At BAM, graphic novelist Chris Ware speaks about memory, emotion
Most people hate public speaking, graphic novelist Chris Ware among them. “I have to apologize,” he told an audience at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) on Tuesday night. “I find that if I don’t apologize then it’ll be just more painful, and I’ll say even more embarrassing things that I regret.”
But Ware had little to be sorry for. The celebrated cartoonist’s self-deprecating humor was never in short supply at the event, the most recent installment of BAM’s Eat, Drink & Be Literary series. But Ware interspersed those self-directed barbs with profound insights on art, storytelling and everyday human experience.
According to Lorin Stein, the editor of The Paris Review, who moderated the event, it’s the sheer ordinariness of the stories that fills Ware’s richly illustrated works that makes them so relatable. “I don’t think there’s anyone better than Chris at capturing the texture of our everyday lives,” Stein said.
Ware’s work may trade in the commonplace, but it’s certainly not simplistic. His award-winning graphic novels like “Building Stories” (2012) and “Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth” (2000) consist of intricate and colorful illustrations that the cartoonist completes painstakingly by hand. The pages eschew traditional comic templates, often including dozens of panels of varying sizes that only sometimes proceed chronologically.