{"id":28364,"date":"2020-01-23T14:40:24","date_gmt":"2020-01-23T19:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?post_type=cu_story&p=28364"},"modified":"2025-02-03T11:30:17","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T16:30:17","slug":"munro-beattie-lecture-2020-inkwells-end-by-seth","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/story\/munro-beattie-lecture-2020-inkwells-end-by-seth\/","title":{"rendered":"Munro Beattie Lecture 2020-2021: Inkwell\u2019s End by Seth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Munro Beattie Lecture 2020-2021: Inkwell\u2019s End by Seth\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

When<\/strong>: March 20, 2021, 7:00pm
Where<\/strong>: Zoom
Registration Required<\/strong>: https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/2021-munro-beattie-lecture\/ <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information, visit: https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/cu-events\/2020-21-munro-beattie-lecture\/<\/a><\/strong>, or contact Professor Janne Cleveland<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"a
Gregory Gallant \/ Seth<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This year, for the first time in its thirty-five-year history, the Munro Beattie lecture will be delivered by a graphic novelist, the celebrated Canadian comics creator who publishes under the name of Seth. Entitled \u201cInkwell\u2019s End,\u201d the talk will take place on Saturday, March 20, virtually (another Munro Beattie first), over Zoom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growing up as Gregory Gallant<\/a> in a series of small Southwestern Ontario towns in the 1960s and 70s, Seth was a voracious reader of comics and soon began creating his own. After moving to Toronto and attending the Ontario College of Art (as it was then known), he began to develop the aesthetic associated with his mature work, an elegant and evocative drawing style influenced by the cartoonists whose work appeared in The New Yorker <\/em>magazine in the 1930s and 40s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seth\u2019s books include It\u2019s A Good Life If You Don\u2019t Weaken<\/em>, an autobiographical narrative about a collector\u2019s obsessive search for a forgotten cartoonist of the past, and The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists<\/em>, a fictionalized account of a Canadian society in which comics creators are respected and revered. His most recent book, Clyde Fans<\/em>, moves away from the metafictional, comics-centred concerns of these earlier works to tell the story of two incompatible brothers trying (and failing) to keep their family business afloat as the fan is quickly supplanted by the air conditioner. The Guardian <\/em><\/a>hails the book as \u201ca masterpiece\u201d that excavates the melancholy at the heart of mid-twentieth-century capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In conversation with PhD candidate Ryan Prittie (Department of English), Seth discusses aspects of his work and life, from his interest in book design and the changing status of comics to the sadness of the past and his sense of having been \u201cborn old.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Clyde<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Interview<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Your talk will mark the first time Carleton\u2019s Munro Beattie lecture will be given by a comics creator. As you are no doubt aware, comics are now taught alongside traditionally \u201cliterary\u201d texts; our department offers whole courses on comics that are very popular with students. I\u2019d be interested to hear your thoughts on the changing reception of comics in the university and elsewhere.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the words of the Grateful dead, \u201cWhat a long strange trip it\u2019s been\u201d. When I was a child, comics were just comics. Not that I thought about them in any conscious way\u2014they were too ubiquitous in a kid\u2019s world to even ponder them. Like television or schoolyard chants there was no reason to even consider them. They were an everyday mundane aspect of childhood. Later as a teenager, when my interest in comic books became serious (and I decided to devote my life to them) I still considered them nothing more than an exciting entertainment genre. I certainly was very serious about them but I recognized that most folks thought of the comics medium as a bottom of the barrel medium\u2014just mass-market junk. I never expected that to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it certainly did change. By the time I\u2019d got to high school comic books were on their way out as a mass-market medium. Sales were declining rapidly for mainstream companies. It looked like they were coming to an end. However, more interestingly, new kinds of comics were appearing (this was the 1980s)\u2014comic books produced for adults, with a modern sensibility and with high-brow aspirations. I\u2019d lost interest in mainstream comics by this time and these new comics showed me the way. I\u2019d found my calling. This was very exciting to me\u2014and I had great belief in the medium itself as a way to tell real stories about real life\u2014but I certainly had no faith that the \u201creal\u201d world outside of the comics shops would ever embrace or understand what I and my peers were trying to do. Long story short\u201430 some years later everything has changed. The graphic novel has remarkably become a fixture in bookstores and comics are reviewed in the New York Times<\/em>, cartoonists are profiled in the New Yorker<\/em>, comics are taught in university and perhaps most surprising to me\u2014the old mainstream comics that I abandoned decades ago have become the main thread of popular culture. Now bus drivers and scientists and CEO\u2019s know who Iron Man or the Black Widow or Stan Lee are. I certainly never would never have predicted that!!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your upcoming lecture is titled \u201cInkwell\u2019s End.\u201d You certainly don\u2019t have to reveal everything, but could you give us a general sense of what you have in mind for the lecture? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Very straightforward, really. A career overview. \u201cInkwell\u2019s End\u201d is the name of my house in Guelph but it also implies a journey\u2019s end. Where that inkwell has led me. That’s what I intend to talk about. My childhood interest in the medium, the touchstone influences and then what my work is about and where it is going. The talk is a series of short rambles, accentuated with many PowerPoint images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot of your work, from It\u2019s a Good Life<\/em>\u2026, to Palookaville<\/em>, to works such as The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists<\/em> draw inspiration the atmosphere of small-town Ontario. What is it about these small towns that make them a continued source of interest for you? Do you see your work as relating to other textual representations of small-town Ontario, such as the work of writers like Alice Munro, Robertson Davies, or Stephen Leacock?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grew up in small towns and though I lived in Toronto for 20 years it turns out that those small towns had a lasting effect on me. I would have denied this during those first ten years in Toronto\u2014in those years I was furiously urban (and shaking the dust of the small town from my feet) but over time I\u2019ve come to find myself constantly going back (in my mind) to those little places. I\u2019ve never made a conscious attempt to employ those small towns as a theme or a motif in my work\u2026but they have made their way into my iconography year by year. Some time ago someone commented to me about how rural my imagery was and I realized, with a shock, that the urban images I drew for so long in Toronto had been replaced with rolling hills and country roads. A result of living in Guelph for the last two decades I guess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes I travel to beautiful foreign places, say Stockholm or Buenos Aires, and think to myself that I might like to live there\u2026but those are fantasies\u2026I could never leave Ontario. As ugly and overdeveloped as much of it has become there is something about the Ontario landscape and its little dots of towns and villages that have got into my DNA and won\u2019t let me leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You mentioned Munro and Leacock\u2014two very important writers for me (not so much, Davies) and yes, it is their portrayals of small-town Ontario that make them favourites of mine. For many years if you asked me who my favourite writer was, the answer would have been Alice Munro. I\u2019d like to say she is an influence but the truth is that what Munro does is so mysterious and potent that she is hard to copy. I mostly read her work in pure amazement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes down to it, I write and draw about these small places because they are the world I grew up in and still live in (to some degree). I\u2019m trying to impart a sense of place and time and feeling with my comics and Ontario is that place and time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ceaseless progression of time is another theme you seem to return to often, whether it be through the ageing of an individual, their work, or the world around them. Works such as Wimbledon Green<\/em> focus on elderly characters, their legacies, and even their deaths. What is it about these topics that interest you as a comics creator?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think I was born old. Even as an early teenager I was nostalgic for the world of my childhood. It might have been because we moved around so much when I was small. Almost every year my father uprooted us. Maybe that made me aware, at an early age, how tenuous everything is. How easily things disappear. Certainly, that feeling has pervaded my whole life in a very tangible sense. I think of it constantly. Time passing. Things vanishing. Even in my youth as a punk, standing around in dark smoky nightclubs, I was vividly aware that this was just a moment in time and would be soon be gone. I remember a deep feeling of mourning about the places I frequented then\u2014knowing I would be looking back sadly on them when they were gone. And now, decades later, I am doing just that. This sort of thinking underlies everything I write or draw or make. Life has a rhythm of sadness to it\u2014a drumbeat of time passing and events moving out of our reach. This is why the past is sad\u2014because it is gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve always loved how your sense of aesthetics doesn\u2019t stop at the edge of the page and in fact bleeds into everything you do, from book design to architecture. It\u2019s clear from your work with publications such as Drawn and Quarterly<\/em><\/a> or The Canadian <\/em><\/strong>Journal of Notes and Queries<\/em> that you place great importance on <\/strong>the overall design of every project with which you are involved, <\/strong>and that you take a very hands-on approach when it comes these <\/strong>projects. What do your aesthetics mean to you, and what does it <\/strong>mean to offer your personal touch to other writing and publishing <\/strong>endeavours?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think of aesthetics as more than just about design. To me, a sense of personal aesthetic is essential. It\u2019s part of your personal identity. I\u2019ve always been overly concerned with my identity and my appearance\u2014thus my fake name and my contrived clothing. It\u2019s more than just developing an eye for good design\u2014it\u2019s about making design a part of who you are, how you think, and how you live. My \u2018design\u201d sense works its way through everything I do, everything I make, everything I enjoy. It defines just who I am. I think this is true for everyone but they don\u2019t think about it so much\u2014they take it for granted. The sports teams they like, the beer they drink, the shirts they pick\u2026whatever. Everyone has an aesthetic. Mine is just super considered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my work, especially my book work, I am aware that the appearance of a book, how it is designed is very important to how it is read. The design creates a \u201cfeeling\u201d about the work and sets the stage for the reader. Certainly, in my own books, the design work is very important in the process of building a world for the story. By the time the reader starts page one of the comic I have tried to place them into that world already. Again, to set the stage. This is true when I design other people\u2019s books too. I\u2019m trying to create feelings and textures around the \u201ccontent\u201d. I\u2019m not thinking much about the reader themselves\u2014not in a concrete way\u2014the reader is an abstract for me. I\u2019m building a world for them to enter but it\u2019s directed by my sensibilities not what I imagine would be theirs. I have little idea what a modern sensibility is all about. I\u2019ve kind of isolated myself somewhat from the modern era\u2014surrounded myself with a cocoon of my own tastes. It does put me out of touch\u2026but then, I don\u2019t worry about it much. Mostly I\u2019m aiming for beauty in what I do. I figure you can\u2019t go wrong (or be out of date) by aiming for beauty!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you don\u2019t mind sharing, what\u2019s next for you? What sorts of projects <\/strong>are you working on at the moment?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the last decade, I\u2019ve branched out into a variety of mediums and forms. Lately, I\u2019ve been collaborating quite a bit with craft artists\u2014producing ceramic objects, metalworks, textiles. All sorts of things. This has been enormously pleasurable for me as it is a joy to work with pure aesthetics. Forms without stories. Though to be truthful, a lot of my objects have stories associated with them too. As a cartoonist, it\u2019s hard to get away from that element.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the studio, I\u2019m working on a wide range of projects. I have at least 3 graphic novels in various stages of production. Two of these are in my sketchbooks and one is just beginning. These will take years to realize but that is the nature of comics. Slow and laborious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m also working on a couple of children\u2019s book ideas right now too\u2014and hope to shop one of them around later this year. This has been something I\u2019ve thought of for decades and I think the time might be right. We\u2019ll see. I just had a big gallery show in Guelph<\/a> at the AGG and the most interesting thing coming out of that is that in the next few months we will be unveiling a large bronze sculpture installation that I\u2019ve designed. I\u2019m quite excited about this. Again, as a child, reading Archie or Spiderman, I did not imagine how different the world of the 21st century would be for cartoonists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When: March 20, 2021, 7:00pmWhere: ZoomRegistration Required: https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/2021-munro-beattie-lecture\/  For more information, visit: https:\/\/carleton.ca\/english\/cu-events\/2020-21-munro-beattie-lecture\/, or contact Professor Janne Cleveland. This year, for the first time in its thirty-five-year history, the Munro Beattie lecture will be delivered by a graphic novelist, the celebrated Canadian comics creator who publishes under the name of Seth. Entitled \u201cInkwell\u2019s End,\u201d the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[602],"cu_story_tag":[],"class_list":["post-28364","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","hentry","cu_story_type-munro-beattie"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/28364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/28364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35982,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/28364\/revisions\/35982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=28364"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=28364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}