“Molly Crabapple is her name, though it isn’t the name her mother gave her” is a fabulous line.
But that’s also a little bit liberating, once you realize that no matter how good and small and quiet you try to make yourself, no matter how much you shy away and try to stick to your permitted boundaries as a woman, people are going to hate on you anyway. LP: The sad thing about today’s world for women artists and writers is that people are going to be vicious and try to tear you down whatever you do. For instance, the one where Laurie says “People don’t want women with swagger.” Is this book a response to that sentiment? My favourite bits of the book were actually the conversations between you two. Christopher Hitchens totally ripped off that idea for his famous piece on waterboarding, by the way. There was Nelly Bly, who got herself institutionalized at age 21 to report from inside the New York mental-asylum system, and Djuna Barnes, who had herself force-fed in order to write about what the experience was like for suffragettes fighting for the vote in Britain. LP: What some people don’t realize is that the first people to really do gonzo journalism in its truest sense-going deep into a story, using your body to tell it and allowing yourself to be changed and challenged by it-were women at the turn of the 20th century, long before Hunter Thompson ever picked up a bottle of Wild Turkey. While Thompson, like Hemingway, is one of those writers whose work has spawned a thousand jackasses, when he is good his writing is so darkly funny, his soul so daring, that he is Wild Danger and Freedom. I drew much inspiration from him, technically and spiritually. I love Steadman’s work to the bottom of my cruel, ink- splattered artist’s heart. Because of this, gonzo-style adventures take a bit more toughness for a woman than a man. MC: Women are trained to see the outside world as a big scary rape trap. Thompson inspired a generation or two of macho gonzo journalists how do you feel about the comparison? Is gonzo different when it’s done by women? Thompson’s collaborations with illustrator Ralph Steadman. Journalist Paul Mason’s introduction situates your collaboration in dialogue with Hunter S. It was a useful way to structure the project. Molly had very definite ideas about what she wanted to draw after our discussions, and I was able to shape some of the scenes of the book around the images.
As a journalist I’m very much used to solo projects, so this was a learning experience. LP: It was a really interesting way to work. We helped and inspired each other’s work, while also creating our own with a lot of autonomy. Laurie suggested other images, and I worked from her iPhone snaps of the antifascist demonstration in Nikea. While I was in Athens, I kept a running list of images that knocked me flat-a printing press in the occupied newspaper Eleftherotopia, or a little girl at an antiracist festival. MC: We worked together to figure out important points that had to be made. Was there much communication back-and-forth, or did you leave each other to just get on with it? You two spent a week in Greece together, but then worked separately on the art and words. Greece is where Europe is deciding what it wants to be. Violent Nazi gangs are being elected into parliament. It’s also the place in Europe where austerity is coming to bear hardest. MC: Greece is the birthplace of democracy. Why Greece and not Madrid, Tahrir, London? Laurie Penny: I was so happy that Molly said yes! I feel like together we made something pretty unique that’s a fusion of our two creative worlds. We had wanted to create something together, and when I decided to go to Greece to make some art, Laurie asked to go with me. Molly Crabapple: Laurie and I became close during Occupy Wall Street. Thompson owes a debt to his lady-journo forebears. It’s out now on Vintage Digital, and Emily McAvan chatted with the authors about meaning, mythologizing, and why Hunter S. The graphic novel–meets–travelogue pairs Penny’s gritty, witty reportage with Crabapple’s pen-and-ink drawings for an on-the-ground portrait of a nation adrift in both crisis and possibility. This summer, these two kickass women travelled to Greece together, and their gorgeous new e-book, Discordia, is the result.
#Recordit kickass.to series
Molly Crabapple is a New York artist whose Victorian-inspired work includes Shell Game, a crowd-sourced series of ornate paintings of the 2011 financial-world metdowns and revolutions. Laurie Penny is an English journalist whose work on protest movements, sex, and desire has been at the forefront of feminist writing of the last few years.
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