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February 18, 2003
A mighty force: Portrait from a teen’s point of view
By NANCY REDWINE
Sentinel staff writer
When Phoebe Gloeckner showed up to teach Drawing 1 at the local community college in Long Island, N.Y., she was surprised to find that anyone knew who she was.
One of the most challenging and controversial cartoonists of the decade — creator of 1998’s "A Child’s Life and Other Stories," and the new "The Diary of a Teenage Girl" — Gloeckner’s work talks about things most people don’t go looking for in a comic book store: rape, drug addiction, sexual exploitation, and the desperation of neglected children.
"Phoebe’s book is the perfect example of how the comic medium is reaching out to the non-traditional comic book reader," said Joe Ferrara, owner of Atlantis Fantasyland, where Gloeckner reads from her new book at 4 p.m. Wednesday.
"Her audience is not people who, as a rule, would buy a comic."
Despite the commonly held idea that comic books are for kids, "The Diary of a Teenage Girl" is neither for kids, nor is it pure comic book.
"I did a combination of text and comics because it’s always frustrated me that purely graphic novels can be read so quickly," Gloeckner said.
"I wanted it to take longer to read this book, and to play with the juxtaposition of different visual and writing styles."
Based on Gloeckner’s diaries of her late ’70s adolescence in San Francisco, the book swings between playful and painful. Finely crafted cartoons that range from documentary to fantastic to graphic lead the reader through the diary and give flesh to the unfolding story.
The book opens with the largely neglected Minnie (Gloeckner’s alter-ego) being seduced into a tortuous sexual relationship with her alcoholic, drug-addicted mother’s boyfriend, Monroe.
Not knowing what’s acceptable behavior and what’s not, she’s swept away by his affection and her newly-awakened sexuality. She writes in her diary:
I have a little feeling that I’m doing something wrong. I can’t look at myself objectively. I want someone to say, ‘Minnie, you shouldn’t do that,’ even though I know it’s my business and no one else is interested. I want someone to care enough to say more than just ‘It’s up to you what you do with your life.’
The story of Minnie and Monroe is the central narrative of the story, with the rest — anonymous sex, near-abduction, rape, heavy drug use — spinning out of control. Some of the most compelling cartooning in the book are the stories of the dangerous sexual exploration Minnie pursues with her friend, Kimmie and her first lesbian lover, Tabatha.
But the life of Minnie is not a morality tale about the repercussions of child neglect, or the libertine nature of the "sex and drugs and rock and roll" ’70s.
What sets Gloeckner’s work apart from a plethora of "survivor" stories is that Minnie is never portrayed as a victim.
While the book is populated with oblivious and opportunistic adults, including the concerned step-father who turns out to be bedding Minnie’s former schoolmate, our heroine is an unstoppable and intelligent force.
I feel so warm. My body seems to have an overwhelming presence — I can move it any way and it moves of its own accord. My mind has no say right now in the actions of my body...I have so much energy. It’s literally coming off my body as steam. I am always hot and my heart is always pounding faster than is usual.
"The character Minnie — even though we could look and say bad things are happening to her and that people are doing bad things to her — takes great joy in life," Gloeckner said.
"She feels things very strongly, joy and sadness (which she feels a lot of) but she’s always able to bounce back and get a renewed curiosity about things."
Though there is much in "The Diary of a Teenage Girl" that could be instructive and entertaining to actual teenage girls — Minnie is precociously profound — the stories are so graphic the book is being marketed to an older market.
"These are sophisticated stories," said Ferrara.
"They’re aimed at a more sophisticated reader, though in this town you’re going to have occasional exceptions."
According to Gloeckner, her audiences span an age range from 20 on up.
"But I feel like if I was 16, the book would be fine for me to read," she said.
It is not so much the subject matter of Gloeckner’s work (while many still flinch at frank discussion of adolescent sex) that has made it controversial, but the explicit nature of her drawings.
In 2000, "A Child’s Life," along with a book by legendary cartoonist Art Crumb, was confiscated by British custom officials and charged with pornography. That charge was overturned in court, but a similar charge in France stuck.
Recently an invitation to speak at an alternative school was revoked when the principal caught sight of "A Child’s Life," which he compared to Hustler magazine.
One story in that book depicts Minnie on her knees in the laundry room of an apartment building. Weeping, she is about to perform oral sex on her step-father. She grips a wine bottle whose label reads "The kind of good cheap California wine that makes girls cry and perform oral sex on jerks."
"The problems have been due to people responding to images out of context," she said.
"It was obvious that people didn’t read the book. The principal would have seen that what I do is the opposite of what Hustler magazine does."
While controversy sells books, Gloeckner mourned the loss of opportunity to reach out to a high school audience.
"I was really excited about that invitation because I felt that I could really inspire these kids," she said.
"I’m an perfect example of a circuitous route getting you to a better place than the direct route that you’re told you must follow. My life has been the result of finding my own way, and not giving up."
If Minnie’s life is any indication (Gloeckner deflects questions about just how autobiographical the book is with "All art is autobiographical"), the cartoonist did miserably in high school.
Yet the alter-ego of the girl who explains how the speed of light works in her diary and hangs out at the California Academy of Sciences on weekends, went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in art and biology from San Francisco State University, and a master’s in biomedical communication from the University of Texas Medical Center in Dallas.
"My grandmother was a doctor," she explained.
"I used to sit in her waiting room, where instead of Women’s Day magazines, she kept her medical journals. Most people don’t relish looking at that stuff. But I would sit, filled with revulsion, and look at these pictures of surgery. I loved it."
Gloeckner now earns her living as a medical illustrator. She laughs when asked what kind of illustrations she tends to draw.
"One thing leads to another and you get pulled in certain directions by circumstances," she said, explaining her work with a pharmaceutical company that was developing a delivery system for a medication, like Viagra, to treat erectile dysfunction. After that she was hired to work on the "Encyclopedia of Unusual Sexual Practices," and recently completed illustrations for the new "Good Vibrations Guide to Sex."
"There are medical illustrations in there," she said. "As well as people — ‘sensitively rendered’ — having sex."
Gloeckner is also working on another novel, as well as occasional comics for publications like Comics Journal, the L.A. Weekly, and Poetry Journal, where she recently did a comic illustration of a poem by Bay Area poet, Kevin Killian.
Her comics, which treat a range of subjects from homelessness to consumer culture to feminism, all draw the personal within the political.
"The things I write about or draw about are things that confuse or anger or excite me in some way," she said.
According to Ferrara, the use of comics to represent the complexities of real life is becoming a major genre.
"We have a ‘slice of life’ section in the store that includes work like ‘Pedro and Me: Friendship, Loss and What I Learned’ by Judd Winick, the "Strangers in Paradise" series Terry Moore, and Gloeckner’s work," he said.
"This is work that hits you on a visceral level. Like ‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl,’ it takes you to a point where you’re so uncomfortable that you start questioning what you previous thought was true."
Atlantis Fantasyworld is at 1020 Cedar St., downtown Santa Cruz. The event is free.
Contact Nancy Redwine atnredwine@santa-cruz.com.
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