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What It Is

4.18 of 5 stars 4.18 · rating details · 2,212 ratings · 331 reviews

“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 thro

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Hardcover, 208 pages

Published May 13th 2008 by Drawn and Quarterly

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Jun 11, 2008 jess rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to jess by: lynda barry

Shelves: 2008

THE ORDINARY IS EXTRAORDINARY. i love this book like i have never loved a book. i want to make out with it, caress it, sleep with it near my pillow and wake up clutching it after a bad dream.

this book is related to the Lynda Barry writing class WRITING THE UNTHINKABLE! which i took in april. this class and book are for people who think they want to write, but don't know where to start. it's also for people who never thought about writing, people who already write, and people who like other peop...more

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Nov 14, 2008 Kevin Fanning rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: totally-worth-owning

I got this from the library but will be buying myself a copy post-haste.

This is what a book about writing should be. It was really interesting to read this so soon after Stephen King's "On Writing", because it really underlined how far short of the target his book fell.

A book about writing should do the following things:
* inspire you
* provide insight/discussion on the tools a writer needs
* offer framework for developing the skills of creativity.

This book does all of those things, but it's heavi...more I got this from the library but will be buying myself a copy post-haste.

This is what a book about writing should be. It was really interesting to read this so soon after Stephen King's "On Writing", because it really underlined how far short of the target his book fell.

A book about writing should do the following things:
* inspire you
* provide insight/discussion on the tools a writer needs
* offer framework for developing the skills of creativity.

This book does all of those things, but it's heaviest on the inspiration, which is where I think the focus should be. Look. The fact is anyone can write, but we get caught up in self-doubt. This book is about training your brain to work through that self-doubt, which is the most important thing for any person engaged in any type of creative endeavor.

This book is the tools, the inspiration, and the oblique strategies, all rolled up in one.

It's not perfect; the introduction is gorgeous and worth lingering over, but it goes on for a bit before you get to the actual heart of the issue. And I would have liked a little more wrap-up at the end; a bit more about the larger sense of why you should be interested in writing and developing the skills she espouses in this book (i.e. because it's good for you.) As it was it felt like she kicked me out of the end of the book a little abruptly.

And note that I haven't actually done any of the exercises she lists in the book, but I took away enough that I feel like I can apply them to the stuff I'm currently stuck on.

This is important work Lynda Barry is doing, and it was immensely helpful to me. She talks about how these are lessons that we can take to heart, but we will forget them, and we will need to continually relearn them. And I'm glad she put light on that and made it safe space; it was a huge relief to hear someone as amazing as her give voice to something that we all struggle with.

If you have this and a copy of Art & Fear on your shelf, I feel like you're going to be unstoppable.

Thumbs up, you guys. (less)

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Jul 25, 2008 Jennifer rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-books

What It Is by Lynda Barry is a fascinating memoir/scrapbook/writing guide that almost defies definition. The first half of the book contains melancholic comic panels about Barry's alienated childhood and how drawing and writing saved her from loneliness interspersed with large one and two page spreads of collages that contain great writing prompts, like "Do thoughts move?" "What is a secret? What is it made of? Where is it kept?" "What is a monster? Do we need them?" The second half of the book...more

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Dec 04, 2012 Parka rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: art-books

(More pictures at parkablogs.com)

This book screamed "Buy me!" when I saw it at the Drawn & Quarterly booth at San Diego Comic Con 2009. It is that good!

With a brush in the right hand, and a pencil on the left, the multi-eyed monster on the back cover spoked, "Welcome to writing the unthinkable". That's the essence of this book created by Lynda Barry, putting vivid imagination onto paper.

What It Is is a scrapbook that's filled to the brim with sketches, coloured illustrations, collages, comi...more

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Jan 17, 2009 Phoebe added it

Shelves: comics

Lynda Barry's latest is more of an artist journal/workbook than a comic book. There are only about thirty pages, maybe, of comics, which are very close to the style and autobiographical content of One Hundred Demons. The loose story of the comics, the surrounding pages, and the instruction manual for journaling that takes up the book's final third, surrounds the maturation of both Barry's creative process and her burgeoning childhood self-consciousness. In the workbook "section", she tries to di...more

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Aug 24, 2009 Raina rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: biographical, adult, feminist, funny, graphic-memoir, local-interest, nonfic, psychological

Totally impressive collage/graphic novel rumination on writing and drawing, with exercises and everything!

I lo-lo-loved One Hundred Demons, but I loved it because I identified with her story, and I think it was a slightly more focused structure - story/collage/story/collage. This is a little more mixed and messy, focusing more on the collage, with cool exercises for becoming more inspired as a writer/draw-er. To me, Barry's collages are a bit messy/unfocused - I don't know where to look. I prefe...more

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Dec 16, 2008 edh rated it 5 of 5 stars

Lynda Barry takes readers on a visual exploration of insecurities and uncertainties about the world in What It Is. Barry's obsession with storytelling and authenticity shines as she reflects on incidents in her life that led her to express herself through words and drawings. She reflects on whether childhood is a place or a time in one's life, and whether the past isn't an integral part of your present experience that you can draw on to help the creative process. The book contains many ideas, qu...more

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Oct 01, 2008 Meredith rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: gn, ya

I would put this into the hands of anyone who wants to explore the creative process. This book is about memory and inspiration and drawing and writing and self-doubt and criticism (for good or bad), and it has questions that prompt a writer or an artist to think big thoughts and writing exercises to help focus things onto the page. She talks a lot about the relationship of objects to memory and to images...and a lot about her creative process and plus, the book just looks cool, period.
I should s...more

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Dec 11, 2012 Hannah rated it 3 of 5 stars

What it is by: Lynda Barry

Have you ever thought about who you are? Or what are the demons inside of you? If you have not, the book What it is will get you thinking. about that. What it is by: Lynda Barry is an interesting and meaningful book. It makes you think a lots out things that you do not often think about and makes you realize things that you may have not realized about yourself before.
In this book, you will read a short story about a real experience that Lynda Barry experienced. Some o...more What it is by: Lynda Barry

Have you ever thought about who you are? Or what are the demons inside of you? If you have not, the book What it is will get you thinking. about that. What it is by: Lynda Barry is an interesting and meaningful book. It makes you think a lots out things that you do not often think about and makes you realize things that you may have not realized about yourself before.
In this book, you will read a short story about a real experience that Lynda Barry experienced. Some of the stories that are in the book are about Lynda Barry thinking about monsters, her history with drawing, her thoughts about her childhood, etc. After the short story, there will be several thinking questions, or as they call them, essay questions. For example, what is an image? What makes us remember things? Is there a difference between memory and remembering? What is a monster? What is the past? What is the future? These are only a couple of examples, although there are many more. You will just have to read the book to hear more! The questions usually relate to the story. If they do not, it probably relates to the next one. At the end of the book, the last 50 pages or so, there are several activities to do to help you understand what some of the questions mean. And of course, throughout the book, there are many pictures to help you visualize what is going on. It even says on the cover that it is illustrated with a lot of colored pictures!
This layout makes a lot of sense because you ﬁrst read the story, then you have time to think and reﬂect about the story through thinking questions, and then you can start thinking about the next story through other thinking questions.
I really enjoyed the short story's because Lynda Barry writes it in a way where you can really connect and understand how she was feeling at the time. I think that Lynda Barry was very good at describing how she felt at the time so we could really feel what she was feeling at the time. Lynda Barry is also a fantastic artist, so I really enjoyed the drawings. The pictures really told a story and helped create the mood of the story. One thing that I wish that the author did was not do as many thinking questions, and do more short story's. Of course, the questions were great and made me think about things that I do not usually think about often, but I really enjoyed the short story's and I wish there were more of them.
I think that people who like more abstract books and like to reﬂect more about themselves should read this book. This book leaves you thinking and does not give you any answers, because there are no "right" answers to the thinking questions. The questions they give you are more abstract than other everyday questions, such as
math questions, etc.

My rating: ***

Barry, Lynda. What It Is. Montreal: n.p., 2008. Print.(less)

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Nov 09, 2012 Mikell rated it 5 of 5 stars

Lynda's illustrations and words are mesmerizing and wildly imaginative! She uses self disclosure to encourage us to look within. My mind was racing with childhood memories and neighborhoods, reflections, introspection. To describe her book without the graphics can only give a fractional view. You must see it - each page is a work of art.

She describes the value of discovering books. "My parents weren't reading people. They worked, shouted, drank, slapped, belted and were broke. . . Bedtime was a...more

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Aug 19, 2011 Bonnie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

This book really inspired me and I loved the memoir parts where she recounts issues she faced growing up. I don't pursue many "artistic" or "crafty" things and this book just brought to my attention what might be lost by not having some sort of artistic type of outlet. She also points out the major reasons most adults abandon drawing, writing, singing, etc and I completely agreed with her on those (and I had never really considered the reasons before). I don't draw because I think I'm terrible a...more

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Apr 12, 2011 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a book about prompting your creativity particularly WRITING. It is broken up into four sections plus a last peach page with lists the acknowledgments.
SECTION 1: Light royal blue paper up to p. 135 is Lynda reflecting on youth and her relationship with herself. There are dozens of questions posed that you could use to begin a writing exercise. An important point in this section is to PHYSICALLY WRITE and/or physically put yourself IN MOTION for any art (computer has its place) but you mu...more

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Mar 22, 2011 Ollie rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: creative writing students

Recommended to Ollie by: Kevin

This is the most beautiful and fun creative writing book I've ever read (and I've read quite a few of them.) It's a mixture of graphic novel, art collage and creative exercises to get your imagination flowing and your pencil moving. Lynda's way of getting to a story is through the exploration of the image and the reclaiming of playfulness (remember when you told stories and drew pictures just for fun?) Her exercises are simple but effective, and her point is that writing lies in the exploration...more

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May 01, 2010 Sharon rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novel, humor, realistic-fiction, favorites

This is the book Lynda Barry was talking about at the Printer's Row Book Fair last summer. It is basically about her creative past and the creative process itself and how it relates to life. The first part of the book is a beautifully done combination of collage and drawing recounting some of Lynda's childhood memories of just beginning to draw and express herself, and her encounters of writer's block. She compares writing and creativity to the hours of play you had when you were a child, just m...more This is the book Lynda Barry was talking about at the Printer's Row Book Fair last summer. It is basically about her creative past and the creative process itself and how it relates to life. The first part of the book is a beautifully done combination of collage and drawing recounting some of Lynda's childhood memories of just beginning to draw and express herself, and her encounters of writer's block. She compares writing and creativity to the hours of play you had when you were a child, just making things up as you went along without stopping, and says that the two big questions that prevent adults from achieving this are "Is this good?" and "Does this suck?". Her basic philosophy is that only when you push yourself past these questions and work without stopping to think can you achieve the state of effortless creation that came so easily in childhood.

The second part of the book is instructional and based on a course Lynda teaches called "Writing the Unthinkable." It is now my dream to take this course someday, but until then I can't wait to try some of the exercises in the book. Out of all the books on writing I have read, this is the only one that offered such a practical, nuts-and-bolts method instead of just giving general advice like writing every day in a notebook and using prompts. Barry highlights a very specific method of working beginning with a noun, then the first ten memories of that noun, and from there short bursts of timed free-writing where you tap basic images focusing on one of those memories without stopping---continuing to move your pen making spirals or the alphabet when you get stuck. One of the most amazing aspects of Barry's work to me is how she is able to so vividly recall childhood memories that I was sure I had forgotten, and she says in the book that once she learned this specific way of writing (she credits a teacher she had in art school) a lot of these opened up to her. Perhaps the highest praise I can give this book is it inspired me to start writing by hand in a notebook again. This book is very successful both in showing one very specific method of how to work, and the beautiful creative results of that method.(less)

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Mar 04, 2010 Bruce rated it 4 of 5 stars

From http://flyingsinger.blogspot.com/2009...

What do the following things have in common?

Writing this blog
Studying Japanese
Learning to fly light airplanes
Writing and recording an astronomy podcast
Learning to fly simulated spacecraft in Orbiter
Writing and recording songs
Being a Solar System Ambassador

For me, these have all been forms of "adult play," what Lynda Barry calls creative concentration (I'm not doing all these things now, but I have invested significant time and energy in all of them ov...more From http://flyingsinger.blogspot.com/2009...

What do the following things have in common?

Writing this blog
Studying Japanese
Learning to fly light airplanes
Writing and recording an astronomy podcast
Learning to fly simulated spacecraft in Orbiter
Writing and recording songs
Being a Solar System Ambassador

For me, these have all been forms of "adult play," what Lynda Barry calls creative concentration (I'm not doing all these things now, but I have invested significant time and energy in all of them over the last 35 years or so). I just discovered this idea of "creative concentration as adult play" in her amazing book, What It Is, a sort of graphical... something or other. Journal. Writing workshop. Comic book. Memoir. Self-help book. All of the above. More than the above.

I've always had a feeling that creativity is an important part of my life. I strive to put creativity into the work I do in my job, and I have had success and satisfaction with that. But it's the work that I don't have to do that seems to demand the most in the creativity department. It takes a lot of time and energy (and sometimes money) - so why do this stuff at all? Is there a shortage of songs that I need to make up? Does the world need this blog? Does it need another private pilot? Does it matter that I know how to dock a simulated space shuttle with a simulated space station? Probably not to anyone but me. But one of the points that Barry indirectly makes in What It Is is that creating something is an experience worth having - regardless of what it is that is created.

Of course it's hard to avoid the inner critics, with questions like "does this suck?" and "what's the point of this?" - but it's important to learn to ignore them at least during the creative process, and to recognize that when you re-read or review something you write or otherwise create, that "critic" is not the same part of your mind as the part that did the creating. The critic has a different agenda (like maybe preventing embarrassment). Barry suggests for writing exercises that you not read them over for at least a week! Of course my "critic" re-read this blog post an hour after it was written and discovered an incomplete sentence!

As I read this over, I realize that it sounds like "the journey is its own reward" or some similar cliche. But it's more than that. She has pages upon heavily-illustrated pages that ask questions like what is playing? What are thoughts? What is self-consciousness? When did you stop drawing pictures, and why? There are also exercises adapted from her writing workshops, so there are specific things you can do with this book. But overall, it seems more like a primer on trying by not trying, on seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary, on discovering (or rediscovering) the wonder of your own creativity.

I feel lucky to still have some of that sense of wonder, especially with music - when I write a new song and record a simple demo, I will listen to it over and over, amazed that this little collection of words and harmonious sound structures, which didn't exist yesterday, now does exist. Maybe it's good, maybe it's not, but it's still amazing, and I sometimes even experience that "floaty feeling" that Barry describes from her childhood (for her it came from drawing lines on paper and having them become something).

I think I need to try drawing again too! (less)

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Dec 19, 2008 Kate rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, adult, senior-high, memoir

I can remember loving to draw and write and imagine as a child. I can also remember a later time when I stopped doing those things; when there were the good drawers and writers and the rest of us just stopped trying. I can't remember what changed in between those times. What was the event that made me stop drawing and writing and making stories? Lynda Barry examines that question in her own life in What It Is.

The first half of this beautiful graphic novel is a short autobiography of Barry's lif...more

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Feb 11, 2013 Jennie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: art, autobiography

This was my introduction to Lynda Barry and her swirling, dreamy artistic vision. I love octopuses and monsters and so I am pretty much contractually obligated to like this, but what I really enjoyed was how much it challenged me. Parts of this book hit on things that were painfully dead on and personal - the recognition was delightfully shocking. But part of me struggled because I sometimes found Barry's work...sort of, well ugly. Not pleasing, chaotic. I think that's the point, as she mentions...more

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Jun 16, 2009 Jane rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: visual-narratives

Barry does it again! I love the free way she uses collage along with her more customary brush and ink work. Meet the Magic Cephalopod who guides us to our imagery,Sea-Ma, the nonjudgmental writing instructor, and the Near-Sighted Monkey who likes to clip magazines while watching TV and drinking beer.

6/16/09 I now own a copy of this book with my very own personal inscription from the author! She even drew a near-sighted monkey for me!

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Jan 09, 2011 Charlene rated it 5 of 5 stars

I discovered Lynda Barry in the 80s when she was doing Ernie Pook's Comeek. Something about it rubbed me the wrong way. The drawing was clunky, people had noses that were too big or some other imaginary graphical infraction that bugged me at the time. So imagine my surprise 20 years later when i rediscovered her as a teacher of creativity of sorts. I can't even tell you what this book is about, exactly. Imagine you accidentally find someone's childhood journal. It's full of intense and intricate...more

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May 01, 2010 Jackie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010, wishlist

OH. MY. GOODNESS. I LOVE LOVE LOVED this book. It was just such a refreshing treat of a book, simultaneously a story about the author's history of art in its many forms, an instructional guide with activities to help you brainstorm ideas, and a great big piece of art itself, embedded with philisophical questions regarding images and the act of creating. I've seen plenty of art instruction that is dry and uninspiring, but this is quite the opposite. As you progress through the book, you see that...more

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Sep 14, 2009 Rachel Ann Brickner rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir, graphic-novels, writing, illustrated, favorites, read-in-2009

"What It Is" by Lynda Barry is part journal, scrapbook, sketchpad, self-help book, memoir, and writing exercise book, so I find it rather limiting to think of it as solely a journal. However, I suppose this book asks us to look at how we define the boundaries of a journal in the first place. "What It Is" is not a journal in the traditional sense. It is a journal that has been compiled with an audience in mind and with well-crafted pages in which the image often corresponds with the words, such a...more "What It Is" by Lynda Barry is part journal, scrapbook, sketchpad, self-help book, memoir, and writing exercise book, so I find it rather limiting to think of it as solely a journal. However, I suppose this book asks us to look at how we define the boundaries of a journal in the first place. "What It Is" is not a journal in the traditional sense. It is a journal that has been compiled with an audience in mind and with well-crafted pages in which the image often corresponds with the words, such as the narrative pages of Barry’s story about her artistic inhibition and her later freedom. I find the correspondence between Barry’s images and words in these narrative sections interesting as a few people have pointed out that they appreciated these sections the most. This is an important aspect of Barry’s project because it shows the power of image-word correspondence, and perhaps how images and words can compliment and reinforce one another.

The image-word correspondence is not quite as obvious on the other pages of "What It Is", but I found them fascinating nonetheless. I liked how they forced my brain to work harder than I do when just reading text as I was trying to find associations between the images and the words. I enjoyed this type of reading because it refuses linearity. My eye wandered around the page, completely stimulated, looking for order and understanding, yet I didn’t find it frustrating. Rather, I found it inspiring because it felt somewhat more organic, personal, and intuitive. In the end, I didn’t find it necessary to make sense of it; rather I enjoyed processing the image-word layers of each page.

I have had a similar experience with Sabrina Ward Harrison’s books. There is something about the organized chaos of her work, and her mentor SARK’s work, that I find completely inspiring and comforting. Perhaps it is because the collage and handwritten element of it makes it seem more “alive” as Barry might argue. Handwriting itself is an image that works to give form to a larger image and there is something about the individuality of Barry, Harrison, and SARK’s work that feels more personable, and because of that, more alive. Perhaps this is why journaling, particularly handwritten journaling, can be so therapeutic and why reading others’ journals is so interesting; we feel like we are being let into a private universe that is made public via our reading of it.

"What It Is" borders the line between a public and private document in that we are given pages that are purposefully rendered, such as the narrative sequences, yet we are also given pages at the end from Barry’s “actual” journal, which she kept while making the book. These pages are rougher and seemingly more spontaneous. Thus, by including these initial journal pages, Barry points to a layering here of initial artistic inspiration later molded by craft and thoughtful editing. I again found this comforting and inspiring because it calls attention to the journal as a place for beginnings, a place to be ugly, spontaneous, associative, nonsensical, sentimental, and a little crazy. As a writing teacher once told me, you have to let yourself be stupid in the composing process and to trust where your writing, or I would argue any artistic medium, is taking you. Otherwise, you may think yourself out of something fabulous.

I think this is what Barry is trying to get at when she instructs the reader to keep moving their pen or brush whenever they are blocked and can’t keep writing, drawing, or painting. Why not just enjoy the movement of your pen, pencil, or paintbrush and see what happens? This is scary because it requires a letting go of sorts and a trusting of the self that thinking does not allow. That’s why I love what Barry says on one of her initial journal pages at the end of the book. She says, “The thinking part of you / is not the doing part of you / or the experiencing part of you / The thinking part of you can / tell you that a decision has / been made but it’s not the / part of you which decides things / This is why thinking is not / the same as creating though / The thinking part of us seems / completely unaware of this” (207).

Although one might argue that Barry’s book is illogical or seemingly random, I think that it accomplishes far more than the typical journal. It forces us to question the difference of forms made by images and words, and it allows us to see what can be accomplished by combining them. Furthermore, Barry’s journal inspired me to continue really looking at things, even the most mundane old letters, stamps, and postcards for inspiration in order to shape how I see the world and what I find to be beautiful, ugly, upsetting, and exciting. I suppose in this way, I have already been keeping a journal similar to Barry’s, yet not quite as structured.

For example, over the summer, I received a lot of mail at my job, and I never saw so much interesting postage! I began to tear off the upper right hand corner of every envelope I received, and I collected them in my journal. I’m not quite sure why I initially did this, but I thought each stamp was so strange and unique, and it just made me happy to look at them in between my words as I flipped through the pages. These stamps were able to give form to a certain aspect of my summer that I didn’t think could be expressed any better in words, and in fact, I thought was better left alone. Perhaps this is why Barry’s seemingly random use of artifacts from others’ lives and its manipulation of those artifacts in order to make a page more interesting and beautiful is what I appreciate about it the most.(less)

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May 14, 2011 Rachel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: art, graphic-novels, life-experiences, memoir, textbooks-and-instructional, the-writers-craft, literature-as-subject, love-or-something-like-it, absolute-favorites, books-i-own, female-perspective, gorgeous, invincible-spirit, non-fiction, renowned-illustrator, creative-inspiration

First, let’s start with what Lynda Barry’s graphic novel is not: drab, ordinary, boring. As an intellectual rhapsody of the power of image, form, and function within writing, What It Is is unlike any book I’ve ever experienced: undeniably an oddity– although wonderfully so. Barry’s stylized use of color, text, imagery, and wording is gorgeous, and the thoughts/questions that she poses are intuitively reflective. Her “essay” questions (which bear the post script “we do not know the answers”) cove...more

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Apr 27, 2011 Paula rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 50-book-challenge

This book was recommended as a starting point for a creative writing course that someone else was planning. I was intrigued, so I checked it out of the library and "read" it. I put that in quotations because it's not really a book you read. The first pages are incredibly dense with seemingly random words and images, questions as to the meanings of memory and image, interspersed with autobiographical interludes from the life of the author. Towards the end of the book, Ms Barry offers some interes...more

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Aug 28, 2011 Taka rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: writing_reference, iu-fall-2011

Good--

Reminded me of Gabriel Rico's Writing the Natural Way minus all the convincing (and old?) scientific background. One practical thing I took away from this is the power of doodling, which Rico also mentions in her book. Another is her simple exercise that may be useful in teaching creative writing.

Anyways, I'll probably try writing by hand and see how that experience is different from banging away on a computer. I do think Barry has a point when she says that we should write slowly and that...more

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Aug 25, 2008 Jay rated it 2 of 5 stars

What It Is began with a philosophical bang. Are dreams autobiography or fiction? Do imaginary enemies exist? And while I appreciate these existential debates for the duration of a conversation, my mind was not in it for the long haul. I can't fault the book for being ambitious. I'm just a simple guy.

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Dec 07, 2010 Bonnie G. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: always-favorite, funny-books, goddamn-hippie, hey-hey-ladies, surreaaaal

I write my journal in pen. On paper. With a very nice pen. And sometimes I doodle. I used to doodle a lot more. I used to write a lot more. Lynda Barry won me over with Cruddy and her strips (and don't you just love her fax correspondence with Matt Groening?); and the magic in this book is hard to over-state. Who hasn't had to take a long walk and still feel like things will never feel better, that one isn't creative, that all thoughts have been done, that one isn't worth STOP THAT- those scary...more

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Apr 14, 2010 Larry Strattner rated it 5 of 5 stars

If you are interested in writing (and cartooning) this is a must-read book.

Parts of the book are positively existential; other parts fun exercises and great thought starters.

I have ordered a copy because there is so much value in having it at hand.(My first read was at the library.)

I recently missed an opportunity to hear Lynda speak and passed. I am kicking myself. I didn't know who she was. While reading this book I discover she is one of the original underground cartoonists, has a strip stil...more

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Sep 16, 2012 Sara rated it 3 of 5 stars

I have admittedly limited experience with Barry's comics (though I hope to remedy this!) Suffice it to say that I've read a few Marlys strips on tumblr and an NYT profile, and I wanted to read something else by her. This was what my library had, so I checked it out.

"What It Is" is not a book so much as an experience. A convoluted, kind of perplexing experience. I enjoyed the few narrative Segues Barry took, but the bulk of the book was a kind of pep talk for people who have lost touch with thei...more

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Mar 04, 2013 Isobel rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is absolutely beautiful, every page is full of gorgeous collage and pictures. I feel like this is the book was made for me yet I hadn't even heard of Lynda Barry up until a couple of months ago. Her drawings and style are just how I aspire my own work to be, and they're actually weirdly similar in a lot of ways. I loved the parts about Barry's childhood and would have liked more of this writing than just blank collage in the first half I think, especially because those pages were so fu...more

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Feb 24, 2009 Terry rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, graphic-art

I love, love, love Lynda Barry with a kind of helpless, adoring love.

If I am remembering correctly, this book sort of picks up on writing/art/creativity "advice" (can't think of another word at the moment) she explores briefly in 'One! Hundred! Demons!' and expands it into a full-length book. This is sort of The Artist's Way, but for, you know, VISUAL people. It's a meditation on creativity and art and autobiography and imagination, along with some exercises. Honestly, if you're looking about f...more

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Genres

Sequential Art > Graphic Novels

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Art

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Sequential Art > Comics

64 users

Language > Writing

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Non Fiction

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Autobiography > Memoir

26 users

Sequential Art > Comix

11 users

Graphic Novels Comics

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Poetry

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How To

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About Lynda Barry

Lynda Barry is an American cartoonist and author, perhaps best known for her weekly comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek.

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Quotes from What It Is

“There are certain children who are told they are too sensitive, and there are certain adults who believe sensitivity is a problem that can be fixed in the way that crooked teeth can be fixed and made straight. And when these two come together you get a fairytale, a kind of story with hopelessness in it.

I believe there is something in these old stories that does what singing does to words. They have transformational capabilities, in the way melody can transform mood.

They can't transform your actual situation, but they can transform your experience of it. We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay. I believe we have always done this, used images to stand and understand what otherwise would be intolerable.” — 73 people liked it

“What year is it in your imagination?” — 12 people liked it

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What It Is

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