Liana Finck is a senior at Cooper Union. She just finished her first comic book, an adaption of Racine's Phedre which may or may not be published soon, and until recently was a blogger for Lilith.
Liana: well, it was about going to synagogue. And the reason I might be fired is because I decided to stop going to synagogue and just write. But I was the one who chose to go to synagogue - it was so open. They asked what I wanted to write a blog about and I said “I’ll go to synagogue” cause I thought it would be a good excuse to start going, cause I don’t like going. I don’t like it.
S: Why did you need an excuse?
L: well, cause I always really want to go again because I feel guilty and then it feels really nice to say the prayers and stuff and you don’t really understand them. But it’s weird cause there are all these communities and you’re breaking in and I’m not really good at just talking to people, so I wasn’t talking so much. And then I had stuff to do and they were not really paying me, so I stopped going.
S: Were they paying you anything?
L: five dollars a blog.
S: that’s not particularly remunerative.
L: no, well its cause it’s a feminist magazine and they don’t want women to work for free. But they know we recognize that they don’t have any money.
S: that seems kind of pointless.
L I used to intern for them a long time ago, and then five dollars was really exciting back then cause I was like, a sophomore in highschool. No I was a senior in highschool, it shouldn’t have seemed like a lot of money. But I guess like it was an internship.
…
L: What do you see in this project?
S: I just think its like… its like a great excuse to just talk with somebody for a long period of time. And people are really into it, you know? And it’s hard, because I’m so curious about people, I really want to know more about them than a lot of people would necessarily just talk about in a conversation. So it sort of gives me a context for that. Instead of like calling you up and going “I’m really curious about what you’re up to” I can say “would you do an interview?” It’s really about satisfying my own curiosity. And practice I guess.
L: and then you’re doing something
S: yeah, it’s active
L: its like being a … do something. Whenever I hang out with people I always have to tell myself that I’m going to be doing something, like I’m going to be studying their personalities. … I don’t usually do that if it’s someone I like, but if it’s someone I don’t like then I will decide not to hang out with them, and then I have to force myself to do it. The people I don’t like, they’re the kind of people that don’t like me. They’re the kind of people who don’t like to hang out but then they want a friend, but they don’t really like anyone, so they just choose me to hang out with.
S: Why, because you just absorb them?
L I don’t know. I think it’s just because I don’t have stuff to do either. So I want to hang out also. I have one friend and we don’t like each other. But I really like her.
…
S: who are you voting for?
L: I’m voting democrat. But I’m not going to vote in the primaries because I really like both of them. I think the woman part is really important to me.
S: I worry that it’s kind of mitigated by the fact that her husband was president first.
L: I feel like this is… not a reason to vote for someone, I feel like it’s really personal not political, but I feel like she gave up so much in marrying him. And I feel like she needs her revenge against him. He’s such an asshole to her.
S: I like Obama.
L: he’s very cute, yeah. … I want to see him win, but I can’t vote against her. I like her, I like that she’s an ambitious woman.
L: I don’t like those ones if they’re mean. Do you think hillary’s mean?
S: oh yeah.
L: she’s not mean, she’s ambitious, she’s not mean.
S: I think she’s mean.
L: I don’t think so.
S: Hillary? I think she’s definitely capable of being mean.
L: I don’t think so, I think she’s nice. I know mean people; mean people are usually very very, good looking. If they’re politicians they have those really white white teeth.
S: if I was running for president I’d probably whiten and straighten my teeth.
L: but she looks so natural. Wouldn’t you do it more than she does if you were a very ambitious woman?
…
S: Tell me about your art.
L: I want to be a different kind of comic artist, but I’m still not sure what kind that is. The reason I want to be one is that, I want to write and that I don’t want to make very very big statement paintings, because they’re boring to me. … But I still haven’t figured out how to present myself at school. I used to take drawing classes and I would show them these things, and I guess to my teachers they would look like Beatrice potter kind of things, like neat and cute, but they weren’t. I guess anything that’s small looks to them like that. And I look like someone who just wants to make cute drawings and wants to make a little bit of money and settle down in Maine and buy tea.
S: sounds nice to me.
L: sounds really nice! But I want to be an ambitious woman. So I want to say things, I want to tell a story. You can’t really tell a story in fine arts. As much. Well you can if you’re a painter, but I don’t know why I don’t want to be a painter.
S: Paintings bore me. I like things.
L: yeah things are very very good. There is one kid in my school who makes things and I don’t think anyone really gets him either. ‘Cause they’re not sculptures, they’re just… like he turns a baseball inside in a really really special way somehow.
…
S: So you make small, smaller pieces?
L: I make stuff that will fit in the scanner. Cause I want them to be reproducible in a book form.
S: What are you working on now?
L: I’m writing a story about a golem. About a family get together, and it’s kind of Jewish. I was using Jewish because I was going to publish it with the people who had the blog. The Jewish-feminist magazine.
S: what’s the magazine called?
L lilith. I’ve started with some illustrations and it was agonizing, how to do these illustrations so that they’re more than illustrations, so that they tell the story. I think that I’m a better artist than I am a writer because the writing’s kind of like, you can tell that I’m immature in it, somehow. You know how people write, and it’s too complicated? But then it also sounds ridiculous, and the writer doesn’t know they’re being ridiculous. Do you write? Stories and stuff?
S: sometimes.
L: you should send me some stuff.
S: I can do that. I’m trying to write about the narratives that people create in their lives.
L: I know, isn’t that amazing? That’s what this golem thing is about.
S: tell me about it! That’s what this project is about. Because this is like, I’m going to create a whole collection of people’s narratives. Or try to have these snapshots of people, where they are.
L: my mom’s is amazing. Hers is about… this isn’t true, she’s such a great artist right now, but she says she left the world of art and ambition because she married a very princely guy and he’s a doctor, and she raised a family and she left art. And she always dreams that she’s like, on a train or something, looking at crystals, but she leaves the crystals to go to the people, because she knows that that’s the only way to keep the crystals.
S: I don’t understand that.
L: it’s about people versus art. She chose people. In her narrative. But actually, I really think that that narrative is an art form.
S: it is an art form.
L: people are so interesting, everyone thinks of themselves really differently somehow.
Sam Dwyer
Hi there liana, how are you? I'm taking you up on your offer to read my 'lang essay. This is my fourth rewrite, and I'm finally happy with it.
Also, I transcribed our conversation! I'm going to work on editing it right now, but there was a tragedy - the tape stopped running right before we got to talk in depth about Racine and your golem project. Would you mind writing a little bit on them -what you were influenced by leading up to the project, what you tried to express with your work, how it disappointed you and then what happened with trying to get it published? Also about your ideas for the golem story, what you're trying to tell.
-sam
Hi Sam
Thanks for writing. Wow I love your essay! It's brilliant. If Lang doesn't want you, they are really stupid. Its terrific!! So full of interesting references, but with its own kind of movement. Are you showing it to a lot of people? What do they say?
I'm reading this book Speedboat by Renata Adler. I think you'd like it, maybe it's kind of dated, hm, it's so funny though. It is about being a journalist in the ?1960s?.
My writing node is shut off today but I will try to about Phedre and the Golem:
My habit of worshipping the classics makes my own work tend towards the crusty, the boxed in. The opposite of classy. I know it. The trick is to be able to love the old things without seeing the pedestals they stand on. One of my favorite poets is Robert Lowell. He has an extremely elegant touch with words and a huge stock of classics in his heart and on his brain, but he also takes pleasure in knocking things down. In one of his books, called Imitations, he translates various revered poems with a crazy twist of his own hand. His versions are funny, poignant, elastic, as I think all poetry is at the moment it is written. The surprises in a poem get lost over time, with the onset of fame and reverence. Lowell brings the surprise qualities back (by translating poems, he's teaching us a lesson about how to read poetry in general). Lowell also wrote a translation of Racine's play, Phedre--a play that is (to me) extremely funny and exhuberant in its original French. Phedre is itself an (I believe irreverent) take on a play called Hippolytus, by Euripides. Lowell's version is (to my mind) also really funny, whereas the numerous other English translations of it range from stuffiness to something finer, but still over-worshipful. Lowell gets it! My comic book, Phedre: a Comic Tragedy, was designed as an irreverent homage to Lowell, Racine, and imitation. However, the project proved too ambitious for me to pull off. It's hard to see the silliness of the translation--and the silliness of the whole idea of making a comic book version of an elaborate French play--behind all the noise on the insanely badly-organized pages. After I finished I went looking for a publisher. I found one through a family friend who might be interested in taking my book.
The Golem is a fictional Jewish Cooking Memoir, about a fictional kind of Judaism. Cooking memoirs full of delicious smells and loving family recipes really tickle me. This one is a memoir made of cardboard. I decided to write something with religion in it because I love the mystical earthiness of religious stories. My made-up version of Judaism will contain some things from other religions, and some things from no religion. Figuring out how to illustrate the story is puzzling, because I already wrote a lot of it without giving a thought to pictures, but I have a feeling that the images will help me lose certain constraints, so I'm trying hard to make the mixture work. I want the drawing style to range from sugary cookbook-type illustrations to fat magical creatures (there's a golem!), drawn in the vein of My Neighbor Totoro. Also, although the idea is a kind of cardboard collage of stereotypes, I don't want the story to be flatly diagrammatic. I'm adding some genuine thoughts and feelings but trying not to get too carried away with them.
aaah so pretentious!!!! i tried to write in a speach balloon, instead of like an essay. tell me if you think it's too hard to understand or needs cleaning up.
Did you do more interviews already?
Liana
Sam to Liana
I think its wonderful don't worry about it. If we weren't pretentious we'd never get anything done. I'll get back to you with something more complete in a few days - I'm at work now.
