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AG: Are you a conservative ? WD: I’m pretty liberal. A Democrat for sure. If you’re my age and have been paying attention to politics at all for the last 20 years, it’s pretty much impossible to see the Republican Party as anything but a mess. I want very much to keep an open mind and listen to all viewpoints and perspectives. Ablatio Penis is an exercise in that thinking. As a citizen, I’m pretty angry. As a creator, I want my characters to be as well-rounded and real as possible. |
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AG: There’s a particular theme of avoidance in this story -- the way you’ve structured the panels is so simple but gives leeway to so many details. None of the characters seem to ever have to talk to each other directly because of the politics in play. |
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WD: That’s interesting. I hadn’t intended that to be a theme for this book. However, It’s definitely a central concern in Trying Not to Notice. I like reading stories where the the reader can sometimes know a little more than the character. |
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AG: TRYING NOT TO NOTICE is a story piecing together four points of view – that of a failed comedian, an aspiring comedian and his wife, and that comedian’s co-worker accountant friend. A sort of morality tale plays itself out where you expose the most morally rewarding character’s artificiality. Did the other characters enable him? WD: My perspective is that each of the characters is avoiding or ignoring something about their lives. However, you can’t see that part through their eyes alone. You need to get a glimpse of them through someone else. I know a cartoonist who found out at the age of 30 that he was autistic. He had no idea for much of his adult life. Of course, those of us who knew him had a hunch. We probably all have something like that about ourselves. It’s terrifying to think about. |
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AG: Summer (below) is a competent accountant, but she’s maybe also apathetic to everyone around her. Somehow this ends up becoming a benefit to her, and that has something to do with her relationship to beauty. How do you feel entertainment industry culture affects the characters ? |
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WD: The entertainment industry just works really well as a frame for stories about modern life. It seems like so many people that I know (myself included) “perform” more than we would if social media didn’t exist. In that sense, it’s a way to talk about presentation, entertainment and beauty and how we think about those things without feeling like I’m an old man yelling at a cloud. |
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AG: This next page (above) is probably one of the most striking pages in the story for me, probably because I’ve never witnessed such a landslide in a character-driven plot like this before. Amanda is introduced very late in the story, yet ends up confirming who the main character of the story is – it’s great! It made me feel as if I had been reading a mystery, but definitely experimental. Do you have any type of genre writing in your past? WD: Thanks! I very much enjoy genre. My belief is that all stories fall into some type of genre. I’d love to write a mystery or thriller someday. Graham Greene is one of my favorite authors, and if I could write a thriller half as good as Brighton Rock, I could die happy. |