Talking "Stitches" with David Small

[Hogan's Alley]

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Dear fellow comics fan:

As we work feverishly on Hogan’s Alley #17, it occurred to us that we
haven’t sent out an e-mail newsletter in some time. And what better
time to send one: We recently had a very interesting conversation with
venerable book illustrator David Small, and we want to share it with
you. If you’ve been hearing the buzz about “Stitches,” the new graphic
novel from David Small, we can assure you it’s justified. It’s an
autobiographical story in which Small looks at his harrowing
childhood, his withholding parents, and the physical and emotional
traumas that he endured and, ultimately, overcame. It’s only
September, but this book is the best graphic novel of the year and is
surely one of the very best of the decade. We spoke with the Caldecott
Medal-winning Small about his book (available from online and brick-
and-mortar retailers beginning Sept. 8) and why he decided to tell his
deeply personal story in graphic novel form.

Hogan’s Alley: What led you to decide to write this story?
David Small: I realized I had been alive for over half a century and
was having dreams and behaving in ways that showed me that I was--on
some level--still a troubled young man. Hiring a shrink was out of the
question; they don’t have them out here on the prairie where we live.
I decided I had to help myself.

HA: How long had you been considering telling your story?
DS: I had been trying to write a prose memoir for at least 10 years,
but it was going awkwardly. Then, one night in Paris, an illustrator
friend showed me some books by Nicholas DeCrecy, Sylvain Chomet,
Blutch and other members of the bande desineé. I realized that, in
Europe, book art had been breaking new ground for quite a while. That
was my stimulus. After that experience in Paris, I began to play with
the idea of trying a graphic. We came home that winter and I began a
new routine: I would work in my studio all day, as usual, on picture
books, then come home, make a martini, and work on the graphic memoir.
The material came in a torrent. Drawing had broken the locks on my
memory. I found that I could recall things much more clearly--and in
more detail--when I was released from the need to describe things in
words.

I developed a technique for recall: If I could envision one thing in a
room--a lamp, for example--generally I could see the table on which
the lamp was resting, the carpet pattern beneath the table, and so on.
Gradually, in this way, I reconstructed my entire family home. Then,
when the rooms were ready for them, the ghosts came in and began
reenacting their lives.

HA: Writing the book surely forced you to confront some very painful
memories. Were there any times when you felt it was becoming too
difficult to pursue?
DS: When my family began to appear on the paper, when I could see
their expressions, their postures, hear their voices, feel them around
me once more, it seemed like a foolish, possibly even dangerous thing
to be doing. I had spent most of my life trying to avoid anything or
anyone who reminded me of my early home life. Now, here I was
obsessing on it and recalling it in detail. At the same time, there
was a thrilling sense in the recollection. I was amazed, day after
day, by the files that existed, how crammed full they were, and also
how available they were in the brain. DeQuincy said the memory
improves the more you lay burdens on it. He was right. And another
thing: The act of drawing my family--of seeing them again--made me
less afraid of them. It allowed me to see them as human beings, which
is a kind of forgiveness, maybe the only kind that has any real value
for me.

HA: You're perhaps best known for your children's book illustration.
What were the challenges involved in approaching a longer form of
storytelling? How different are the challenges of, say, children's
book illustration versus graphic novel illustration?
DS: Picture books, like poetry, demand economy and precision. You
learn to say a lot with very little, and in a short amount of time.
The graphic form offered me a new freedom, and at first I went wild
with it. Not being bound by page length, and to have the reins lifted
on content and language, was exhilarating. But this break for freedom
nearly led me to a catastrophe; I went off into too many directions.
That freedom, which at first had seemed a virtue, was suddenly a
negative quality. My creativity has always flourished within limits.

My agent gave those limits back to me. Holly McGhee, my literary
agent, is also a writer and editor. She went through at least 12
drafts of “Stitches” with me before we sold it. She reminded me that
books have structure and themes. Because my life was chaotic and
followed no obvious thematic pathways, I had forgotten these simple
facts. Holly--when she saw how scattered I had become--also started
giving me strict deadlines, which I needed.

This led to the hardest part of making the book, giving it a
structure. I wanted to tell the truth, but I found that this was going
to be difficult if I adhered to a strict chronology of events. I also
had to cut out some of the people who seemed important in my life
because they weren’t necessarily important to this story. To
understand the difficulty, try putting your own life into term paper
outline form. I can guarantee this will seem like an absurd activity,
and a false one, firstly because memories aren’t chronological, and
secondly because of the editing you’ll have to do on your own life.
For example, unless your beloved Uncle Joe furthers the story, you
have to cut him out.

Art is all about giving shape to life’s disarray, which is the idea at
the source of Picasso’s famous line, “Art is a lie which tells the
truth.” You never see that more clearly than when trying to write your
autobiography.

HA: Twelve rounds of revisions. Wow! How did each revision alter the
work? Were the revisions all focused on narrative structure and
focusing the work?
DS: After I began reworking the book into picture form, the earliest
versions were just chunks of memories with no sequence. I kept sending
piles of photocopied drawings to my agent, hoping she would find some
thread between them, because I couldn't. Holly couldn’t, either. That
is, she might have found it, but that was my job, and she wasn’t going
to do it for me.

Actually, I now think I was afraid, at that time, to make a story out
of my young life. If I organized it, put it in order, gave it shape,
then I wouldn’t have it anymore. I was, to some extent, comfortable
with those old anxieties. They were my mental landscaping. Holly says
she felt I was doing research in a graphic form, and that it was her
job to get all this stuff, look at it, and then tell me what a great
job I was doing so I would continue. She reminds me that several times
things came back to her office and I would have left out her favorite
part. Then she had to tell me to put it back in.

This happened with the “Alice" sequence, which eventually became a key
scene in the book. When I first sent it to Holly, I hadn’t developed
it far enough. When I cut it out it was because I felt it was trivial
and, frankly, embarrassing. Then, after she insisted it was one of her
favorite scenes, I found that by pushing it, by exploring it more
deeply, by finding out what, specifically, was so embarrassing about
it, it became central.

I think of Holly as the midwife on this book. I was lucky I was to
have that kind of firm, steady support. With something as emotional
and confusing as a memoir, I can’t imagine doing it alone. It was Bob
Weil, my editor at Norton, who finally helped shape the book, and he
did it not so much by contributing specific ideas as by insisting that
I shut my door, stop showing the book around to everyone who came in
the studio, and do it myself. He was strict about this, but he also
had a lovely and poetic way of saying it. “David," he said, "be the
cormorant who dives beneath the skin of the sea and comes up with a
treasure of fish!” Also, to be blunt about it, being under contract
and having a deadline was what finally made me focus and shape my own
book. You see, again, it’s a lot about parameters, limits,
restrictions. These are all good things.

HA: Have you been a fan of the graphic novel format?
DS: No. Before Paris I never considered it as a form I’d want to work
in. With only a few exceptions, the graphic novels I had seen held no
interest for me.

HA: What are some graphic novels and creators you've enjoyed?
DS: I’ve followed R. Crumb since the ’60s, when I used to comb the
local stores for the latest issue of Zap Comix. I admired Spiegelman’s
Maus and was astounded by Chris Ware’s art. But none of these artists
had anything in common with me stylistically. As you can see, I wasn’t
much aware of what was going on. While I worked on “Stitches,” I
scrupulously avoided looking at any other books. Even those French
works, after a first glance, I put aside. I didn’t want to be
influenced or--more importantly--made to feel inadequate. People gave
me many books, but I shelved them. I did watch a lot of movies. I went
back and studied the movies that have affected and influenced me the
most: Cries and Whispers, Persona, L’Aventurra, L’Eclisse, Rosemary’s
Baby, Repulsion, Psycho, Strangers On A Train, Tristana, and Belle de
Jour. These are all films I have seen multiple times each and which
never cease to teach me something new. Now that my book is finished, I
look at everything, but I still find very few graphic novels where I
feel both the story and the pictures work equally well together. But
here are some: Blue Pills, by Frederick Peeters; Notes for a War
Story, by Gipi; White Rapids, by Pascal Blanchet; Blankets, by Craig
Thompson; and The Rabbi’s Cat, by Joann Sfar. Something I just read,
which made my jaw drop to the floor, is Winchluss’s Pinocchio. It got
the Best New Comic Prize last year at Angouleme. I read it in French.
When it gets translated, it’s going to blow everyone away over here.
Still, as you can see, even among the Europeans, my list is, so far,
very short.

A good question might be why I continue to like mainly books by
Europeans. The answer, I think, has to do with figure drawing, which
the American art schools pretty much dropped-kicked out of the
curriculum back in the ’60s and the lack of which has crippled many
young artists--even the ones who are highly visually driven--by taking
away one of their most potent means of self-expression.

HA: I'd be curious to know if you've shown the book to your brother,
who is also depicted in the book. If so, what was his reaction to the
story?
DS: Ted and I had had a very difficult relationship over decades. We
rarely spoke and, when we did, there was always tension and acrimony.
Bob Weil made me show the book to him. Weil didn’t want another memoir
publishing scandal to occur, not to his company and certainly not on
his watch. He had to know if there was anyone still living who might
claim that my book was all lies. When I told him my brother was alive,
Bob insisted that we show the book to him, even in its unfinished
state. I had told my brother I was doing the book; because he’s in it,
I didn’t want to just spring it on him. I had also assured him that it
wasn’t about him. I felt I had no right to write about his life.

After we sent him a copy of the A.R.C. [advance readers copy], I gave
him four days before I called him up. He immediately said the book had
blown him away, that it was like a snapshot of his own youth. He
wanted to show it to his therapist, to his sons. It was as if a dam of
intense good feelings had burst. Four months later-- mirabile dictu--
he came to see us and stayed four days. We laughed, cried, reminisced,
and got to know one another again after a lifetime. All that distance
and defensiveness for all those years was simply about both of us not
wanting to be reminded of our early home life. We were both angry at
our parents and, in trying to push them out of our lives, had pushed
each other away. “Stitches” has helped both of us see our parents and
their situation, to understand them as human beings and to realize
that he and I were not responsible for--and should quit feeling guilty
about--anything that happened back then. If nothing else happens with
this book, it will have been worth doing it for that alone.

HA: Has creating “Stitches” whetted your appetite for future work in
the graphic novel format?
DS: A big, enthusiastic “Yes!” I really look forward to doing another
one, and I have some ideas, though I don’t want to talk about them
prematurely. It’s an exciting form, but also it’s a hell of a lot of
hard work. I would hate doing a graphic novel for which I didn’t have
the same passion and personal involvement I had with “Stitches.” So,
no matter what happens, I won’t be the cormorant plunging back into
that sea, unless I know there is a treasure of fish--meaning creative
fulfillment--to be found there.
______________________________________________

This will undoubtedly not be the last you hear of “Stitches.” Not only
do we predict that it will rack up awards and critical acclaim, but
several movie studios have expressed interest in making David Small’s
remarkable story into a movie. You can order your own copy of
“Stitches” at a discount here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0393068579/?tag=hogansalleyma-20, and we are
very happy to share some of Small’s pencil roughs, including an
unpublished sequence, from “Stitches” here:
http://www.cagle.com/hogan/newsletter_extras/david_small/david_small.asp.

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