Customer Reviews

The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Ever since reading 'A Child's Life,' I'd been looking forward to this book, and I was not disappointed. Phoebe Gloeckner's 15-year-old fictional alter-ego, Minnie, keeps a journal that is sharply observant, articulate, and funny, without crossing the line into the 'adult over-writing' that often plagues adults' versions of children's diaries. The setting (1970s San Francisco) makes many of the things that Minnie describes matter-of-factly seem jarring when you step back--affairs with older men, 'responsible' parental drug use, etc. Yet when you're reading the book, Minnie's world envelops you completely.

Unlike many other (quite believable) teenage characters, Minnie does not even pretend to be cool or detached. She blatantly states her craving to be loved, hugged, touched. The dynamics of her affair with her mother's boyfriend, in which she tends to be the sexual instigator, are fascinating and heartbreaking at the same time. The juxtaposition of the sordid and the innocent is seamless: one minute Minnie and her best friend are swigging schnapps and passing joints on their way to a sexual encounter with a married man; the next, they're running down the street laughing, stuffing their faces with dime-store candy.

Gloeckner's drawings are plush and emotional, detailing specific blocks in San Francisco and capturing facial expressions with equal care.

Anyone who likes to be swept up wholly into a character's life should enjoy this unusual book.

I am the first to admit I know very little about the world of underground comics. A student of mine recommended this book to me, and I ordered a copy from Amazon out of mild curiosity; I ended up reading through it in one sitting.

Gloeckner's fifteen year-old protagonist, Minnie Goetze, is a superbly realized, multi-dimensional, picaresque character like few others I have encountered in adolescent-oriented American fiction. Though the frank descriptions and visual images of Minnie's often self-destructive sexual encounters may disturb some readers (and perhaps titillate others), the genius of this book lies in Gloeckner's extraordinary ability to capture the mercurial, labile emotions of this clever, troubled young diarist. As a male reviewer, I realize that it is problematic for me to write this, but from my professional and personal experience, Gloeckner's understanding of "American female fifteen year-oldness" is pitch-perfect, even if Minnie's actual life is unlike that of most (but not all) of the adolescents with whom I work.

"Diary of a Teenage Girl" is also a damning indictment of the world in which Minnie grows up. The adults in the book are, for the most part irresponsible, incorrigibly self-obsessed, exploitative and ineffective. Minnie was born at the dawn of the 60s, and has come of age in the immediate aftermath of the "summer of love". The rhetoric of the age of Aquarius is on the lips of many of the adults -- but the free love of the adult world has meant nothing but exploitation and alienation for Minnie. She fantasizes that she is a powerful and independent woman; a sexual aggressor and a rival to her mother (she is sleeping with her mother's boyfriend); in reality, she is heartbreakingly naive, self-centered, frightened, childishly romantic, and above all, desperate for authentic love.

I have never read the work of R. Crumb or other similar cartoonists; I might do so now. The comics sequences are stunning; they bring a pathos, a humor, and a richness to the text that would not otherwise be there.

A bit harrowing, all in all, but a tremendous achievement. Brava!

It was probably a decade ago when I first began seeing Phoebe Gloeckner's work in a handful of low rent independent comics. Initially it may have been the intensely rendered pornographic sequences that snared my attention, but there was something about her work that always drew me in further; a kind of downward-spiraling confessional verisimilitude one seldom encounters in any medium. She depicted familial discord and childhood cruelties with precisely the sort of raw, unflinching honesty that seemed to elude every other R. Crumb wannabe on the circuit. And her stories had a way of churning uncomfortably in my mind long after the last bitter panel, almost as though a close friend had revealed a dark secret.

With "Diary of A Teenage Girl," Gloeckner revisits the same dodgy terrain of her earlier comics, with strips and illustrations now being used more as a kind of episodic punctuation to the diary-based narrative. The cumulative effect may lack some of the signature boundary-crushing sting exhibited in her 1998 collection, "A Child's Life," but readers are rewarded with an eerily convincing character portrait and a disquieting coming-of-age story that avoids cheap coming-of-age clichés.

Set in San Francisco during the late 1970s, the main (presumably autobiographical) story recounts a tumultuous span in the life of Minnie Goetze, a likable, artistically precocious 15-year-old girl who has become caught up in a sexual relationship with her mother's sleazy, self-actualizing boyfriend. Longing for genuine affection and trying desperately to make sense of her situation, Minnie makes the usual self-destructive choices, finding clarity and purpose only in her slowly emerging identity as an artist. Gloeckner doesn't condescend or gloss over ugly details. And because Minnie's ordeal is never couched in easy victim rhetoric, the true depth of her victimization is shown in poignant relief against the hedonistic Bay City backdrop.

All is not dark and heavy going, however. References to "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman," and EST seminars, and first-wave Rocky Horror habitués capture the 70s zeitgeist with humor and authentic nostalgia. And some of the most memorable scenes center on Minnie's private ambitions and her guarded fascination with the nascent underground comics scene. (Her correspondence with "Bunch" alter-ego Aline Kominsky-Crumb is an especially nice touch.)

But "Diary of a Teenage Girl" is a serious book, perhaps best understood as an account of childhood trust cast against adult hypocrisy. The salient motifs are familiar: there is a general aura of disaffected affluence, the breakdown of family bonds, and always the specter of absent fathers and predatory men. Above all, however, we are left with that uneasy sense that something precious has been lost.

In recent years, major works by such writers as Chris Ware and Dan Clowes have led critics to begin taking graphic novels seriously. Let's hope this one doesn't get overlooked.

Phoebe Gloeckner succeeded in charting her course through a difficult marriage between two forms of storytelling that have often been at odds with each other. Literature has never been kind to comics but Gloeckner seamlessly switches from words to images which complement each other and make this book a real page turner.

I am a devout fan of Gloeckner's work, let there be no secret about it. In an ongoing effort to interest my girlfriend in comics I give her contemporary comics by women. "The Diary of a Teenage Girl" was such a gift. However, I read the book cover to cover before she could ever get to it. Unfortunately there are not to many published U.S. women comics artists out there. Those who are published have very unique individual voices which stand high above the bleak mannerism that has been plaguing American comics in the second half of the last decade. Gloeckner is at the top of her game.

Like the character Minnie, I was also 15 in 1976. I used to walk around the neighborhood drinking beer out of a brown paper bag, or go to the all-night diner at the drugstore at 3 am to drink coffee & smoke cigarettes. This book is totally evocative of those times. What's more, Phoebe Gloeckner manages to capture the emotional landscape of adolescence with a breathtaking acuity reminiscent of Francesca Lia Block or Lynda Barry. I recommend "The Hanged Man" by Francesca Lia Block. Not everybody can handle dark books like this, but to those of us who lived through similar times, this is a special book. Please give us more, Phoebe!

Now acclaimed for her work as a bio-graphic designer and underground cartoonist, Phoebe Gloeckner developed her prodigious skill through a trial of fire: enduring the hormone-clouded squall of pubescence amidst the flotsam and jetsam of the San Francisco post-Aquarius `free-love' era. Precocious to a fault and lacking serious support from her immediate family, young Phoebe embarked upon the adolescent journey with karma to burn, seeking love in all the wrong faces and finding life-experience with equal measures of trauma and understanding. Part of this harrowing path was detailed in Gloeckner's graphic-novel *A Child's Life*, and many of the gaps in that compilation are filled in with her first novel, *The Diary of a Teenage Girl*, which, though nowhere near as explicit or shocking as that first endeavor of purgation, is a fairly stressful read by itself - and an invaluable testament to the mindset of a young woman trapped in an indifferent, exploitative world, with nowhere to go but down.

The story, in a nutshell: Minnie Getz, age fifteen, has moved out to San Francisco with her mother and stepfather, who promptly split up right after arriving. Her mother's boyfriend, a pathetic alcoholic by the name of Monroe, seduces Minnie, indoctrinating too early the pleasures and pain of intimacy. The people around Minnie still swim in the more dangerous ideals of the late 60's - the `Aquarius Ethic' of free love, drug abuse and casual exploitation (never mind that the actual astrological Aquarius-shift won't occur until 2160) - Minnie floats among her mother's degenerate friends and paramours, and soon enough finds her own in the gutters and alleyways of South San Fran.

More than anything Minnie desires, and is denied, a loving presence in her life: her mother is judgmental and jealous, her seducer/boyfriend oblivious, her sister addicted to the television and her step-father distant, communicating only by letters. Minnie seeks solace in reading underground comics and trying her hand at the artistic craft (R. Crumb noted her talent), in exploring the turbulent waters of sexuality, and, eventually, succumbing to the pain-numbing elements available on the street corner and, more often than not, her own house: for example, her mother smokes pot in front of the kids and dates a lawyer colloquially-called `Michael Cocaine.' The self-destructive path Minnie chooses to embark upon, in the later part of this novel, comes as no surprise; after being privy to the innermost reflections and torments of this young woman's mind, via the diary-format, one can almost see it as an inevitable conclusion, and all the more disturbing given that the events described within are based on true-life experience - and happen everyday, to hundreds of Minnies around the United States and the world at large.

As I mentioned above, this book is somewhat `softer' in approach to the borderline-pornographic *A Child's Life*, but the subject matter contained still holds enough power to upset and/or titillate, given the individual reader's mindset. Indeed, despite some post-authorial doctoring, the text reads very much like the day-to-day scribbles of an (a)typical young woman fighting through the normal difficulties of the teenage era: the complications of relationships, the insecurities regarding the physical shell, mundane events and random digressions, the angst of trying to `find' oneself while inundated with the confusing messages of consumer-culture. It feels ~real~. And probably is. Gloekner's artwork helps chronicle the passage: illustrations range from `cute' design work, to initial stabs at talent-development; from a surreal portrait of Mexican-clad cats to a startling examination of her and Monroe's post-coitus arguments. At key points the narrative switches from written word to comic-form progression - an effective technique that gives a face to the events and characters.

*The Diary of a Teenage Girl* - a profound, riveting account of feminine development, of human nature in its myriad sordid forms, and of catharsis - the ending being especially powerful. This is a disturbing read, yet ultimately illuminating; and, I think, essential to anyone seeking insight into the trials and turmoil that afflict the (psychologically) abandoned.

Highly Recommended.

I fell in love with Minnie.

So many adults fail miserably at writing the adolescent. This is a brilliant work - it doesn't belittle the character and allows her to have intelligence and understanding at a delicate age, while still retaining her youth.

The illustrated storyboards are weaved into the book beautifully. I can't imagine the story without them, as they provide a different kind of insight.

Just excellent.

You feel for Minnie. Gloeckner has succeded in capturing those years of teenagerdom where you can successfully ignore your head because the world must be okay. You will cry for Minnie's blindness to the faults of those around her and adore her for her attempts to let everyone be good. Minnie is a real picture of the mental state of teenagers (even if her actions are less restrained by family than most), and once you pick up this book, you will want nothing more than for her to turn out allright.

Really an excellent window into two separate-but-joined alien landscapes - the inside of a teenager's head, and the post hippy paradise crash-and-burn San Francisco of the mid-1970's. The work suffers a bit from being neither fish nor fowl - about 25% comics shuffled throughout a prose diary - but it has to be admitted that neither approach on its own would have resulted in a work with quite as much resonance or elicited as much empathy from the reader.

Case in point: Gloeckner has revisited several of the scenes from this book in various short comics over the years, and while they bring out the horror-show elements well thanks to her humid drawing, they don't offer much hope for humanity (not really a criticism, I know) or much in the way of true depth or reflection. But the diary pieces on their own only offer the up-close solipsism of the teenage mind, so the uneasy balance seems to be a necessary one.

There is also an 'abyss gazes back' aspect to the book that's off-putting: as an adult male (I'm 37), I'm deeply uncomfortable reading about the truly depressing sex, drugs and rock n' roll adventures of a 15 year old girl. It could be argued that the journalistic integrity of the work renders the dubious morality of the simple act of reading it moot, but in the end, the art and content of the book are too deeply entwined to let the reader off the hook. In fact, it's pretty apparent that Gloeckner intended to implicate the reader as well, so read it fully expecting to be left feeling both somewhat guilty and enlightened.

Really, if the content weren't so questionable, I'd recommend this as a perfect book for any teenage girl who is interested in either prose or comics that focus on them. It's a rarity, and a vacuum that shoju sadly can't fill. I did give serious thought to recommending to the two girls in the Comic class I teach, but it's just too raw for that.

It goes without saying that both the prose and drawing are top-notch.

So: recommended for anyone who can appreciate a well-made piece of catharsis (for both artist and reader) by a master of the comics craft. Then have some lighter fare nearby so you can decompress afterwards.

At some parts during this novel I questioned the necessity of the graphic text, because after reading these books for Adolescent Literature class, I told my teenage sister that I would pass them on to her. Some part of me wanted to hold this one back, and keep it on my bookshelf instead of placing it into her hands. But then I asked myself which part of the novel I would be censoring her from: the drugs and the sex or the hurt and awkwardness that comes from experiencing life as a teenager. I figured she will eventually find out about the drugs and the sex, I can't protect her from these things--knowing about them won't want to make her try them, it will only answer some of her questions about the "unknown." And I can't protect her from the feelings we all experienced as teenagers. This novel might even teach her that her feelings are normal, though some of the events in this book will hopefully be extreme for her lifestyle.
More than any novel we've read so far, this story shows the naked passion of a teenager. This book seems to be written by a teenager dealing with honest struggles, rather than a book written by an adult that's trying to teach the teenage audience a lesson. Part of what makes this book seem so candid is Minnie's ability to accept that she's searching and she doesn't try to pretend she has answers. Even though her search involves some sexually and intoxicating situations, the heart-grabbing matter of the text seems to be Minnie's desperate search for authentic love--a desire that many can relate to.
The reader can experience Minnie's development through both her diary entries and her drawings. Gloeckner doesn't spend much time anticipating the future, but instead she focuses on the present and what that means in the relation to the character. Text has the ability to reveal the past thoughts of a character, but the drawings seem to represent the present. When Gloeckner presents Minnie's thoughts through a drawing, instead of text, you can almost feel the thought process the character may have been pondering as she sketched. The drawings symbolize those times when you've exhausted yourself and don't feel like placing your thoughts into words. Instead you want to just sit and think and replay the scene over and over in your head.
When you hear the story through only one character's thoughts, your view is tainted to seeing how they see the world. Minnie's development as a character is shown through chapters that are labeled with periods of time often seen by teens. Minnie began her exploration in spring, which she calls her "introduction to love." During this period, she seems interested in the here and now, and Minnie feels and experiences things as they come to her.
In the next section, Summer Vacation, Minnie lets loose and experiments, even though she knows her actions may not be in her best interest. She never says it aloud, but many readers excuse her actions during this period because it's summer. Readers understand the need to take a break and go crazy at the same time. Hey, school's out.
During Minnie's junior year, the reader could see her being to map out her future actions. They began to see her challenge her own thoughts. Minnie becomes depressed during her junior year, because she allows herself to recognize her self-hurting actions. At this time she realizes that she has to do something to change her life.
In the epilogue, the reader is allowed to feel a sense of joy for Minnie--not because her life's better and there's a happy ending, but rather because she's learning to be honest to herself. She still doesn't have the answers to life, but she's beginning a sincere search. And you can't help but feel a sense of girl power when Minnie looks Monroe in the eye, shakes his hand, and thinks "I'm better than you, you son-of-a-bitch."