“Catalog of an Impossible Library”: A Conversation with David B.
2016; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 90; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/wlt.2016.0067
ISSN1945-8134
Autores Tópico(s)Comics and Graphic Narratives
Resumo40 WLT MARCH / APRIL 2016 B orn in 1959, David B. (B. is short for Beauchard) began working in comics and illustration around 1985. In 1990, with a group of six other artists, he cofounded L’Association, the most influential publisher of independent comics in France. David B.’s elegant, austere aesthetics have influenced that publisher’s distinctive trade dress and design sensibility to the present day, and he is also responsible for mentoring Marjane Satrapi in the development of L’Association’s most successful book, the international best-seller Persepolis. As an artist, he is best known for his acclaimed autobiographical comic Epileptic , published serially in France from 1996 to 2003, about his family’s struggle surrounding his brother’s epilepsy and David’s development as an artist. This was his first book-length work to be translated into English (the first half appeared in 2002 from Fantagraphics, and the complete work was published as a single volume by Pantheon in 2005). Since then, a number of his books have been translated into English , including Babel, Incidents in the Night, and Best of Enemies. I first became familiar with David B.’s work when I encountered “The Armed Garden” in Mome magazine in 2005 and was amazed by both the distinctiveness of the art and the quality of the narration. From there I went back and read my way through his work and since then have cotranslated , with my daughter, Sarah, the cover feature international comics Catalog of an Impossible Library” A Conversation with David B. by Brian Evenson “ WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 41 first two volumes of Incidents in the Night (Uncivilized Books, 2013 and 2015). Brian Evenson: People have often spoken of your distinctive artistic style. One immediately recognizes your work as your own. How did that style develop? How do you feel it has changed over the years? David B: I was very influenced by artists like [Hugo] Pratt, [Jacques] Tardi, and [José] Muñoz, who developed a very distinctive relationship between black and white. I drew Le Cheval Blême (The pale horse) with a brush, which gave me a thick line and very intense blacks. My style evolved in doing Epileptic. I moved from the brush to the pen, and I started to add hatching in certain places, so the drawing became less “black.” In fact, I really like to go back to the brush from time to time, to navigate a bit between one tool and the other. There are books that I envision with very contrasted blacks and whites and others with optical grays. I use a pure black-and-white more in the autobiographical work, and in the fictional ones I add nuances. BE: What people don’t talk about as much is how distinctive your writing is as well. For me it’s exceptionally rare to have a writerly personality joined with a tremendous sense of artistry—it makes your books satisfying simultaneously on two different levels. Do you find the art and the writing develop simultaneously, or do you script things first? DB: What I’m going to narrate has as much importance as what I’m going to draw. I am a teller of stories, I try to say something to my readers, and I want to write this something—which is to say, to have a style as good in the dialogue and the text as in the narration or the drawing. I believe that that’s what makes a writer, what makes his work recognizable. Actually, I write and draw at the same time, nothing is ever finished in advance; the story is always being created as it is taking shape. I reserve for myself in this way surprises , possibilities. BE: Many of your works are interested in printed books—Incidents in the Night in particular —and that interest often has a mystical or esoteric element. What prose writers do you find feed you most as a writer and artist? DB: My parents had a library very well stocked in books on esotericism, magic, symbolism, alchemy, and mysteries of all sorts. Certain books were illustrated and had an effect on my imagination. As far as stories, it was...
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