To The Heights of The Golden Age
November 29, 2008 by Jesse Lonergan
Filed under NBM Blog
So what I’m working on is a book about Turkmenistan where I was a Peace Corps volunteer for a year and a half. It’s a dictatorship and while I was there the dictator was Turkmenbashy. He regularly made Parade’s top ten best dictator list (which is really the only real measuring stick for dictators). Before I went I heard Turkmenistan described as 1984 meets Disney World meets hallucinogens, which I found out is kind of accurate. My goal is to capture what it is like to live in this kind of a place. The story is really just about one Turkmen and his dreams of getting rich and marrying the prettiest girl in town, but I’m trying to cram everything in. I got a couple of crazy cab rides, one involving a back seat full of raw goat meat, another ending up stranded in the desert. Drunken nights, black eyes. A mysterious murder. A guy who thinks he’s Chuck Norris. English grammar jokes (no really)(they’re hilarious)(well maybe not)(but they’re as funny as count and non-count nouns can be). Hopefully I’ll get it all in by the end of March.
Say, Jesse–in FLOWER AND FADE, are the two main characters Asian? I simply ‘read’ them as Asian, based on the drawings, but then–can’t imagine how a white guy would choose Asians as main characters…
thanks–enjoyable book, though I had a few ?? about storytelling ‘jumps’ in there…
No, not Asian. Though they are pretty simply drawn so I guess they could be read any number of ways. I’ve also been told that some my comics have some sort of existential/zen quality.
Glad you enjoyed the book. I’m nervous to ask about your questions about storytelling jumps for fear that you’ll catch me with my pants down and I’ll be embarrassed.