Leanne Shapton / Alcatraz

‘Alcatraz’

A Story by Leanne Shapton

She looked me in the eye and said, “This is a true story.” We were at a dinner party, a casual one in someone’s enormous, expensively fitted kitchen. She had come alone, was recently divorced. I’d met her before, but we’d never really spoken or found common ground. I’d always thought she was chilly. When we were sat next to each other at dinner and got to talking about books and people we both knew, I realized her shyness was the blurry, foggy kind—reserved, but not cold.

Maria Reva / 7 Illustrated Novels for Adults

 

Leanne Shapton

7 Illustrated Novels for Adults

Maria Reva recommends stories with visual elements

T

hough illustrated books were common in the 19th century, you won’t find illustrations in many adult books these days. Perhaps it’s the production cost, or that illustrations in books are often perceived as unserious or unnecessary.

While workshopping the stories from my linked collection, Good Citizens Need Not Fear, the graphic elements met resistance. Did I really need the diagrams showing how beds are arranged in a Soviet orphanage? What about the illustration of a truck tire being cut into a swan (a common DIY in Ukraine)? Couldn’t I just use my words? 

Not only do illustrations efficiently evoke a complex concept (a tire-to-swan description would have read like a tech manual), they express what the text cannot—or will not. In the orphanage story, “Little Rabbit,” the narration portrays a charmingly efficient institution, but it’s the diagrams that tip the reader off to a horrifying reality: the children deemed to have less potential begin disappearing from records.

Here are 7 books whose authors don’t (exclusively) use their words:

Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen

A psychiatrist is convinced his wife has been replaced by a doppelganger, and embarks on a desperate search for his real wife. As he slides into insanity, he uses scientific models to prove to himself that he is indeed of sound mind. His commentary on one of the models, however, betrays his true state: “That image […] looked to me like a lonely man, in an alien landscape, glancing back over his shoulder as if to ask something of someone he was not sure was there.” 

A psychiatrist is convinced his wife has been replaced by a doppelganger, and embarks on a desperate search for his real wife. As he slides into insanity, he uses scientific models to prove to himself that he is indeed of sound mind. His commentary on one of the models, however, betrays his true state: “That image […] looked to me like a lonely man, in an alien landscape, glancing back over his shoulder as if to ask something of someone he was not sure was there.”

Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut 

Most people know what the American flag looks like. Or what a pair of underpants looks like. But Vonnegut illustrates them anyway, accompanied by the refrain, “This is what [X] looked like.” Vonnegut’s illustrations might seem comically redundant, but they perform a vital function: their archeological tone gives the reader distance, creating the impression the novel is about an alien civilization, its idiosyncrasies to be examined with a fresh eye.

The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia 

Illustrations, diagrams, redaction: you name it, this whirlwind of a novel has it. In the original McSweeney’s edition, there are even pages with offending words/names physically cut out. As the characters wage a war against the omnificent narrator and his pesky habit of intruding upon their thoughts, the graphic elements become more and more wacky. (Illustrations by Sarah Tillman.)

Women Talking by Miriam Toews

The novel begins with a set of three illustrations by Willow Dawson: curly clouds over fields, a man and woman brandishing knives at each other, and a horse walking away. We soon find out that the illustrations are a voting ballot: a group of Mennonite women (who are illiterate) will cast their vote to decide how to respond to the crimes perpetrated against them.

The Power by Naomi Alderman

Women develop the ability to generate electrical current with their hands, thereby becoming physically (and, by extension, politically) superior to men. The novel is framed as a male writer’s fictional account, 5,000 years later, of the origin of female dominance. Peppered throughout are archeological drawings of our present time, satirically interpreted through the matriarchal gaze of the future.

Little by Edward Carey

Little is based on the life of the famous wax sculptor Marie Tussaud. We witness Tussaud’s growth as a woman and artist through her (Carey’s) delightfully upsetting illustrations: body parts, dead animals, personal effects, and more. As Aida Edemariam writes, “To look well, for Carey, an illustrator as well as a novelist, is to see how emotion and meaning inhere in all objects, giving them independent life.”

Swimming Studies by Leanne Shapton 

Shapton’s memoir explores her fraught past in competitive swimming—she was a former contender for the Canadian Olympic team—and the challenge of shedding one identity (swimmer) for another (artist). Photographs and illustrations intersperse with autobiographical sketches. For example, in what Ben Wiley calls “a marvelous piece of synesthesia,” Shapton paints and describes fourteen odors from swim meets (parka hem included!).

About the Author

Maria Reva was born in Ukraine and grew up in Canada. She holds an MFA from the Michener Center at the University of Texas. Her fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, McSweeney’s, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere, and has won a National Magazine Award. She also works as an opera librettist.

ELECTRIC LITERATURE

Leanne Shapton: What's love got to do it?

By Elizabeth Mitchell

Sunday Febreary 14, 2016

When asked what love had to do with her book Was She Pretty?, author and illustrator Leanne Shapton had to stifle a guffaw.

“What’s love got to do with it? It’s more about what jealously has to do with love,” she said over the phone while navigating her way through New York traffic.

“It’s definitely the dark side of love. You know, when you’re two months into a new relationship and you start to wonder about your new love’s history?’

It was Shapton’s “raging jealousy” at the beginning of her relationship with her now husband, that sparked the idea for the book (“it was the most popular question he got asked about ex-girlfriends”) which is composed of simple black and white illustrations opposite minimalist descriptions of past girlfriends. While she understood jealousy as an unfortunate side-effect of love, she thought she’d ask around and see what others had to say on the topic.

It turns out, a lot.

“It’s much better to talk about these jealousies with girlfriends than to bring them into the relationship — especially in the early stages,” she said. “One friend of mine accidentally body checked one of her boyfriend’s exes . . . sometimes you just have to laugh . . .”

Creating Was She Pretty? provided Shapton with “a release to laugh at my own ridiculousness” while reminding her that the issues of jealousy and insecurity in romantic relationships aren’t new ones. They’re also not going anywhere.

“I don’t think my romantic fascination will ever go away,” she continued, noting its general popularity and citing classics from Shakespeare — who gave jealousy its “green-eyed monster” moniker in Othello — to Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca, the ultimate “impossible to live up to” ex.

“There are so many very deep feelings about love which are out of our control,” she said. “When I was drawing the book, I tried not to be prescriptive. I really wanted to leave a lot out. I wanted it to be specifically black and white so the reader could fill in the blanks.”

Was She Pretty? gives readers an opportunity to develop their own narrative via the imagined superior traits of the subjects’ boyfriends’ exes. The subtleties of tone in its deliberately simple style give an allegorical quality to the grey areas surrounding love as they blend in with whatever the reader brings along for the ride. Originally published in 2006, the book received international, critical acclaim and went on to cult status; in honour of its 10th anniversary, publisher Drawn & Quarterly has created a paperback edition.

“When the hardcover came out ten years ago, on the back it listed ‘relationships’ as the section of the bookstore it could be placed,” Shapton said.

“I know it has to do with relationships — I’ve had women come up to me and tell me it’s helped them get over similar jealousies — but it’s definitely about the darker side. Drawn & Quarterly has put it in graphic novels, which is much better.”

The book’s title, is also open for interpretation: is the question asked out of curiosity, or does it contain a hint of dismissiveness?

That too is for the reader to decide. However, ten years on Was She Pretty? — no matter where it’s shelved in bookstores — really is about love and human behaviour.

Elizabeth Mitchell is a Toronto writer and editor.

THESTAR

Leanne Shapton / The Ghosts Are Aghast

Leanne Shapton
HERMÉS dress.
hotographed by Lauren Hemmick

LEANNE SHAPTON 

THE GHOSTS ARE AGHAST

BY MILES GRIFFIS
MARCH 18, 2019

The epigraph in the beginning of Leanne Shapton’s latest graphic novel, Guestbook: Ghost Stories, out via Riverhead Books in March of this year, was penned by her late friend and prolific writer Adam Gilders—“A geist/ A gust/ A ghost/ Aghast/ I guess/ A guest.” 

Full of unconventional storytelling in the form of photo essays, poems, paintings, profiles, blueprints, make believe Instagram grids, prose, wrapping paper, and spooky 35mm photographs tucked between the pages, the work’s 33 chapters explore the presence of unknown presences—the past as a present paranormal guest.

 “With these stories, I wanted to experiment with how a reader emotionally reads a picture and metabolizes a picture. And I wanted to use photography in a way to show how dark and powerful I think it is,” Shapton says from a Times Square highrise on an icy Friday afternoon, “I think it’s where our ghosts are centered now.” 

These ghosts of our past selves in polaroids are not unlike the ones lurking in the narrow hallways and bright sitting rooms in the book’s photo essays “The Dream” and “Lago”, nor are they dissimilar to the found photographs of icebergs, like the one that presumably dismantled the Titanic, floating ominously in the fog of the North Atlantic in the chapter “The Iceberg As Viewed by Eyewitnesses.” 

The book, Shapton’s tenth, follows in the parade of her innovative works like 2009’s “Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry” that details a four- year love affair between a couple as told through 335 auction lots as well as 2016’s Was She Pretty about jealousy for current lovers’ ex-lovers featuring witty resentments and charming drawings. 

Aside from the success of her books, Shapton is also an accomplished artist and illustrator with past client collaborations like Aesop, Tory Burch, and Rachel Comey. Her creative eye has also led her to the role of art director at a variety of publications, and her knack for storytelling shines in her journalism, with bylines in The New Yorker andThe New York Times Style Magazine. 

While much of Guestbook is serious, like the chapter “Billy Bryson” that deals with imaginary friends, trauma, and burn-out, Guestbook also has wonderful moments of humor that remind us that just because we are being haunted, doesn’t mean we can’t laugh. 

In “I Will Draw A Diagram of Her Movements” we’re told that sometimes it actually feels nice to be watched by unseen eyes, “The creepy creeping. The okayness creeps.” And in “Public Figure/ Beauty Lover/ Digital Talent / Traveler / Spinario / Parma / Abu Dhabi” a humorous poem displays lavishly mundane online flirtations left below a photo we cannot see— “My dear, so elegant, so confident, I’m in love with your feed”, “Oh wow looks so dreamy”, “Ahhh I love this looks amazing”, and “This is goals.” 

The poem reads like Instagram comments from strangers you don’t want to meet. Sad, shackled, and wandering. 

Speaking of the grid, in “Natura Morta,” vintage photographs are mixed with a modern photos of a woman— driving in a convertible, backstroking in a lagoon, a (clothed) crotch channeling a ray of light, a topless mirror selfie, and many others. Underneath each photo are arbitrary “likes” that peak at a modest 267. 

“There’s a lot of trust that happens with photography that I don’t think should happen with photography,” Shapton says, “ It’s just lies and lies and sadness. I was telling a friend the other day that every time I post on Instagram it’s because I’m feeling sad, and lonely. It doesn’t come out of a place of security, in some ways, it’s kind of a cry for help.” 

Guestbook’s ghost stories are not ones tracing our most storied ghosts like The Flying Dutchman, Thom Thompson, La Llorona, nor is it an investigation of the literary ghost, like Hamlet’s father’s wraith or the ghoulish sailors of Coleridge’s “The Rime of Ancient Mariner”—Shapton’s visitants are us, disappearing from our present to live as apparitions on the feeds of our past. 

FLAUNT

Leanne Shapton

Ghost Story: An Interview with Leanne Shapton

In this interview with MFA nonfiction candidate Grace Ann Leadbeater, Leanne Shapton talks about her upcoming book, Guestbook: Ghost Stories, out March 26, 2019. Shapton is an artist, author, and publisher. Her book Swimming Studies won the 2012 National Book Critic’s Circle Award for autobiography, and was long listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2012. She is also a partner in J&L Books.

Grace Ann Leadbeater

February 28, 2019

Guestbook investigates what haunts us. What first drew you to explore this idea of being haunted by objects, experiences, people, et cetera?

I’ve been interested in old things all my life. I grew up in an old house, my father collected Studebakers. He was an industrial designer and we were surrounded by things from different decades. My mother is Filipino and the house was full of baskets and cups and objects from the Philippines. I’ve always valued and understood that there were stories and meaning in things— sentimental value, design value, and history.

In all of my work I’m looking backwards, whether it’s the book Was She Pretty?, and how we think of our lover’s exes— or Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry. That was a love story in the form of an auction catalog: the objects act as containers, transmitters for storytelling. For The Native Trees of Canada, I took inspiration from a vintage book from 1979— a forestry manual. I’m always looking for how the past resonates or speaks to me now.

The book is bursting with images. Did you ever consider this book existing without images or were the images always a vital part?

They were always a vital part. I’ve read ghost stories and loved ghost stories since I was small. All of my favorite stories are ghost stories, even if they’re not always called ghost stories, like Hamlet, “The Dead,” A Christmas Carol. I love literary ghost stories like Edith Wharton’s “Afterward,” or local lore you might find in a gift shop like Ghost stories of Montana.

I wanted to do something with the form that involved images. Images carry emotion. In this image-driven culture, they influence what we’re haunted by. Look at Instagram, for example, how violent it can be in terms of inspiring jealousy, sympathy, or making us feel lousy or good about ourselves.

I wanted to see if the ghost story form could carry more or do more with images. Early on in thinking about this book I went to the ghost story section of the London Library. There were all these books by eccentric British ghost hunters, like Borley Rectory: The most haunted house in England. The photographs in those books— often banal images of houses and plain rooms— had terrifically dramatic captions. I loved how that discrepancy worked. The way we looked at those pictures with leading captions could direct comprehension and tone. I could work on emotion more efficiently with a picture.

This collecting of images and artifacts is so exciting in the literary realm. Are these images and artifacts you’ve been collecting for years? Did you go looking for any in the midst of making the book?

I found most of the images while making the book. I knew that after Important Artifacts I could cast and shoot scenes if I wanted to. But with thirty stories I realized it would get expensive. I turned to my family’s photo albums, my own collection of snapshots, to eBay and Etsy.

With “Eidolon,” the images began as screen grabs from Death in Venice. They then became painted stills from one scene, to abstract them even more. The painted photographs allow one more layer of abstraction—less veracity and more of a floaty quality.

How do you position yourself with the title? Are you a guest studying this guestbook or is it your guestbook that others are the guest of?

The book is full of ghosts that are guests. The epigraph “A geist, A gust, A ghost, Aghast, I guess, A guest” was something that my friend Adam Gilders, who died in 2007, wrote in my parents’ guestbook back in 1995.

The book had a few different titles, but I realized the original guestbook that held Adam’s little message was an existing object already. I love the word guest. It felt right. There was a debate over whether I should put “ghost stories” on the cover. My agent said, “Well they’re not all ghost stories. You’ve done something with this short story form, too. These are stories about detachment, loss and memory.” It was my editor’s idea to de-boss it on the cover so that it’s an impression and not a printed word.

How did you navigate your own personal artifacts and images with the ones that you sought out through eBay, Etsy, et cetera?

“Sirena Di Gali” uses my own original photographs, found images and family snapshots, but very few other stories do.  They are either, per story, all my own, or found. For “New Jersey Transit,” I searched specifically for swimmers behind chain link fences. There is so much anonymous, snapshot photography available. And again, like these ghosts, guests—who are these people? With “Billy Byron,” I used a few stock images. I did have to go over everything with the Penguin Random house legal department.

Do you think that using both words and pictures to tell a narrative is more readily received because of this newish world we are in of rapid image-sharing (predominately with Instagram)?

I do. I think we are very sophisticated readers of images, but we don’t know how sophisticated we are. It’s something that excites me, that you and I can look at a completely boring image of a latte and read the same, nuanced things. I think there is a lexicon, or alphabet of reading images that we haven’t organized yet. I think since the invention of photography our understanding of the world has deepened, as has our capacity to be fooled by things. What’s really interesting to me is that we put so much trust in it. I find it sinister. I find it tricky. I find myself second guessing. Do I believe what I’m reading in a picture? Or, What’s the whole story? We’re losing some sense of wonder, or faith, when we rely on images. I think there’s a whole new kind of literacy that has been developing since Daguerre.

Do you think that that we also heavily put trust in one another to believe our deceptions with the images we share?

Yes. Our lives have become a performance because we understand what’s photogenic and what’s not. And I think that’s limiting. I think the idea of what is photogenic or what is beautiful inflects our culture by repetition. This was all predicted by Aby Warburg. When we see something, there is a knee-jerk reaction to believe, because it’s a photograph. Ideas of trust are in question, and that’s why I thought the ghost story could be revisited. There will be more ghost stories that involve photography. Henry James wrote one, in 1896, called “The Friends of the Friends.”

Does your process as a writer differ from your process as an artist? Or perhaps they’re synonymous for you?

I’m in the middle of writing a long-form journalism piece and it’s similar. When I paint I work in series. I’ll paint the same thing seventeen times. With writing, well, I love rewriting. It’s a case of re-writing something seventeen times. Also, when I’m writing, it helps me to look at images and describe them to get tone or to give the reader a sense of two channels working at the same time. My writing will always have an element of, “Reader, look at this,” whether illustrated or not. I like to play with layers of text and image, that involve an imagined image, a description of a real image, and then facts. I do paint more than I write. I find writing harder.

You have a background in swimming. How does this activity/practice of propelling oneself through water relate to or differ from your creative practices?

Both make you tired and short of breath. I rely on the idea of laps, repetition. Finding a rhythm. Finding a zone. If I sit down and work for five hours it feels wonderful. It feels like the focus I had in a practice or when I pushed myself to get up, eat a bagel, to get to the pool. I find that place is very satisfying. And how does it relate? I guess because I know how to do it, to focus like that. That feeling is what I look for when painting and writing: the line on the bottom of the pool. And in terms of propulsion, I think a creative process requires that you slow down. Stamina. Discipline. I mean, all these things have to be at work.

Do you see yourself ever making a book without a visual factor?

I don’t know, because it’s how I write. I would like to. It’s a good idea. In the class I teach at Columbia, Words and Pictures, the first exercise I have everyone do is to find an image from a selection on a table and write about it. When the pieces are read aloud, sometimes I don’t show the class the image.

The text has a different life with the removal of the picture. I’ve written pieces of journalism where I don’t provide the images, where someone illustrates or a photo editor decides. Right now I’m writing an afterword for a Thomas Bernhard novel and I won’t put pictures in it.

Is it terrifying to write when you know that someone else is going to decide what images go with the writing?

I want to design and art direct it all. It’s a part of my writing, a part of the delivery for me, using that entire palette. I can’t stand it, but I get it. And I love collaborating.

About the author

Grace Ann Leadbeater

Grace Ann Leadbeater is an artist who is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in writing at Columbia University. She grew up in Central Florida and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

COLUMBIA JOURNAL