Product Details
What It Is

What It Is
By Lynda Barry

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Product Description

“Deliciously drawn (with fragments of collage worked into each page), insightful and bubbling with delight in the process of artistic creation. A+” —Salon
 
How do objects summon memories? What do real images feel like? For decades, these types of 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. What It Is demonstrates a tried-and-true creative method that is playful, powerful, and accessible to anyone with an inquisitive wish to write or to remember. Composed of completely new material, each page of Barry’s first Drawn & Quarterly book is a full-color collage that is not only a gentle guide to this process but an invigorating example of exactly what it is: “The ordinary is extraordinary.”

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #11397 in Books
  • Published on: 2008-05-13
  • Released on: 2008-05-13
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 209 pages

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Lynda Barry:

“Barry is, underneath the wonky handwriting and the quirky, naïve drawings, a great memoirist . . . Like [Tobias] Wolff and [Dave] Eggers, she finds a tone that accommodates self-criticism and self-irony without tipping over into self-loathing . . . but what she is particularly good at is resonance.” —The New York Times
 
“Barry is not just a storyteller, she’s an evangelist who urges people to pick up a pen—or a brush . . . and look at their own lives with fresh, forgiving eyes.” —San Francisco Chronicle
 
“America’s leading cartoon artist of childhood angst . . . The precise rightness of Barry’s smallest observation puts TV’s The Wonder Years to shame.” —Entertainment Weekly

About the Author

Cartoonist, novelist, and playwright Lynda Barry is the creator behind the
syndicated strip Ernie Pook’s Comeek, featuring the incomparable Marlys and Freddy. Her books include One Hundred Demons and The Good Times Are Killing Me.

Customer Reviews

Pure Lynda Barry Experience, get your creative juices going or just marvel at hers5
This is the essence of the creative writing course Lynda Barry gives around the country these days. It conveys the course stuff beautifully, AND is a work of art in its own right. Not a rehash of her other books in any way, it just worms its way into your mind.

Every page is beautiful, every page contains insights into creativity, every page is just plain fun (or just scary fun), and it has everything you need to apply the writing method Lynda uses in your own work.

You really can write out of your own memories, and come up with something that isn't drivel. Get the book and try it. And join Lynda in tipping your hat to Marilyn Frasca, who originated the method.

this book is essential5
Have you ever needed jumper cables to revive your creative process? This book is essentially just that.
I have long been a Lynda Barry fan, but this is what a sense will be an essential reference book for any creative type. It bores down into just what makes one want to create and suggests exercises and steps to get whatever festers inside you out.
To say that it has prompted me to fine tune my and understand my writing in much more depth would be an understatement. It also has gotten my to pick up my pencil and draw/sketch for the 1st time in over 15 years.
I am pretty sure i will be constantly reading and rereading this as i further hone the creation craft.
if you crave creation in any form, this book is a must.

Way exceeded my expectations! The coolest book I own!5
I ordered this after reading about it on Kelly Kilmer's blog, where she highly praised this repeatedly and made me think that I was missing out on something wonderful if I didn't buy it.
So I bought it, and what I found out is that I had been missing out on something wonderful!!

I couldn't be more happy that I bought this book! First of all this book surprised me in that it is nicely sized 8.5 x 11 (approx) and it's much THICKER than I had imaged it, and it's HARDCOVER.(I was expecting a soft cover magazine type book)So, after I admired the outside, and opened it up, I was even more impressed and excited with what I found!! Yes, I thought I was in comic book/collage/art journal/writing prompt heaven!! With so much to look at, I just about wore myself out trying to look at/read everything. -Which is also a nice thing about this book, I am highly doubting that you'd run out of things to look at or read here.

This is kinda like looking at one of your school friends notebook, or journal, except SO MUCH BETTER! There are comic book pictures, random thoughts, journal prompts, drawings, ideas, etc, etc, etc. This is an awesome and inspiring book. This tops the list of coolest books that I own!!