An Evening With Roz Chast

No matter where I've lived, and I've lived in some of the far corners of the earth, I've lived a literary life. Back in Southern California, though, it's less of a stretch to do so. Nearly every month there's an author I admire speaking someplace near.

Last  night, it was graphic novelist, Liz Chast, at the Bowers Museum in nearby Santa Ana. My Westminster library book group will later this month be discussing her National Endowment for the Arts book, "Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?". I'd finished reading it a couple of nights ago. It brought back a lot of memories about my own mother's last days.

Chast has been a featured cartoonist for "The New Yorker" since the late '70s...I always turn to her cartoons first each Friday or Saturday when my issue arrives. Last night a number of women in the audience stood during the concluding Q&A session to relate how they feel that Chast has chronicled their own lives. I'm not Jewish...my mother wasn't similar to Roz Chast's. Nonetheless, I've known that sometimes stereotypes become such because of prevalent examples. So when these Jewish women began to talk of their moms, I still could chuckle. I've known a few.

So has Roz Chast. When one woman mentioned that her mother had the audacity to die on Mother's Day, Roz said, "Oh, yes. Maximum effect." The audience howled.

Chast's talk began with the photo above. "Me, Age 9." The gentleman seated next to me helped me decipher the titles of the books surrounding her. We managed to squint enough to make out, "A Child's Garden of Maladies," "The Big Book of Horrible Rare Diseases," "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Scurvy," "Lockjaw Monthly," and "Merck's Manual."

Chast explained that she's sometimes been called "The Poet Laureate of Neurosis." This began in her early childhood. Her aunt, a nurse, gave each year's outdated "Merck's Manual" to the family when a new edition appeared. When Roz thumbed through it, she found much of it way over her head. But she knew what signs and symptoms were. So she always was seeking these. 

She explained that she realized that leprosy was rare in upper Brooklyn. But rare did not mean impossible. So when she found a symptom that she thought she'd experienced herself, she knew right away that she'd contracted this disease. 

Lockjaw? The playgrounds surrounding her home had lots of old rusty swings and slides. Consequently, her playmates all obsessed about contracting this disease. They'd scratch themselves on a rusty nail and figure that in fifteen minutes their jaws would clamp down, so consequently they'd starve to death. Such was preadolescence in Brooklyn in the 1960s.

After showing the sketches she made of her mother on her deathbed, Chast closed her talk with displaying what recently has been my favorite cartoon of hers. When I look at this, I think how appropriate it would be for some of my health food-obsessed California friends. I mean, fair is fair. There should be payoffs!