Larson is an avowed fan of the late, great monologist Spalding Gray, the actor, writer and “sit-down comedian” who turned his own life into an open Freudian research lab and theater piece. Like Gray, Larson has taken an established form – in Gray’s case, the theatrical monologue, in Larson’s, the zine – and probed it, plied it and pummeled it like a baseball glove into a unique and custom-fitted vehicle for self-exploration and expression. To take one’s own emotional and psychological processing public is courageous and will always be viewed by some as indulgent, so if you’re going to do it, go strong to hole, unapologetically, as Gray did and as Larson does. That you will get hurt is a given.
Previous issues of No Better than Apples cross-thatch their stories in a casual, interleaved narrative texture. It’s the multi-strand texture of real life transpiring within an arbitrary window of time. While no more tidy or resolution-driven than any of the other installments, Issue Nine behaves more like a single story because real life did in fact become a mono-narrative for Larson in the summer of 2012 due to a major, disruptive health crisis: the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. Issue Nine tackles that experience in all its dimensions.
The gravity of the subject does not alter her artistic mode one bit. The zine proceeds in graphically complemented narrative segments and set pieces, usually contained within one page or in two-page spreads. Design elements include textural backgrounds, single images drawn from the narrative, representations of internal states and self-portraits that often remind me of the great comic-strip memoirist Lynda Barry. Some vignettes are typed and dense, others spaciously handwritten. Narrative modes vary: acute, unfailingly funny reporting; impressionistic, occasionally opaque reflections and freakouts; and text-and-design compositions that almost seem like marketing logos: iconic distillations of what Larson has learned and is learning.
The young Spalding Gray once rode out a depressive episode in a room behind a New Paltz bookstore, but his stories also played out on some pretty big stages. His masterpiece, Swimming to Cambodia, situates his neurotic journey amidst the making of a major motion picture (The Killing Fields) and in the context of Southeast Asian history and the story of the Khmer Rouge. (“They were like a hundred thousand rednecks rallying in New Paltz, New York, 90 miles above the City, about to march in.”)
Larson, too, locates and processes her stories in a social and historical context; but in keeping with the zine aesthetic, that context is modest and acute: the local community and, even more micro, a subset of that community, a first circle of friends who feature in all her zines and to whom they are clearly tribute. While No Better than Apples goes deep into the frightened and isolated psyche of its author, much of its poignancy comes from its tender and funny portrayal of this friend circle. Art and intimate pathos mingle here so profoundly that the reader feels caught between the need to bake Ms. Larson some cookies and to nominate her for a Pulitzer.
Related Events:
On Thursday, March 14, Kate Larson will read from No Better than Apples at Inquiring Minds Bookstore at 6 Church Street in New Paltz at 7 p.m. Also reading from new works will a heavy-hitting lineup of memoirists, some with graphic components, some without: Nicole J. Georges, author of Calling Dr. Laura; Cassie J. Sneider, author of Fine Fine Music; and coloring book author Jacinta Bunnell.
A few days later, the always-innovative culture engineers at Team Love RavenHouse Gallery, also on Church Street, present “9 and 13,” a works-on-paper show by Kate Larson and Jacinta Bunnell, inspired by the Inquiring Minds reading. The show provides a rare opportunity for Larson’s readers to view original pieces, both in black-and-white and color, and will include ephemera from the zine-making process. The exhibition opens March 18 and continues through May 5. A reception will be held at the gallery on Monday, March 18 from 6 to 8 p.m., with a special musical appearance at 7 p.m. by renowned experimental cellist Helen Money (Poi Dog Pondering, Bob Mould, Broken Social Scene).
