nerdtalk

May 18, 2004

Ira Glass of This American Life vs. Chris Ware of Acme Novelty Library.

The pair have been hitting the lecture circuit lately. They did a session at Royce a little while ago, but I think the tickets seemed really expensive just to hear dudes talk, so I passed. Luckily, someone transcribed the University of Minnesota experience into an 80 page monstrosity for anyone to read!

Chris Ware: There’s plenty of miserable, lonely people in the world and there’s not enough art about it, I don’t think. I, you know - I get tired of reading stories about sexual liaisons and, you know, and conquests and all that kind of nonsense, it just gets tiresome. There’s plenty of stuff, I mean. I don’t know, I guess I’m nuts or something.

Ira Glass: Happy-happy people have the Friends.

[some audience hissing]

Chris Ware: What?

Ira Glass: Happy people have the TV show Friends.

[audience chuckles]

Chris Ware: No, but I mean, you ride the bus, you ride the train and you see so many people that you know they’ll never meet anybody. I mean, you can tell. And it’s, I mean it’s–

Ira Glass: So you’re saying happy people have enough art? There’s enough art about the successful and happy.

Chris Ware: That’s all there is, it’s just art to make you feel better about yourself or something.

Ira Glass: David Sedaris has said that one of the things he liked about reading Jimmy Corrigan is that it was a book that when you were done, you could feel like your life was better than the guy in the book.

[audience laughter]

He said he found that kind of uplifting.

Chris Ware: Oh, that’s nice. That sounds … fair enough.