia Wertz at a slightly rundown family diner she\u2019d recommended deep in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. We drank coffee and ate waffles (hers, covered in bacon) and whole-wheat pancakes (mine, covered in syrup). We\u2019d talked briefly before, but always amid the clamor of comics conventions, where Wertz hustles hard to sell her books but does not relish being on display. Yet she has been putting her life online for nearly\u00a0a decade. Her new omnibus collection, <\/em>Museum of Mistakes<\/a>, brings together three volumes of her autobiographical Web series called <\/em>Fart Party, written between 2005 and 2010; miscellanea, such as hate mail and guest sketches; and a handful of previously unpublished stories, including one that delves into her past and how children process grief.<\/em><\/p>\n

As the cartoonist Tom Hart has noted, Wertz \u201cmakes self-destruction charming.\u201d In comics gloriously full of curses and insider jokes, she catalogs love found and lost, family dysfunction, and a risky cross-country move; she suffers low-wage service jobs and the publishing industry\u2019s rush after indie comics darlings. Though Wertz\u2019s frustration is often palpable (she occasionally imagines pulling people who annoy her limb from limb), she employs a kind of innocent visual style\u2014her figures are wide-eyed and jaunty\u2014and she\u2019s adept at developing a sense of intimacy between the reader and her antisocial persona on the page. In other words, she lets you in, then flips you off.<\/em><\/p>\n

Wertz has published two graphic memoirs since most of the comics in <\/em>Museum of Mistakes first appeared: <\/em>Drinking at the Movies (2010) and <\/em>The Infinite Wait and Other Stories (2012). The latter is partly concerned with her diagnosis with Lupus and the horrors of navigating the health care system as an uninsured artist. She also recently chronicled her journey to sobriety in an essay for Narratively<\/a> about comedy, depression, and addiction. A few years ago, she began documenting her urban-exploring exploits, posting haunting photographs of modern ruins on her site Adventure Bible School<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

This fall, Wertz made a much-anticipated return to publishing new online comics that, as Gary Panter puts it, \u201clook cute and nice, but they aren\u2019t.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

You\u2019re back to making daily diary comics after a two-year break. Why have you started again\u2014and why did you stop? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I stopped because I was sick of myself. I completed the The Infinite Wait<\/em> in only six months by drawing autobio comics sixteen hours a day. And before that, I had drawn comics every day, nonstop, for six years.<\/p>\n

Eleanor Davis took a year after she finished How to Be Happy<\/em> where she said, I\u2019m only going to draw what I want to draw, when I want to\u2014not what I need to for work, not what I think I should be working on. I used her example as justification, but I would have stopped anyway. I had planned to take a two-week<\/em> break, and then, two years later, I was just ready to start again. I had remembered why I liked drawing comics.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Wertz2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What was it like rediscovering your older work? You\u2019ve said, \u201cI drank my way through my first three books, and consequently, I think they\u2019re all garbage.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

Wow, I\u2019m so harsh. I\u2019ve been able to take enough time to appreciate these comics again. I realized that although I was an alcoholic when I made them, it doesn\u2019t mean they aren\u2019t good. Well, I don\u2019t know if I would say good<\/em>, but they\u2019re funny. I also tried at one point to ditch the name Fart Party<\/em>. I ended up reembracing it. Who fucking cares?<\/p>\n

The early stories were drawn when alcohol worked for me. I write about it in a celebratory way, but if you look back knowing what happened to me later, you see that it\u2019s excessive. I was also making an active choice during those years not to talk about the serious issues in my life, which were later covered in The Infinite Wait<\/em>. My brother\u2019s drug and alcohol addiction was slowly taking over my life, and I was sick. But in Fart Party<\/em>, only every once in a while is there a panel that says, Oh, my brother fell off the wagon and got the shit kicked out of him but here I am, eating a cookie.<\/p>\n

There is a striking scene in the saga in Fart Party<\/em> of your now ex-boyfriend Oliver. You come in to bed at night drunk and he pushes you off him\u2014he doesn\u2019t find it sexy. With hindsight, it\u2019s clear how your drinking was interrupting relationships. <\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s such a cute comic, and I thought that was funny when it first happened. Then it definitely happened more than just that one time. I put that poor guy through some ridiculous nonsense. You can\u2019t conduct adult relationships like that, being out at four-thirty in the morning and not returning phone calls. Who does that? Alcoholics do that.<\/p>\n

I love the comic your brother made, which is in Museum of Mistakes<\/em>, about your obsession with Guns N\u2019 Roses. It deals with a form of addiction, a subject you cycle back to throughout your work.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You see me going into a K-hole of Guns N\u2019 Roses videos, not going to school, not wanting to participate in my own life. My brother swooped in, took the videos away, and then he<\/em> started watching them. The pattern repeats itself later, when he had his addiction years and I swooped in to save him. That\u2019s been a constant narrative in our relationship. The comic is a funny piece about me liking hair metal, but it also says more about me than my own work does.<\/p>\n

\"p20\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What is your process? Do you keep a diary and draw from life? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I write out stories as they happen. I don\u2019t have the luxury of retrospect. Retrospect is what most memoirs are written from\u2014and that\u2019s good, because you want to see people grow\u2014but I prefer to create a narrative where I don\u2019t afford myself the grace of afterthought. It\u2019s embarrassing and raw. You have to watch me fuck up.<\/p>\n

The Infinite Wait<\/em> was the first story I wrote as a long-form script, but I pulled it from diary sketches. I did draw the stories of my childhood from memory, putting myself in the mind of a child rather than taking an adult perspective. I was selling golf balls, running off into the woods with my older brother and a dull pocketknife. We were on welfare when I was a kid, but I didn\u2019t know it. I don\u2019t attribute being poor to having a hard childhood. Rather, it forced my family to be together. If we went on vacation, we were all stuck together in my grandmother\u2019s motor home, because at that time gas was maybe seventy cents a gallon. There were problems I was unaware of until later, when my parents broke up. But the good times are ingrained in my memory, and I like to write about them. It may make it painful because it all went bad later, but it\u2019s that much more important to me to remember.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve said that you originally tried writing short stories, but once you started telling stories with drawings, the art did the editing for you. How did that work?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Throughout my childhood and high school, I wanted to be a writer, but I don\u2019t have the discipline to self-edit. I have good bones for storytelling, but I\u2019m too loquacious and go off on too many tangents. I also wanted to be an artist, but I didn\u2019t want to go to art class. I only wanted to draw what I<\/em> wanted to draw. So I never was a good artist, and I never was a good writer. But with comics, I realized I could put art and writing together, and the physical constraint of nine panels or four panels creates an editorial process.<\/p>\n

Within that framework, I look at a piece and ask myself what is absolutely essential\u2014what can I draw, and what do I have <\/em>to put in dialogue or words? Comics are minimal, so I can take three pages of writing and make a comic that\u2019s nine panels. By selecting only the essential words and sentences, I see what I don\u2019t need to talk about, where I don\u2019t need to draw upon a tangent\u2014I find all that matters.<\/p>\n

You tend to<\/strong>\"p9\"<\/a> disparage your skills, but in The Museum of Mistakes<\/em> you include juvenilia and process sketches, and I see how your drawing has evolved<\/strong>. Is your style deliberate?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

To paraphrase Charles Schultz, the simplest art form is the most effective. If you draw a simple face, readers can then project themselves into the story. In the early Peanuts<\/em>, the characters were more childlike. The more \u201cgrown-up\u201d versions are what most people know from the newspapers, but I prefer when they looked like kids. Similarly, in The Infinite Wait<\/em>, I refined my drawings. But it\u2019s like I decided to take it a little too seriously, for that book. In the comics I\u2019m posting now, I am going back to my cruder, cartoony style from the Fart Party<\/em> days. I\u2019m going to play it looser.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not a trained artist\u2014that\u2019s obvious. I can draw a good background, good buildings. It\u2019s people I don\u2019t like drawing.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s revealing!<\/strong><\/p>\n

I know, it\u2019s my temperament in life.<\/p>\n

The character Julia is so angry. I was a little afraid of you.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m a real bitch in my work. No one likes a happy-go-lucky character\u2014that\u2019s the character everyone wants to see destroyed. I portray and exaggerate the ugliest aspects of my personality. When I draw a comic where my eyes are bugging out, in real life I was mildly irritated at most. I build up an interaction in the story, and there\u2019s an invisible end panel that I don\u2019t draw, which is just me laughing at the situation. In real life, I\u2019m more even-keeled, though I do my best work when I\u2019m unhappy.<\/p>\n

\"p15\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You regularly draw yourself in isolation. But cities\u2014particularly New York and San Francisco\u2014feature prominently in your stories. How do you relate to being an artist alone in the social architecture of a city? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I have a conflicted relationship with the city. I do live an isolated life\u2014I live alone, I work alone, I travel alone. In my urban exploring I\u2019m going to places where humans no longer are\u2014that\u2019s the objective. But even when I don\u2019t want it, the city still provides human interaction. Even basic subway encounters force me to remember that I\u2019m a human being, that we\u2019re all here doing this together.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s \u201curban exploring\u201d? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I explore abandoned buildings, take photos of them, and go treasure hunting. I research and write up the history of the places, then weave in some autobio.<\/p>\n

There are five levels of urban exploring. I don\u2019t want to brag, but I\u2019m very good at what I do. There are places, like Farm Colony on Staten Island, where you can walk right through a hole in the fence. Then there are decaying hotels and resorts, with cops on patrol, and, on a higher level, depending on security and the state of the building, an abandoned hospital and asylums. The fourth level includes super illegal sites to enter, like military bases and the subway system. Last, there are \u201cworld traveler\u201d explorers\u2014usually professionals, like photographers for National Geographic<\/em>, who investigate places like Chernobyl and abandoned islands like Hashima in Japan.<\/p>\n

Do you go alone?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I go alone if I\u2019m familiar with the place. If I\u2019m not, I bring a friend, because I don\u2019t want to fall through the floor, and that\u2019s how I die, laying there with two broken legs.<\/p>\n

\"p1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You publish photos and documents you find. You unearth people\u2019s private lives. What is the legality of that and what are the ethical issues?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m holding onto a lot of paperwork, including patient files, from asylums. The institutions were supposed to destroy them when they abandoned the facilities. During the period of mass deinstitutionalization, from the sixties through the nineties, they considered files destroyed if they were sealed in the basement or the roof. But explorers get in there and discover people\u2019s stories. We find diaries and interviews. In terms of legal issues, it\u2019s trespassing and larceny. The ethical issues have to do with whether a patient has any living relatives. How much material can you publish and discuss without hurting family, without getting yourself in trouble?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m waiting to make some finds public. I\u2019m waiting for buildings to be torn down. I\u2019m also well versed in the statute of limitations for larceny and trespassing, so I\u2019m waiting those out, too.<\/p>\n

Are you searching for living family members? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I am hunting for the family of one patient who was institutionalized for homosexuality during World War II. He\u2019s a genius. I found twenty years of handwritten personal letters where he\u2019s writing to his mother, who is herself going into an institution. And she institutionalized him. The doctors talk about his IQ as a child, which was off the charts. In the documents, you see him go in an arrogant narcissist\u2014he\u2019s the worst, but I love him. He was totally functional, just gay. And he loses his mind completely over the years of being a smart person who\u2019s institutionalized. Then he tries to go back out into the world, and he can\u2019t function. He goes back to the hospital of his own accord. It\u2019s so painful to see him unravel.<\/p>\n

What compels you to share your own life?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s definitely not the money\u2014there is none\u2014and it\u2019s not for fame or praise. I like<\/em> doing it. I like talking about myself. It\u2019s fun to ink. It\u2019s fun to draw. It\u2019s fun to tell stories. It\u2019s a therapeutic process. When I cover something in a comic, it\u2019s already a little less painful as I\u2019m writing it. I can sit at home in my pajamas drawing and come to the same conclusions as I could by putting on pants, going to the city, and talking to a therapist. From a removed point of view, I look at myself on paper and identify behaviors that have to stop. I see patterns I can\u2019t see otherwise. I\u2019m learning about myself right along with the readers.<\/p>\n

Meg Lemke is a contributing editor at <\/em>MUTHA Magazine<\/a> and chairs the comics and graphic novel programming committee at the Brooklyn Book Festival<\/a>. You can find her online @meglemke and meglemke.tumblr.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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