Episode 4 - Literary Foreground, Comics Playground, with Tana Oshima

In the comics medium's ongoing quest for respectability, the 21st century has seen a proliferation of so-called literary comics: buttoned up, digestible, "realistic" -- comic strips cosplaying as New Yorker stories. 

 

Today's guest, Tana Oshima, explodes any ideas a reader might have about what a literary comic can or should look like. By day, Tana is an accomplished Japanese-to-Spanish literary translator, whose credits include books by Yu Miri, Hiroko Oyamada, Yuko Tsushima, and Nobel-prize winner Yasunari Kawabata. By night, she has produced (in English) a slew of playful, inventive comic books, a form that she considers her playground.

 

Join us as we discuss drawing vs. writing, the joys of bullshit literature, the mouths of Francis Bacon, our liberation from perfectionism, and much else. Hear me mangle some fairly simple Spanish phrases, and even read a few passages from Tana's work!

 

Links:

Tana's shop

Tana's instagram

Interviews with Francis Bacon

Today I Wrote Nothing by Daniil Kharms

Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan

Miami Review of Comics instagram

Drew's instagram

Drew's (free) patreon

Jason Butler's website

Jason Butler's instagram