Banned Book Month Guest Post from Liniers: On Dangerous-Sounding Books
I was, what, fourteen, fifteen? Kevin Bacon had moved into a new town. He didn’t have any friends. He had Sting’s hair. And he sure liked to dance. Especially if he was really angry. He’d go into a dramatically lit barn and dance out his anger like an intense Tasmanian Devil. Anyway. Why was he so angry? They didn’t want him and Michael Penn to organize a dance. Dancing was illegal! I’d be angry too. Marty McFly didn’t have this problem with the Enchantment under the Sea Dance. And that was around the McCarthy era of the fifties. I was confused “What’s wrong with these people?” I thought to myself. “What kind of crazy movie is this? Also… Who is this Kurt Vonnegut whose book has parents of this kooky town, especially that pompous, Bible thumping John Lithgow, all riled up? Did they say SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE? That sounds like a horror book.”
Dell, Reprint Edition, 1991.
In the early eighties, Argentina was coming out of a bloody dictatorship and we were fed up with banning in general. It was the time of no English music on the radios, banning a whole language. How could we want to listen to Queen if we were at war with England?
And some books just make people think a little too much about things. I remember some old curmudgeon on TV saying that universities were for learning, not thinking.
Too much thinking provokes subversive states of mind, which in turn lead inevitably to terrorism.
Thinking too much…
But those terrifying days were gone. The warped minds behind a systematic agenda for disappearing people (and thought) from our country were standing trial. We were living in a brand new democracy. We could listen to Queen if we wanted to. We had broken free. We were ready Freddie. We where the champions of the world. And this literally came about in the World cup of 86.
Even more confusion on my part as I wondered “So what’s going on in this town? They are burning books?” Wasn’t the USA a strong democracy? Why were they burning books in this movie? “And what the fuck is wrong with dancing?”
I decided I should get my hands on this SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE book. I would definitely impress people with my dangerous intellectual prowess. Probably my sisters pretty friends would think:
”Who is this dangerous guy reading these dangerous books”… (Sadly, that never happened.)
I went to my parents bookshelves and searched for Vonnegut. Nope. Nevermind. I would find another dangerous sounding book.
And so it began: I went from J. D. Salinger to Henry Miller. From García Marquez to Kerouac. From Kafka to Borges. My parents had some pretty decent books. Some were hard to get into. Others I could’t put down.
Enchanted Lion Books, October 2015.
I remember a teacher asking “What are you reading there, Siri?” And when she saw it was Tropic of Cancer she gave me this worried look that made me feel like Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones.
Still, SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE was nowhere to be found in my parents house or in Argentine bookstores.
My parents traveled to the US when the eighties where about to come to their wall topling end. I asked them to bring me two books Art Spiegelman’s MAUS and Kurt Vonnegut’s SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE.
I remember getting these books when they came back. Running to my bedroom. I kicked off my Sunday shoes. And began reading.
Everybody cut footloose!
Liniers. Photo by Nora Lezano.
Ricardo “Liniers” Siri is an Argentine cartoonist who is beloved in Latin America for his wildly successful decade-long comic strip MACANUDO, published in the prestigious Buenos Aires newspaper La Nación, and for his colorful, on-stage concert collaborations with Grammy-nominated musician Kevin Johansen. His MACANUDO strip has won him fans throughout the world as well as hundreds of thousands of fans on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. It has also won him comparisons to the cartoonist heavyweights Charles Schultz and Bill Watterson. An artist with one foot in cartooning and the other in illustration, Liniers exists at the crossroads where commentary, politics, culture and comics come together. And like all of the great cartoonists of the past, his work is informed by historic and literary references, from Narnia and Lewis Carroll to Maus and even Stephen Colbert.
Liniers has also created outstanding picture books for TOON Books, with Françoise Mouly. When TOON published THE BIG WET BALLOON in 2013 he was virtually unknown in the United States. Since then, he’s made his mark with the publication of the first volumes of his MACANUDO (which means cool, neat, nice) series, discovered and published by Enchanted Lion, with wonderful translations by Mara Lethem, and has landed three New Yorker Magazine covers as well: “Straphangers”, “The Elephant in the Room” and “Hipster Stole.”
For someone with no name recognition in the US just a couple of years ago, there is now a lot of buzz and excitement around his fresh and innovative work. One of the most compelling aspects of his work is that he is not detached. He takes the world as it is as his material, but instead of being cool and ironic in the face of it, he remains curious and open.
He started to publish MACANUDO in La Nacíon early in the 21st century, when political and daily life in Argentina were terrible and the prevailing attitude was very pessimistic. Instead of focusing on the big picture, which was awful, he decided to focus his strip on the little things––the teeny, tiny good things that are always there, but get lost in the big picture.
Liniers travels with a notebook and his watercolors and writes and draws no matter where he is. And those of us who know him have all seen it: the brush dipping into the glass of tap water as continues to eat and drink, drawing and responding to the world around him all the while.
Liniers has created well over 3,600 published comic strips, has published over twenty-five books in Spanish, and has published more than ten books in nine countries, from Brazil to France, Italy, and the Czech Republic. His first book to be published in English, THE BIG WET BALLOON has been both a critical and popular success was nominated for an Eisner award and was selected as a best book of 2013 by Parents Magazine. His MACANUDO volumes have also received starred reviews and nominations. Moreover, the fourth volume of to appear in French was recently selected for the 2014 Angouléme Festival. Together with his wife Angie, Liniers also founded the comics publisher La Editorial Común, which publishes Latin American comics and Spanish translations of European and American comics. Liniers lives in Buenos Aires with his wife and three daughters––Matilda, Clementina, and Emma… No penguins though…Yet.
MACANUDO #3 (Enchanted Lion) and WRITTEN AND DRAWN BY HENRIETTA (TOON) will both be published in October 2015.
