Interview with Davy Liu | Sound Authors Radio

December 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent: Welcome to Sound Authors! Today is Friday, August 22, 2008. The Olympics are still going on. That’s my favorite pastime; I can’t get away from it, I watch every second of the day. I have four guests on the show, three authors and one musician as always. My first guest will be Davy Liu and he has a wonderful children’s book that is incredibly filled with art and all of that. My second guest on the show is Lillian Brummet. She is going to speak to me about her book Trash Talk. My third guest will be James D. Stein and that is for a book called How Mass Explains the World, A Guide to the Power of Numbers; that’s fun. My fourth guest will be Carolyn Solobelo from Red Molly, an amazing folk and bluegrass group. So my first guest on the show today is Davy Liu. He has extensive experience in artwork straight out of school. He went to work at Disney Animation Studio on Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and the Lion King but his own work is very powerful. He has written a book called Fire Fish. It’s gorgeous and he’s got some films and books coming out in the near future. Welcome to the show Davy.

Davy Liu: Thank you very much.

Dr. Kent: Tell me a little bit about what are you working on now?

Davy Liu: I’m working on the third book, which is the donkey’s perspective of Jesus Christ.

Dr. Kent: The donkey’s perspective?

Davy Liu: Yes, the third book yeah. It’s pretty much the farm animal perspective of Jesus Christ because every year in the Jewish tradition they had to sacrifice an elderly animal but when Jesus came and was crucified and died on the cross there was no sacrifice needed so this group of animals wonders why this year their older son isn’t needed. So they want to find out who died for their son.

Dr. Kent: All of your books are about animals. Where did you develop your love of animals and telling these stories?

Davy Liu: I grew up with pets. I love the animals. Where I come from we can have monkeys for pets. I grew up in Taiwan and had a monkey for a pet and we get all kinds of exotic animals. So I grew this really strong dialogue with animals as a child and I’m in America and I couldn’t speak English so I could only live in my own world so I developed my own kind of visual communications. What if this were to speak languages and if we just understood things through pictures so when I was 13 I was taught doing all these drawings and I worked at that.

Then when I worked at Disney that kind of just was in tune with working with pictures and telling a story from the animals’ perspective. So it was actually very helpful that it was a language I could communicate around powerfully with animals’ thoughts because some of us as humans are kind of the same way. Animals just don’t talk, that’s all.

Dr. Kent: I’ve read the book Fire Fish, which is visually just stunning. How do you as an illustrator make artwork pop so well in an illustrated children’s book?

Davy Liu: For me again, working with Disney and Lucas Films, my role was always production design, which is the picture has to speak 1,000 words and not so much the actors speaking their lines. So visually it has to be very attractive. So all the books I created hopefully can find investors to admit to the quality of the final productions going to look. So I created each book pretty much pre-production design of what a movie package may be so you may see my book and a lot of kids say, wow, is this a movie? That’s exactly the idea; it’s not like making more for illustrations, making more for like a future animated movie film.

Dr. Kent: In all of your books have a theological message but their told through the eyes of the animals. So talk a little bit about that and how you got into that?

Davy Liu: For their first one, which I did the first one called The Giant Leaf, which is an animal perspective of Noah’s Ark. I kind of started with the book of Genesis chapter 6 because God called all the animals to come to Noah and I’m going like boy, that’s pretty daring. Even the animal has to listen to God and they have to take a giant leap of faith and really find the savior vessel, which is Noah’s ark. But for them it’s got to be, you know I have a cat and she’s afraid of the living daylights when I run my vacuum cleaner. I don’t even need to turn it on and she runs.

I’m thinking this big vessel and what was this things impact force when Noah took 120 years to build and what did the animals really think of what this things going to do? He was probably destroying their forests so I took that and started bouncing off and created the whole entire series basically hopefully to really draw not just kids but the theology of understanding I mean who God is. God really doesn’t think the way we think. And if we go and try to understand God through the animals then we can understand Noah’s Ark. So that’s what the Giant Leaf came from because God really put things in fair organic form and the great news is that God came as a human. He didn’t come as a UFO or a superpower being, he came as one of us humans; very humble as a baby on the manger.

So the whole entire story is the same thing with Noah and the Noah’s Ark story. He displayed a message of salvation through a giant leaf that’s floating in the water. My story happened to have dinosaurs because they were the slave driver. They oppressed them and they beat all the mammals on the ground. And all the animals want to do one day is live free from the masters. So that was where the idea came from. All the animals wanted to be free from this big giant and they had no idea this giant flood was coming. So all the animals had these dreams and they just have to leave and forsake their comfort place and they have to go find this giant leaf. Eventually they went north and saw this monster with a big mouth and the three main characters who were hitchhiking to this leaf; a monkey, a fox, and a koala bear are kind of puzzled and thinking why would they go in there all by themselves?

So eventually the flood came and they realized the only salvation was that animal eater so they went inside it and didn’t realize it was the best party in the world in this monster that Noah created to believe. I took that and just went on to different series which is Fire Fish and now Jordan’s Guest, which is the donkey’s guest, who is Jesus.

Dr. Kent: Tell me a little bit about when you say okay I need to breathe some life into this donkey, how do you go about doing that?

Davy Liu: Breathing life into the donkey I would say that very much would be a personal thing. I feel like I’m kind of that donkey because being Chinese growing up in a culture where my academic just doesn’t excel. I mean I had a C minus average (C-) throughout my entire academics and thanks to my parents who saved me and brought me to America where I could at least have a crutch saying that I don’t speak English so therefore I have a right to get bad grades.

That worked for about four or five years until I graduated from college and then I went to art school. So living in that culture where everybody’s grade point average is maybe 4.0 I was just a loser you know? I had no purpose and the one thing that I love is art. Somehow because I realized that was a gift that God has given me and I’m able to live freely and just enjoy that. So Jordan the donkey is the same thing. The donkey was tied in the yard and all the barn animals like the sheep, the cow, the camel and the horses, they all have a purpose, and basically this donkey is tied in the middle of the barn.

All the tourists that come to Jerusalem want to ride the horses and the camel to go see Jerusalem. They certainly don’t want to ride the short legged donkey but at the end of the story this donkey was used for The Savior and then the donkey became so famous he became the donkey that everybody wants to come and see when the donkey was the secondary character. I think because the story is not so much the donkey because it’s not who you are, if God uses you you’re wise and radiant. Like there’s no tomorrow in how God can use you and that’s what I did. I said, God I don’t have much I just have this artistic gift and I want to just serve You and just glorify You. Not to be preachy but I want people to know that He really loves humanity in a big way.

Dr. Kent: So you grew up Chinese you said in was it Thailand?

Davy Liu: Taiwan.

Dr. Kent: In Taiwan and you’ve been back to China and you lead tours. Is that correct?

Davy Liu: Oh many years yeah. I paint so I do a China tour every October we go to China and I love China. I mean I just love the people there.

Dr. Kent: What do you think about the Olympics there?

Davy Liu: Oh I think it’s awesome and the Chinese went over the top to run a show its like look at us, you know? That’s great. Good for them. It’s really going to be tough to top that one, whoever gets handed the next baton of an Olympic opening, that’s a tough one to top. I know they poured millions and millions of dollars of their own money just to impress and that’s because they can.

Dr. Kent: That opening ceremony was pretty amazing and quite artistic actually.

Davy Liu: Oh really good. The director, the movie director ### is really amazing with visual stunning stuff so they did a good job.

Dr. Kent: Let’s talk a little bit about your career, where you want to go and what your next projects are. You told us about the book from the donkey’s perspective but what else are you working on?

Davy Liu: Basically I own the preproduction company called Kendu Films and what we do is we pretty much do preproduction design for other companies. But my dream is hopefully that we get enough; we’ve got a broker now and we’re trying to get the first book, The Giant Leaf, which you can get on Amazon also, to go on to a movie. I wrote this thing when I was working on The Lion King and I wrote it as a movie script first. So I want to keep going with the series because I think in Hollywood right now they lack a lot of strong content and what I want to continue to do is produce excellent family entertainment content so that hopefully our culture will be impacted by it.

My passion is really not to create another Pixar. I think our culture needs to have a very strong value on human rights and that human right comes from God. It’s not because humans say so and that value is based on who God thinks we are and I’d like to continue that kind of strong based belief in our system, especially in America. We’re losing that kind of value so my goal is to continue to keep doing every single book from the bible from the animal perspective. My goal is to finish the twelve books and hopefully by then we’ve got some kind of movie film going and an ongoing thing in the pop culture. Again my passion is not to cater this thing to Christians or anybody that believes in my theories, I just want to allow them to enjoy from a new perspective of who God is.

Dr. Kent: It seems fascinating and how will you find all the rest of the animals? Are there that many animals in the bible?

Davy Liu: Oh there are lots of animals! There are a lot. I’m doing a lion’s perspective of the Book of Daniel and a camel’s perspective of Apostle Paul when he got blind because he was a super murderer. I mean he was going around crucifying all the Christians and oppressed them and the camel witnessed this bright light. So that’s one and then I’m doing a whales perspective of Jonah. The whale had a hernia, swallowed Jonah and realized he’s got something really unique that he didn’t even realize he was swallowing in those big teeth of his.

Then we’re doing a mystical animal in the Garden of Eden and the animals are all going to look very bizarre in the Garden of Eden the first time they witness a human was created. They came and ruled the garden and they destroy the garden so there’s a lot of stuff in the bible. It’s really very exciting and then the Jordan story, I mean in the Old Testament God used a donkey that spoke to the prophet and say why are you hitting me? I mean that type of stuff is really stuff that’s a lot of humor that God really did enhance in the bible.

Dr. Kent: Well it’s been a fascinating discussion. Where can we find out about all your projects?

Davy Liu: You can go to kendufilms.com. At Kendu the main character is the giant leaf and also you can find all the projects I’m working on.

Dr. Kent: Well it’s been a real honor and I love what you do so I’ll keep checking it out.

Davy Liu: Thank you very much, I appreciate it.

Dr. Kent: Have a great day. Now my next guest on the show will be Lillian Brummet with her book Trash Talk: An Inspirational Guide to Saving Time and Money Through Better Waste and Resource Management. That will be interesting. Come on back for it.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Childrens, Comics, Art, TRANSCRIPTS, Spirituality, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, Inspiration, Religion, PODCAST

Christopher Tennant | Rich & Famous

December 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Interview with Christopher Tennant [9:28m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Interviewing Christopher was a blast. His take on the lifestyles of the rich and famous is riveting. Pick up his book! An invitation to the book from his website:

WELCOME TO THE CLUB

Remember when having a couple million dollars meant something?

Neither do we.

Particularly when we recall (with just the slightest of tingles) that over 30,000 Americans are now sitting on at least thirty times that.

This crew includes every entry on the Forbes 400 (who, at last count, were worth a combined $1.54 trillion, more than all the money held in commercial U.S. banks) right on down to that guy back in B-school who first told you what a hedge fund was.

They’re not all famous, or even well known, but these 30,000 do have much in common. Relative to the average citizen, they can travel where they want, live where they want, do what they want, and even screw who they want—both for business and for pleasure. Their money allows them to be truly free, and isn’t that what our forefathers were getting at?

But, as we’ve been told so many times, freedom has its price. In the case of the aforementioned 30,000, it’s the tyranny of too many options. St. Barts or St. Moritz? Gulfstream or Boeing? Where to build your private golf course—or did you want a polo field? With all those wealth managers incessantly ringing you up, should you consider counter-surveillance measures?

We’re exhausted just thinking about it.

We call this tippity-top tier the Filthy Rich. As you’ll soon learn, you don’t need to earn or inherit more money than you already have to join their ranks. You just need to try a little harder.

Maybe a lot harder.

—Christopher Tennant

Posted by admin | Filed Under Comics, Entertainment, Hollywood, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST

Interview with Erica Ferencik | Sound Authors Radio

November 8, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent: Welcome to Sound Authors! Today is Friday, October 17th. I’ve got four great guests on the show. My first guest, her name is Erica Ferencik; I believe I’m saying that correctly.

Erica Ferencik: Perfectly.

Dr. Kent: Okay. The book she’s written is called Cracks in the Foundation. It’s a hysterical book about real estate and a town called Squams Cootknockitt. Now I have to have you tell me how that’s pronounced.

Erica Ferencik: Also you did that beautifully. I grew up in Schenectady, New York so I feel I’m at liberty to make fun of all those towns up there. You know, like Scatterkill and you know and others in my book like Vanderscleef and so on.

Dr. Kent: Tell me about this book Cracks in the Foundation. On the front cover there’s a hysterical real estate agent with a for sale sign halfway in the background.

Erica Ferencik: Well she’s sort of your quintessential old school veteran real estate agent in this sort of no where town of Squamscootnockitt, New York and she sort of half lives. She drinks too much white zinfandel, she’s 40 pounds overweight, and she’s sort of an over the top character, kind of like I don’t know, Ignavious J. Riley in Confederacy of Dunces you know? You remember him; he had a flatulence problem and lived with his mother and worked at Levis pants. Its kind of a dated book at this point but it was part of the inspiration for the book.

Dr. Kent: In that book, I remember he had a what was it? A hot dog cart for awhile and he ate all the hot dogs?

Erica Ferencik: He did.

Dr. Kent: Tell me about this 39 years of digging for pay dirt in Squamscootnockit by your main character Ginger.

Erica Ferencik: She’s a scrapper. She wont take no for an answer and she’s that kind of realtor. She’s of the bunch that still sends the lemon cake recipes and knocks on your door to try to get the listing and I guess there’s something about her that yeah, it’s ridiculous over the top, but there’s something really admirable and lovable about her, I mean I think. She’s just sort of the unsinkable molly brown of real estate. In high contrast to her newest office mate who comes from Manhattan and she’s just got the heels and she’s very slick; and her name is Candy Rickenhousen so she’s totally mucking up Gingers little world of basically a three person shop in upstate New York.

Dr. Kent: The whole story revolves around a starter out house.

Erica Ferencik: Yes, well its like as a realtor, so many ridiculous things happen to us and sort of the stuff you wouldn’t believe I mean anyways. But the outhouse was just like I always think, what’s the worst possible listing I could get? Anybody could get? The completely unsellable item. What’s the worst possible thing you could get and in the book it’s on a tiny piece of land and its historic and you cant tear it down so its like this enigma is sort of symbolic of her life. She can’t seem to make any sales and the funny thing about this book.

I’ve been a realtor for eight years, I wrote it in 2006 when the market was actually not bad. Well, I guess no one predicted things would fall, well I guess a few people predicted things would be as bad as they are. I didn’t mean for it to come true but that’s her situation and again as a novelist I wanted to give the protagonist a real problem. She’s going to lose her house, she’s going to foreclose unless she makes some dough, you know?

Dr. Kent: Tell me a little about this market right now. Are you still in real estate or have you signed off and decided to become an author exclusively?

Erica Ferencik: I’ve signed off and decided to become a rich and wealthy author. Door number two. I guess I’m still a full time realtor as much as I can be right now. The market, I’m in the Framingham, Sudbury Massachusetts market, those being actually two very different markets, ones a bit higher market than the other but its really tough right now. We have one town that 90% of the sales, the listings under 300,000 are foreclosures or short sales.

Then as realtors we have to learn how to conduct business in an entirely different way. We have to learn how do we transact a short sale; its much more complicated than life involving even more people than the usual set of people that we have, which is realtors, buyers, and sellers, mortgage people, attorneys; now the banks are involved and that’s just a whole different bag of wax. It slows things down and makes transactions really difficult for everyone. Plus the fact that people are losing their houses. Real estate is so much more than the house. It’s a symbol of status and family life and it’s very emotional and I mean it’s a huge thing for people.

Dr. Kent: So let’s talk about this woman and her life in your book. How much is she like you? Of course you’ve talked about the long, crazy, New England names and the starter out house but she also has a daughter, a Wiccan daughter and she named her Harvest. So talk about these tongue in cheek things about how do you relate to this character?

Erica Ferencik: Well, I guess I was trying to take myself who does have sort of an unsinkable personality in many ways and sort of take it over the top to make it funnier. Again going back to things that happen to us as realtors I was looking at a house and there was two little dogs in the house. They escaped out the back and luckily they were fenced in but it took me like 45 minutes to round them up. I was thinking what would happen if I lost them or something?

In the book, and I will answer your question by the way, Ginger Canadu loses two twin daschunds and they are able to recapture one of them only one of them and she replaces that dachshunds with one from the pound and of course she gets caught and its totally ridiculous. But I was just thinking what would someone do whose completely unethical and sort of foolish yet had a good heart. And let me explain that part. She has this relation, she loves her daughter more than anybody, and her daughters name is Harvest.

She came up with that name, she was actually smoking pot when she was pregnant, and she was eating a PB&J and she saw Harvest on the bread and she came up with that name. but anyways, so I mean, Ginger is more of the sort of drinks a bit too much and throws a bone every now and then whereas Harvest is completely the opposite; very conservative, drinks mint tea and is wiccan and is also bisexual which is another thing that came up. But this thing that bothered Ginger the most was that Harvest was Wiccan because it’s something she can’t understand. It’s very scary, what is she doing with these rituals and all that.

Dr. Kent: Let me ask you since you’ve brought up an interesting thing about pot smoking and the bisexual daughter and all this. How about the political season right now. What’s your take on this crazy back and forth in the media?

Erica Ferencik: Oh you mean the upcoming election?

Dr. Kent: Yes.

Erica Ferencik: I just wish it were over, I’m so sick of it. Two guys put in a box are going to fight each other if enough time goes by. It’s absurd that it’s taking so long, it just feels that way because it started so long ago, at least that’s how it feels to me anyways.

Dr. Kent: What would your character Ginger think about it? She is wearing a pantsuit on the front cover.

Erica Ferencik: She probably lets see, maybe she would I think she would want Obama. I think she would go for Obama. Hillary Clinton and then you know the switcheroo to Obama. I think she’s pretty cool, she definitely has her issues but she’s not a republican.

Dr. Kent: Is Harvest old enough to vote?

Erica Ferencik: She’s 18, is that old enough?

Dr. Kent: Yes. 21 to drink and 18 to vote. Well this has been a wonderful conversation about Cracks in the Foundation by Erica Ferencik, is that correct?

Erica Ferencik: That’s exactly right.

Dr. Kent: Your website as far as I can tell is wakingdreampress.com. Is there another one or is that it?

Erica Ferencik: Wakingdreampress.com is the publishing company that I started but you can also go to cracksinthefoundation.com and read about it. There’s Q&A, my press events, all kinds of info.

Dr. Kent: It’s a hysterical book, when’s the next one coming?

Erica Ferencik: I wish I knew that. I have sequels running through my head; I just got to get it on paper. I’m 24/7 promoting this but definitely something will come out soon.

Dr. Kent: Can you tell us was she able to sell the outhouse or are you not allowed to tell us?

Erica Ferencik: She was able to sell the outhouse to an outhouse collector in the end.

Dr. Kent: Well good luck to you in the real estate market and the book is called Cracks in the Foundation by Erica Ferencik. Her website is wakingdreampress.com or cracksinthefoundation.com. Thanks so much for chatting with me.

Erica Ferencik: Thank you so much Dr. Kent.

Dr. Kent: My next guest on the show is Nuala Gardner. She is the author of a book called A Friend Like Henry. We’ll talk a little about autism and other things coming up. Don’t miss it!

Posted by admin | Filed Under History, Comics, TRANSCRIPTS, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST

Eric Appleman | Political Cartoons

November 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Interview with Eric Appleman [14:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Eric Appleman was a great guest. He spoke to us about his books of political cartoons. One for the republicans, and one for the democrats. About the democratic book:A good editorial cartoon can capture the essence of an event or a candidacy like few other media. This collection of over 250 editorial cartoons by more than 75 artists provides insights on the candidates for the 2008 Democratic nomination and the process that led up to the Convention in Denver.The 2008 Democratic presidential primary race was one of the most intense nominating campaigns in a generation. A record 35 million people voted in the Democratic primaries. The Democratic candidates raised over half a billion dollars, also a record.Starting with the Iowa caucuses on January 3, 2008, early contests winnowed the field; veteran Sens. Joe Biden and Chris Dodd, Gov. Bill Richardson, and Rep. Dennis Kucinich all ended their campaigns in January. Former Sen. John Edwards tried to hang on, but ended his quest at the end of month, leaving Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama engaged in a titanic struggle. Democratic voters faced a historic choice between the determined Clinton, who saw her mantle of inevitability slip away, and the youthful Obama, who combined an inspirational message and unprecedented campaign organization. For a time it appeared that superdelegates might decide the nomination or that the race might go all the way to the convention.In this collection, many of America’s top editorial cartoonists offer their views on the historic Democratic nominating campaign that went all the way to the last primaries on June 3.

Posted by admin | Filed Under History, Art, Comics, Politics, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, Entertainment, PODCAST

M. Thomas Inge Transcript

December 15, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent Gustavson: Welcome to Sound Authors. I’ve been speaking to M. Thomas Inge. We’ve been talking about Charles Schultz. I’d like to divest from that for a second and chat about what you’re working on now. I’m sure it’s some interesting project.M. Thomas Inge: Well I’ve always combined my interest in popular culture with a so-called high brow series of culture so it’s a combination of those things. I recently published a biography of William Faulkner which was an illustrated biography which was a lot of fun because I got a chance to track down photographs and drawings and unusual book covers and things like that. That was published by the Overlook Press in New York.The one that’s about to come out is a volume in the new Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture came out over a decade ago. It was a big huge single volume reference work. Now it’s being revised in separate volumes and I edited the volume on literature so I got a chance to talk about the whole scope of southern literature from the beginning down to the present. Another project-that’s the University of North Carolina Press. There’s another project, a collection of humor from the old south through the University of Missouri Press.I’m also working on a book on Walt Disney. I’m particularly studying the process of adaptation in Disney’s films, the way he would take an original fairy tale story or novel and how he would change it in the process of animating it and what the meaning of those kinds of changes are.I continue to work on Faulkner relations between comic strips and American literature for another. I’m also doing a small book right at the moment on Poe in the comic books. He’s probably the most influential writer to be adapted to comic book stories. We’re going to have an exhibition at the Edgar Allen Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia based on my work on Poe in the comic books.So as you can see it’s a wide variety of things.

Dr. Kent Gustavson: You stay busy.You know it keeps me off the street and out of trouble. [laughter] At my age I don’t get on the street too much. I’ve always been a kind of workaholic. I enjoy every minute of it. I love my teaching too. I think, the academic world is a fine place to be. I love working with all these young people and trying to teach them a few things while you learn a few things from them. So, yes, I do love it all.

Gustavson: Another question for you. I teach as well and I’m part of the X Generation but there’s a huge striation between - there are so many differing generations and the Internet separates us all. I don’t really understand the Y Generation and the thumbers(?), the brand new ones, but how is it teaching Peanuts across the generations, teaching comics? How does that differ from teaching literature?

Inge: Well since Peanuts was around for 50 years and it was experienced by several generations during that period of time, you get a broad spectrum of people who know the strip and even if they don’t know the strip they know the characters because they’re on lunch boxes and napkins and comic books and film, the television series with the Christmas one coming up every year. They’re probably among the most widely known characters in the world except for Mickey Mouse and Superman. They’re probably more widely known. Therefore everybody has had some experience, been touched in some small way by Peanuts. So, that sort of appeals to the generations.But, if I talk to my students about the humor in Mad magazine or National Lampoon you get a blank stare. They don’t know that material. Talk to them about The Onion and they might if they’re staying in touch with contemporary humor and satire.One of the odd sorts of things about teaching as long as I have - I’ve been teaching about 45 years now - is that you stay the same over those 45 years because the students stay the same. The people sitting in front of you are the same age year after year after year and you get some sense that you’re the same age you were when you started teaching which you’re not.So, you have to remind yourself that there are things you know by experience that they can’t possibly know and even if they did they’ve heard of them, they’re only a part of past history. So, we have to take time and explain things I think, parts of our history that we take for granted and they don’t. At the same time they know a heck of a lot more about computers and technology than I ever will.So, while there are things they don’t know, there are things they do so there’s kind of an even exchange going on. They’re learning from me and I’m learning from them.

Gustavson: I guess the question is - they’re exposed to so much stimulation all day long - flashing screens-and it’s getting more and more all the time. Do they have the patience for comic strips anymore?

Inge: Well I don’t that the comic strips are as popular as they once were because newspaper are disappearing. I mean we used to have two newspapers in every town. Now there’s one at best. So, this limits the number of comic strips that can be carried. I have a feeling that it’s the older groups that still go back to the comic strips every day. Because the other kids they do get their humor off of the computer screen or their iPods or wherever.But there’s a kind of a shift in sources of information. For my generation it’s always going to be print. With future generations it’s always going to be mainly visual with print coming along. I don’t know you know whether we’ve lost or gained anything by these changes. They’re a natural part of the scheme of things and for us older people it looks like well you know, they don’t know how to read anymore. But, sometimes buying all those books that Barnes and Noble and Borders are selling you know. And they’re doing big booming business in books so somebody must be reading books somewhere. So, there are people still holding on to the printed word. And of course you still have to read the instructions on the computer to set it up.So, there is a need for words, so I don’t know where they’re, I mean, when I grew up the best we could do was listening to the radio.Get the comic books and comic strips. We could have used a little more stimulation, to tell you the truth. Now maybe they’re getting too much, I’m not quite sure. But, I have a feeling it’s just the times are changing and maybe we’re not.

Gustavson: Absolutely. I also have a question for you. It seems you’ve taught in many foreign universities. What’s the difference between cultures in comics? I know there’s political satire, there’s every day comics. What have you seen in other countries?

Inge: Well, they don’t have as much freedom. They don’t have that bill of rights that guarantees us freedom of speech. You know, nor do many countries have that strong separation of church and state. In fact, we have both of those meaning we can make fun of any institution. Religious, political, educational, whatever. And that’s an important part of the democratic system here in this country.So when you teach humor in another context, you find that the whole sets of morals and the ways they can find things funny differs because in a totalitarian country, I’ve taught in the Soviet Union for example, humor of the party is discouraged. In fact, it could put you in prison for life. So, you had to be very careful in circles. But, I found that in the oral tradition, and that’s where a lot of the humor resides, there is always an oral tradition.In that oral tradition, there’s a great deal of more freedom and flexibility to do what you want. And so the humor is there, it’s just not seen in evident print. And the cultural reference points change. I was teaching my Soviet students in those days an exert from a Groucho Marx film A Night At The Opera, and Groucho and Chico are doing this comic routine about contracts that come with signing up an opera singer.And they get down to the last part of it and Chico says what’s that, and Groucho says, oh that’s the sanity clause. And Chico says that you can’t fool me, there ain’t no sanity clause. Well, my students had never heard of santa clause so the humor went over their heads, so I had to explain the joke. Also, at the time I was teaching, we had a lot of Polish jokes circulating, and the Russians said why are you making fun of the Poles? They’re great, educated, talented people.And I said you’re right. But, then I found that they had something called Armenian radio jokes, and these were jokes at Armenians apparently told over the radio that made them look stupid. So, I said well wait a minute, you have your Armenian radio jokes. And they said yeah, but the Armenian’s are really stupid.[laughs]

Inge: So the reference toward change, but they is still some humor there. And I think, those Russian students were among the best I ever had, in fact.

Gustavson: Well, that’s something to think about. In Charles Schulz’ comics he rarely, over fifty years, he didn’t write strips that people wouldn’t like for some reason. There were no groups of people that disliked Peanuts.

Inge: Well, how can you?[laughs]

Inge: It’s like, as I said Peanuts is so underwhelming in a sense. Poor Charlie Brown, you can’t help but feel sorry for him. And he never got into political, though he did get into religious themes sometimes. But, it’d be by way of a Bible verse that would show up in the strip or something like that. And he did go through a period himself when he was affiliated with the Church of God, which is kind of the independent evangelical group.But he came away from that later on, and towards the end of his life he called himself a secular humanist. And I think, basing the strip is more oriented that way anyway. That is, it gets into the problems of mankind without necessarily providing the kind of solutions that religion tends to offer. And politics he stayed away from because he was not a political person.In fact, I’m not quite sure that he belonged to any political party ever.

Gustavson: So what can we learn. What kind of conclusions can we draw from Peanuts? What can we use to live our lives?

Inge: Well, we learn in the first place that we’re not alone in the universe. And no matter how deep or troubling our problems are, we’re not by ourselves. And Charlie Brown, in other words, is there too at least. And we can identify with him, even though he has a bunch of friends around him giving him a hard time, he also knows when push comes to shove they’ll be there to help him too.I mean, some of our strongest critics are among our best friends, very often. So, it teaches us that, you know, we’re not in our problems, and also it teaches us that no matter how difficult these problems become, if we can maintain a balance in a sense of humor and not take ourselves too seriously, then there’s still a possibility of life in the tunnel of kicking that football.Of getting up that next day and accomplishing the thing we set out to do, so it’s that kind of positive affirmative message, I think, that comes out of what is basically a comic strip for despair and failure. That message that comes from the strip is one we take to heart and one we need. I mean, the whole twentieth century is a pretty insecure century with the cold war and then the other wars we got into after World War II and are still in today.These are scary times, and in a sense some days I feel we’re almost back to the nineteen fifties in the cold war feeling of our country because we’re so concerned about possible terrorists and things people are going to do to us. So, you know any kind of entertainment that speaks to those fears and makes us feel better about ourselves, that’s something worth keeping around.

Gustavson: So, we’re all hoping that the red-haired girl will sometime fall in love with us. And thank you so much for chatting with us today, M. Thomas. In his book published several years ago is Charles M. Schulz Conversations, he’s got a William Faulkner biography and many other publications. Thank you so much for being on the show.