Ben Katchor
Ben Katchor
Ben Katchoris an American cartoonist best known for his comic strip Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer. He has contributed comics and drawings to The Forward, The New Yorker, Metropolis magazine, and weekly newspapers in the U.S. A Guggenheim Fellowship and MacArthur Fellowship recipient, Katchor was described by author Michael Chabon as "the creator of the last great American comic strip."...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCartoonist
CountryUnited States of America
watches strange clock
I never wore a watch. I always depend on public clocks, and stores have clocks, but that is strange.
art mean people responses whether
Sometimes I make things that people have very strong responses to. Whether that's art, I don't know. That's one of those words that doesn't mean anything. It's why I don't just use words.
comic comics sell strip
In America, there's a very long tradition of a comic strip that comes in newspapers, which is not true all over the world. To sell papers, they put color comics in.
cheese exhibit ink paper piece smell soviet touch
I remember as a child going to an exhibit about the Soviet Union, and every paper had this alien smell. The paper and the ink were all exported. It was like a piece of cheese from that country, you could touch it, feel it, smell it, and it was different.
cheaply
The publishing industry has always wanted to make books as cheaply and as ephemerally as they could; it's nothing new.
directions exciting following itself possible reveals strips taken weekly writer
There's something exciting about weekly strips in that you're following the way the story reveals itself to the writer week by week. All the possible directions it could have taken are there; it's a kind of participatory reading that I think books discourage.
sound western-music western
I'm very interested in music and where these sounds of Western music come from.
goats female mood
Goat curry and a female librarian, that's what I'm in the mood for.
spiritual religious years
I've wasted the last five years of my life dealing in religious articles. People today find spiritual solace in ballroom dancing.
cougars born call-me
I was born Moishe Ketzelbourd but the Indians call me Maurice Cougar.
eye ghetto thinking
What sort of attractions do you think lured our coreligionists out of the ghetto and into the mainstream of European culture? Was it the wit of Molière, or the ingenious stage mechanisms of Pixérécourt? Or was it simply the opportunity to cast an eye, without shame, upon the living, unclad human form?
running movement stories
A picture story just doesn't run like a film. It doesn't have 24 frames per second. It doesn't deal with this illusion of movement.
book kids world
As a small kid, I came across things like these early Edward Gorey books in department-store bookstores. These were these really unusual objects to me. I didn't know how they fit into the comic world or into newspaper comics.
building feels apartment
I live in an apartment building built in 1925, and it hasn't been heavily renovated, so I feel very much connected to that time and what went on in that place.