At the age of 67, Vonnegut wrote an Introduction in Warts and All, a 1990 collection originally published by Penguin Books of comic works by brothers Drew and Josh Alan Friedman, edited and designed by Art Spiegelman, R. Sikoryak, and Francoise Mouly.
Summary[]
Los Desastres de la Guerra - No. 15, by Francisco Goya
Earlier in his career, Vonnegut found himself grouped with other largely unrelated authors in a category called "Black Humorists". Eventually, he determined that what all these writers shared "was a determination to show what foolish, misinformed playthings of good and bad luck even the grandest human beings are". Such ideas seemed not only anti-American, but anti-human at a time when the species assumed it was about to colonize the universe. Similar ideas are now more effectively conveyed with "troubling and interesting pictures as well as words" since "semi-literacy is epidemic".
In fact, however, such works are inheritors of a tradition going back to at least Goya's Los Desastres de la Guerra and Proverbios. Vonnegut has put illustrations in some of his books, but since he can't actually draw, he remains "overwhelmed by respect and envy" when he sees work like Drew Friedman's, whom he still has not met but whose skill is unquestionable. In his childhood, Vonnegut saw comics of similar quality, but none came with something worth saying. People who can only see reasons for optimism in the future of the human race will dismiss the work of Drew and his brother Josh as nothing but trash, but again, one thinks of Goya.[1]
- ↑ "Introduction", Draw and Josh Alan Friedman, Warts and All.