What It Is

by Lynda Barry

Overview

Lynda Barry’s bestselling treatise on creativity, What It Is, is now available in paperback

How do objects summon memories? What do real images feel like? What is an image? What is the past? For decades, these questions have permeated the pages of Lynda Barry’s compositions, with words attracting pictures and conjuring places through a pen that first and foremost keeps on moving. Barry’s What It Is demonstrates a tried-and-true creative method that is playful, powerful, and accessible to anyone with an inquisitive mind who wishes to write or to remember.

In this exploratory workbook, confessional, and memoir each page is a full-color collage that is a gentle guide to the creative process packed full ofswirling collaged images with pen and ink drawings on Barry’s signature legal paper. Barry’s award winning book is an invigorating example of exactly what it is: “The ordinary is extraordinary.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770467378
Publisher:	Drawn & Quarterly
Publication date:	05/07/2024
Pages:	216
Sales rank:	190,722
Product dimensions:	7.40(w) x 9.50(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Lynda Barry has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator, and teacher and found that they are very much alike. She lives in Wisconsin, where she is an Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Creativity at the University of Wisconsin Madison. In 2019, she received the “Genius grant” from the MacArthurs Fellows program.

In addition to What It Is, Barry has written four bestselling and acclaimed creative how-to graphic novels, What It Is; Picture This; Syllabus: Notes From an Accidental Professor; and Making Comics. Her seminal comic strip, Ernie Pook's Comeek, features Marlys, Maybonne, and Freddie and was collected into The! Greatest! of! Marlys!, The Freddie Stories, Come Over Come Over, My Perfect Life, and It’s So Magic. Her other books include One! Hundred! Demons!, Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel, and The Good Times are Killing Me.

Editorial Reviews

The collages in legendary cartoonist Lynda Barry’s What It Is are a bathysphere-like odyssey through the depths of her funky subconscious.” —Vanity Fair

“What It Is is equal parts cartoon memoir, collage album, scrapbook, and Zen roadmap. Written and drawn in a chaotic but riveting style, it offers itself as a guide to creative self-ignition.” —The Boston Globe

“The magic of that moment and of all Barry's self-examinations is that her ideas apply to just about everybody.” —Oprah

From the Publisher

This brilliant, beautiful, nearly uncategorizable book is a print version of Barry's famous seminar "Writing the Unthinkable" a class about writing from "images," recollected or imagined moments. It's part cartooning, part handwritten text, part ornate multimedia collage (with heartbreaking pieces of decades-old school papers and words snipped out of old textbooks)-all three appear on almost every page, most of which Barry constructed by decorating every available space on ruled yellow notebook paper. The first and longest section is a bizarre and hilarious memoir of Barry's creative impulses: how they developed when she was a child, how they flickered and faded when she started asking herself "Is this good?" and "Does this suck?" and how they returned when she learned to escape that trap. The core of the book, though, explains the "writing the unthinkable" technique; it's narrated by a sea monster and stars a "magic cephalopod." Finally, Barry shows us a sheaf of her note pad, the pages she fills with doodles and spare phrases while she's working on a "real" project; they are, naturally, as vivid and radiantly eccentric as everything else here. The whole thing is overflowing with quirks, strangeness and charm, and makes palpable Barry's affection for her students and the act of art making itself. (May)

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Publishers Weekly

"It" is a highly imaginative, image-and-words collage, mashed-up with a how-to-write book and highlighted with autobiographical snippets. Barry's purpose is to urge readers to interact with their own imagery, ideas, and stories, then write and/or draw them. The text wanders through a colorful, free-form garden of birds, animals, flowers, and snippets of letters and quotations, almost demanding that readers break any habits of associating "creating" with fear-inducing concepts like "assignments" or "rules." As her own form of exercises, she invites readers to write what first comes to mind, using various prompts and tricks to disable inhibitions and the hypercritical overseer in the head. Doodles, hypothetical questions, ornate borders, and dialog all become grist. Create images, and words will come; create words, and images will come. What It Is will frustrate readers who want to follow a clear trail of ideas and pictures but delight those who take the time to let their minds taste all of Barry's visual and literate smorgasbord. For teen and adult collections.
—Martha Cornog

Library Journal

Gr 9 Up

Every so often a book comes along that surpasses expectations, taking readers on an inspirational voyage that they don't want to leave. This is one such book. Each page is a feast for the eyes with beautiful full-page collages of photographs, watercolors, ink drawings, and text, resulting in a gorgeous volume that explores and encourages writing in a combination of ways. The author challenges readers with philosophical questions to ponder, such as "What is an image? Where are they found? Can we remember something we can't imagine?" The volume also acts as a workbook that successfully encourages teens to explore their own creativity through writing. In addition, autobiographical glimpses of Barry's journey from childhood to adulthood appear throughout the book. The struggles and obstacles she faces while following her path of becoming an artist and writer allow readers to believe in the possibility of writing themselves. This stunning book will appeal to those teens who are interested in delving into their creativity through words and art. The questions posed and valuable exercises that exist within its pages, along with the illustrations, could also make this book a valuable tool for English and art teachers in the classroom.-Lara McAllister, Halifax Public Libraries, Nova Scotia

School Library Journal