Lies Like Truth
My friend Nicholas Delbanco, the highly praised novelist and head of the creative writing program at the University of Michigan, once said in essence that autobiography is fiction disguised as the truth, and the novel is the truth disguised as fiction. So what's with the spate of writers lately churning out "autobiography" they've invented wholecloth? The latest is a quintessential white valley girl, graduate of Campbell Hall prep school in Los Angeles, who faked the autobiography of a half-native American girl's experiences as a foster child growing up with gangs in the ghetto. The literati are beating their breasts about how this could happen, and why publishers aren't vetting these books better. The reality is that novels don't make money. Publishers can do much better with tell-alls, the more lurid the better, so they'd prefer to look the other way. I have it on good authority that Mark Twain never got anywhere nearer to the Mississippi River than Hoboken.
posted by John M Crowther @ 7:50 AM
7 Comments:
And I have it on equally good authority that either Jeremy is shrinking or else those cops are giants.
Great cartoon John! roger
Thanks, Roger!
Mark, it's the metaphorical aspect of cartooning that potentially elevates it to a level of greatness rivalling that of Courbet and David. To a small child policemen are giants, especially when they come to the front door, and it renders the child even smaller than he is, something I took great pains to reflect in my opus. I'm not surprised that this was perceived by someone such as yourself, even if your name is bogus.
Big or small, Jeremy is still the funniest and best of all.
Yes, it’s true that as an artist you have every right to show the world through the eyes of a child. That’s called poetic license and back in Old Missouri that’d cost you about as much as one for my dog. Sure my name is bogus, nom de plume, nom de guerre, but what about John Crowther? Do you really believe the public is so gullible that they’d believe that there is really such a person? My birth name is Sam. Fess up, what’s yours?
Gosh... I wonder who has time enough on their hands to measure the precise height of cartoon characters? Not Mark Twain that's for sure! LOL It sure is a tough crowd out there!
My dear Jean, one doesn’t need a ruler to measure that child’s height. With a blink of the two good eyes the Lord has given me I can instantly ascertain that there is something distinctly unusual about that boy: he seems to have the super human ability to grow smaller or taller, older or younger from drawing to drawing. By the way, I do not argue with Mr. Crowther’s right to own an artistic license and use it creatively anymore than I would deny a marriage license to any two humans, whatever their proclivities, who wish to obtain one. My observations are not intended as artistic criticism. I am not qualified to do that
Post a Comment
<< Home