Virtual Memories Show 383:
Everett Glenn
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“My motivation? Kinda cookie-cutter: Desperate person doesn’t want to die of alcoholism, writes instead. That’s the blurb.”
Artist, cartoonist, and clotheshorse Everett Glenn joins the show from Berlin to talk about how narrating his life as a story helped him make (some) sense of his fragmented, chaotic upbringing (he talks more about that upbringing in this great conversation with Noah Van Sciver). We get into his evolution and influences as a cartoonist through his Unsmooth graphic novel and his recent amazing achievement of the 20-page story The Gigs (which you HAVE to read), how he skipped the idol-worship phase of literature, how Cool World and Ralph Bakshi blew his mind at an impressionable age, and how he deals with the self-eating snake of racial identity from the perspective of a Black American living in Germany. We also talk about the importance of design, the origins of his ligne claire, where his fantastic clothing sense comes from, how he learned tailoring in an attempt to get a visa, how the confidence it takes to push the fashion envelope can feed into confidence in other parts of life, and more! Give it a listen! And go read Unsmooth & The Gigs!
“Art school teaches you how to embody the idea that art is valuable.”
“Somerset Maugham was basically my dad. Khalil Gibran was my birth father and left me in Maugham’s hands.”
SPOTIFY LINK TK
“When it comes to race, it doesn’t matter what I think. I’ll always be a Black man in society. That’s something I can’t control.”
“I skipped the idol-worship stage of discovering literature. I went straight to ‘This is a person who had experiences and figured out how to use language to articulate those experiences.'”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!
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About our Guest
Everett Glenn is a semi-reclusive American cartoonist living in Berlin, Germany. He works in various mediums, including drawing, painting, and designing fashion accessories. His work grows out of his tumultuous upbringing and personal experiences. His most recent works are the graphic novel Unsmooth (Floating World Comics) and the story The Gigs, anthologized in NOW #8 (Fantagraphics).
Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone
