So like every child of the nineties, I was obsessed with Calvin and Hobbes. We had all the collections in my house and I loved reading them, over and over. I really connected with Calvin — his limitless imagination, his ability to turn anything into a narrative, his love of nature. Sailor Boy and I often quote lines from our favorite comic strips, especially the one where Calvin comes upon Hobbes sleeping in the sun and begins to recite:
“My tiger, it seems, it running ’round nude,
His fur coat must have made him perspire.
It lies on the floor, should this be construed
As a permanent change of attire?
Perhaps he considered its colors passé,
Or maybe it fit him too snug.
Will he want it back? Should I put it away?
Or leave it right here as a rug?”
It should be noted that Rio, to whom this poem is most often directed, is about as amused by our efforts as Hobbes was in the strip.
At its height, C&H was subject to a ton of copyright violations. Though Watterson never licensed his images for commercialization. the streets were rife with cars bearing bumper stickers of an evil, peeing Calvin. And then, Watterson ended the strip (to a great fan outcry), and lived as a recluse. But recently he gave an interview to a local Cleveland reporter. Naturally, I was all over it.
My disappointment in the interview is mainly that, with all the opportunity the reporter had to ask BW about his long career, he settled for basically asking the same question over and over again. Look:
- What do you think it was about “Calvin and Hobbes” that went beyond just capturing readers’ attention, but their hearts as well?
- What are your thoughts about the legacy of your strip?
- What would you like to tell the fans who are still grieving about the end of your strip?
- Because your work touched so many people, fans feel a connection to you, like they know you. How do you deal with knowing that it’s going to follow you for the rest of your days?
- How do you want people to remember that 6-year-old and his tiger?
You can actually see Watterson growing frustrated with having to answer it repeatedly over the course of the interview. There was literally only ONE question that veered from this repetitive pattern: “Do you like the idea of a C&H postage stamp?”
Watterson was pretty gracious though. He just kept beating the drum of: “The only part I understand is what went into the creation of the strip. What readers take away from it is up to them. Once the strip is published, readers bring their own experiences to it, and the work takes on a life of its own. Everyone responds differently to different parts.”
This is so true. Now, decades later, I’m an author myself, and I see that what people choose to take away from my book could be what I put in there or could not. It can sometimes be something that I never even saw in the text myself.
I spend a lot of time wrestling with the notion of “Why did Reader X get this part of the book, but Reader Y missed it? Why did Reader Z love this part of my other book but doesn’t love a similar part in my new book?” (Curse you, internet, and your proliferation of reader reaction blogs and websites!) BUt I can’t control what experiences the reader is bringing to my work, and how the simplest turn of phrase might jar something inside of him or her.
I wonder what the secret is to Watterson’s zen. How it is that he came to a place where he could say, “I just tried to write honestly, and I tried to make this little world fun to look at, so people would take the time to read it” and be done with it. Because when I’m writing, I believe that. When I’m writing, I think to myself, Oh, isn’t this fun. I really like this part. I think this part is fun to read, I think people are going to like this. I am writing for the reader’s entertainment. I want to make the experience of reading one of my books a good experience for the reader. I want it to be exciting and informative and romantic and scary and funny and sad.
But whether it IS to each individual reader — well, that’s up to them.
And, in passing, what a waste. What great questions the reporter could have asked! “What do you think Calvin is doing now, all grown up? Is he an astronaut? A writer? Is he a desk jockey with a marvelous inner life? Does he drive his wife crazy with sick snowman jokes every February? Does he take his kids for hikes through the woods? Does he recite poetry to his dogs while they nap on the rug?”
I mean, just wondering.
February 4th, 2010 at 10:56 am
Do you feel a bit like Watterson in relation to the ending of the SSG series? I know you’ve had people begging for more about Amy. Are you comfortable with the series being done and just happy to have it out there for people to enjoy?
I’m sad, though, that we’ve never seen anything new from him. Though I wonder if it’s better to have given that one great thing to the world and go on with your life, or to keep trying to give greatness. I often wonder how J.K. Rowling will fare.
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February 4th, 2010 at 11:00 am
He would probably say that Calvin’s future lies in the mind of the reader, influenced by that person’s experiences and expectations, and beyond his [the author's] control.
Great column, Diana.
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February 4th, 2010 at 11:09 am
Annie, once I’m done laughing hysterically about any comparison between C&H and SSG… no, I don’t feel like that AT ALL. C&H was an open strip that Watterson decided to end at the height of its popularity, where it was running in thousands of newspapers in over 50 countries and with millions upon millions of book collections sold. SSG was a planned 4 book series that ended, as planned from the start, with all story lines brought to a close. And you know, a TINY fanbase, most of whom I think agree with me that I ended the story.
It is interesting to think about the pressures accompanying an artist when they achieve such massive success on a single project. The writers I know who are well known for a particularly story are always getting asked by fans to write more of that. One writer I know (whose subsequent project have been both bestsellers and award winners) got the most horrible “fan mail” saying she’d never do anything equal to her previous project and should just stop now.
Phyllis, you’re probably right. Maybe he could have asked if he’s drawn anything interesting lately?
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February 4th, 2010 at 11:31 am
Hehe! You haven’t seen me lately, because if you had, there’s no way you’d call your fan base tiny
I hope you never become a recluse and keep on writing!
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February 4th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
My daughter reads C&H and LOVES it. We have all the collections, too.
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February 4th, 2010 at 2:34 pm
I somehow always thought that Calvin grew up to be Bill Watterson. His drawings in the strip always looked so Bill Watterson-ish. =)
This is a fantastic argument for New Criticism, Diana – although I still feel like New Criticism should never need to explain itself. I guess I’m old-school.
I think the real question here is whether those reader responses actually affect your writing. Does reader response invade your writing/thinking space? Do you catch yourself thinking about what your readers want to see happen now that you have a fanbase that you can actually gauge? Watterson clearly had a huge fanbase, but at the time he was writing, it probably wasn’t as easily accessible or as immediate as yours is, Diana. How do you deal with that, or do you deal with it at all?
Also, I totally would have asked more about the characters as well. For instance, did Calvin’s father die of a heart attack trying to deal with Calvin? Did Calvin ever get together with Susie and get bigger than Moe? Did Hobbes ever find a sweet tiger girlfriend? I’m all about the romance. =)
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February 4th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
Tiff, I htink there was a collection of C&H once where he talked about this — like he provided commentary in between the drawings talking about how he envisioned Susie and Calvin’s relationship, and the parents, and etc. Like he would show a strip of Calvin’s mom gardening or Calvin’s dad biking and say he was trying to illustrate them having outside interests, or he showed the time Uncle Max came to visit and then said he had to write Max out because he realized how awkward it was for Max to never use the mom and dad’s names. I can’t remember exactly what he said about Susie, but it was cute. Something about how Susie was the kind of girl he always had a crush on who never liked him back, and how he thought Calvin had a crush on her too. Susie always reminded me of Hermione. I think she grew up to be Hermione.
I defintiely am affected by what my readers want now, and it’s really hard, especially when I’m in the middle of a series, to turn that off and not care about what the few people on the internet who have bothered to write me their requests might want. Sometimes I can give them what they want in a more casual way — like writing a secret story to answer a reader’s question about what Poe thought at such and such a stage. But in general I have a pretty firm idea of my characters main ARCs. I think it’s more in the details where I feel the temptation to specifically respond to one criticism or another.
Like one consistent criticism I would get about the SSG series is that i never showed them in their classrooms, and if they were all such good students, why didn’t I show them doing their schoolwork? Which struck me as kind of funny because I did actually show them STUDYING a lot — Amy even pulls an all-nighter in UTR. (SSG, to be fair, takes place mostly after classes have ended for the semester.) But there’s not really much to say about stuff that happens in a classroom or while studying unless it has a bearing on the plot of the book. I’m not going to insert some long debate over an academic subject if it’s not somehow thematically linked to the subject, and the characters actually work a lot of what they are studying into their conversations on a more casual basis anyway. But then in T&G, I got to make Michelle a TA and have Amy stalk her in class, so that worked out well for me.
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February 4th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
The commentaries one is the 10th anniversary book, which I don’t have on hand because it belongs to my 16-year-old brother, and which is therefore at home. Alas. We grew up on C&H – I remember when I was eleven-ish, my mum chewed out my oldest brother (then 9) for trying to get my second brother (5) to play Calvinball with him, a game which I now know from experience ends in fights as often in real life as it does in cartoon.
I remember reading that 10th anniversary C&H book in middle school and feeling this almost proprietary pride in Bill Watterson for choosing not to license Calvin and Hobbes and for ending it when he did. For avoiding the awful Garfield phenomenon. I do find it interesting, however, that he’s chosen not to do anything else since then – no more cartoons? Maybe he was just tired of the machine that is syndicated cartoons. It’s too bad.
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February 4th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Diana, that’s the collection I read, where Watterson talks about Susie and how Calvin has a crush on her. I just want confirmation that eventually they have a wonderful marriage and three screaming kids with anthropomorphic stuffed toys (who are obviously the children of the now retired Hobbes).
Yeah, I’m sure the temptation to respond to specific criticisms can be annoying and frustrating. I feel like that’s a huge part of what makes sequels disappointing as well–but like any job, it’s all about managing expectations, and I feel like authors have a lot more freedom to do that now that they CAN go on the internet, respond, and interact with their readers. So you might get a lot more feedback, and it might make for a whole new idea of reader-response theory, but now, authors can respond, like you say, maybe not in the published manuscript (Watterson did that quite a few times), but with extras and blogs and whatnot. That’s amazing to me, that you can manage expectations by posting your thoughts on a blog or whatnot. That must be a relief, at least (I wonder if someone is writing a dissertation on theories of author-response in light of web 2.0 AS WE SPEAK), and maybe it allows for a more focused, objective-ish manuscript at the end?
I never cared that much about the whole class thing in SSG because, like you say, if it’s not important to the overall plot, there’s no need for it. It’s like the whole “characters going to the bathroom” thing – I assume it happens, I don’t need to read about it. Although, I must say, I really enjoyed the early scene in SSG when Amy’s in the bathroom and says to her reflection, “Face it. You’ve been had” with a mouthful of toothpaste. Very cinematic. =)
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February 4th, 2010 at 5:00 pm
Obviously, Calvin’s last name is Mitty. And the middle initial is W.
As for not showing the Diggers actually studying or in class, that isn’t going to be particularly interesting, unless you are about to reveal An Important Plot Point.
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February 5th, 2010 at 1:11 am
I’m a little bit younger, but I had awesome parents and uncles that bought me and my sister THE DEFINITIVE CALVIN & HOBBES and other glorious C&H collections. My favorite strips were always the ones with Calvin and his time machine cardboard box, or when he and Susie were all hating each other but flirty, or that one time when Hobbes got lost in the woods *sniffles*
Man, I love C&H.
And if I had to imagine them now, I see Calvin as a cubicle drone, but with that same imagination. Married to Susie, of course. (And Hobbes is still around, naturally.)
On a weird note, I had a computer lab teacher in 9th grade that looked JUST LIKE Calvin’s dad. It really freaked me out. /random.
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February 5th, 2010 at 1:16 am
Oh also, have y’all seen this from FORBIDDEN PLANET? For the Susie & Calvin fans:
http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/2009/more-calvin-hobbes-bootlegs/
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February 5th, 2010 at 1:42 am
Brynne, I felt that same sense of pride. Weird. Guess it’s that personal ownership the interviewer was talking about. Of course, when you’re young you kind of get this idea that whatever you like almost belongs to you. I remember being surprised to learn that other people had read narnia and stuff like that.
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February 5th, 2010 at 1:47 am
Tiff, you’re kind of blowing my mind here. That’s a lot of food for thought. Maybe authors are crafting their projects differently now that there’s people on the internet having twitter chats about what they think is missing from the market or missing from a particular series. But the thing is, also, I don’t write by committee, and my reviews have always been very illustrative to me that what one reader likes best about my series another reader finds to be the biggest drawback. You can’t really create in that environment. So one reader is going to say, “Well, I posted that I wanted more X on the internet and the book has more X so she did it for me” when really, that’s not the case. After UTR came out, a lot of people were pulling for Poe. But the fact that Poe and Amy happened was because that was my intent all along, and keeping that a secret on my blog and not spoiling people on my blog was defininitely difficult.
I also remember before T&G came out a lot of people begging me for information about whether or not Poe and Amy “ended up together” — but people aren’t necessarily aware that books are usually written by the time the previous installments in the series even hit the shelves — so asking for particular things is not usually even possible.
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February 5th, 2010 at 1:49 am
PR, you’re right. But there’s an example of why an author can sometimes look at a bit of criticism and shrug and go “meh, write your own book” and move on.
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February 5th, 2010 at 1:49 am
Thea, some of those are really disturbing!
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February 5th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
On pride in authors: Yeah, I think you’re right. I thought that about a lot of media I loved (from Star Wars to C&H!) but also about places and people and things. When I was five, my family moved from Olympia, WA to central Pennsylvania, and I remember telling someone proudly, “I’m from Washington! That’s a state on the west coast.” and being astonished that they’d HEARD OF WASHINGTON!
Of course, that’s partly because I’ve met people who DON’T know where WA is.
But at five I was simply amazed at any kind of shared experience.
Thea:
I just find those really heartbreaking. I remember very clearly the moment when I realized my dolls weren’t alive (around age nine, I think…probably later than a lot of kids) and it was sad and terrifying. I don’t really want to think of Calvin as anything but an imaginative six-year-old.
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March 4th, 2010 at 2:31 am
Ok, just saw this online and thought you’d appreciate it
http://epicwinftw.com/2010/02/24/epic-win-photos-im-still-rooting-for-hobbes/
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