Cartoonist Gary Larson on What's Beautiful and What's Ugly in Nature

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: DECEMBER 31, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 123101np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Gary Larson
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:06

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

On this New Year's Eve edition of our show, animal week continues with cartoon animals. Cartoonist Gary Larson has dreamed up all sorts of weird creatures for his surreal comic, "The Far Side." Many of his comics have mocked human foibles by showing the world through the points of view of animals and insects.

In appreciation of his work, scientists have named a butterfly and a biting louse after him. "The Far Side" was syndicated in more than 1,900 newspapers around the world and translated into 17 languages before Larson retired from drawing it about three years ago. Twenty-one of his "Far Side" books have been bestsellers. He is currently finishing up his second animated film.

I spoke with him last Spring after the publication of his illustrated book about a family of earthworms called "There's a Hair in My Dirt!" I asked him about the inspiration for the story.

GARY LARSON, CARTOONIST, "THE FAR SIDE;" AUTHOR, "THERE'S A HAIR IN MY DIRT!": Maybe this goes back to my -- my childhood because I -- I always had an affinity for animals that lived in swamps and especially snakes. I always liked snakes and caught them and brought them home. And I had -- I had very tolerant parents, I think, that allowed you to bring things into the house like that and set up little cages and terrariums and whatever.

And that -- that has always stayed with me. I've even, on into my 20s, I had a real strong interest in reptiles and amphibians. But when you do that, you start to get -- you start to obviously encounter a lot of reactions from people who walk into your place and are horror-stricken at what they see. And it makes you -- well, it always made you feel like you had to explain yourself. And I just never had any fear of those things at all. In fact, I was -- I thought they were beautiful.

And it's -- it started me thinking about, well, you know, is it me? Or is it you? Why is someone else looking at this and saying that it's ugly or whatever? And I started to realize that maybe there's -- maybe we all bring prejudice to nature as well, when we decide what's beautiful and what's ugly or what's -- what's dramatic and impressive and what's not.

GROSS: One of your comics is of a snake that's coiled up, but it's sitting on a couch in a living room. And of course, the snake has the same patterns -- the snake's skin is the same pattern as the couch's upholstery.

LARSON: Right.

GROSS: So...

LARSON: Right, right.

GROSS: ... so the couch is kind of -- the snake is kind of like camouflaged in the living room...

LARSON: Right.

GROSS: ... the way snakes usually are camouflaged in the woods. Did you have snakes in the house that got out and hid out in the living room?

LARSON: Oh, I did. I used to -- yeah, they would get loose every once in a while and my folks were never real pleased about that, but still they never put their foot down. But yeah -- well, I usually could find them eventually.

GROSS: Usually? All right.

LARSON: Yeah.

GROSS: That sounds awfully...

LAUGHTER

LARSON: I know my -- I lost an eight-foot boa constrictor once in our house, and my dad and I went on a search for it. And we were looking -- we were looking everywhere and could not find this thing. And my mom was gone. She didn't even -- wasn't even aware of it, but you know, we had to find it before she got home.

And I remember I was in the living room looking behind the couch or whatever, and I -- I heard my dad scream from another room. And he said -- well actually what he said -- he yelled "I found it." And then this scream came out of there.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: What happened?

LARSON: Well, nothing. Actually, the snake didn't do anything. He had reached up -- my mom had like a sewing machine or something, and it was -- and he had reached up inside -- you know, well, actually the cabinet that it was in. And he didn't look. He just put his hand up inside this thing and was feeling, and he put his hand right on it. And it was -- it was really funny because he had -- this reaction was to first of all say that he found it, and then it sort of hit him that he'd found it. And this scream.

GROSS: In a lot of your comics, you try to see the world through the eyes of insects and animals and the human world looks, you know, often very absurd when seen through the eyes of insects and animals. In one of your very funny comics, there's a movie theater filled with insects, and they're watching a horror movie called "Return of the Killer Windshield."

LARSON: Right.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: I think it was very funny. What kind of things do you wonder about when you wonder about what an insect's point of view is like? Do you spend a lot of time doing that? Thinking: I wonder how the world looks to the insects that we kill when we drive quickly down the highway?

LARSON: Well, I suppose I do. But you know, it's always been confusing to me as well -- is to try to understand how or where this idea came from, how I got there.

GROSS: With the idea of that particular cartoon? Or just ideas in general?

LARSON: In general, 'cause now -- I mean, I'm thinking about the cartoon you mentioned in that, and I'm going: well, how did I think of that and why did that come to me? But yeah, I imagine I am starting to think about their world and looking at it, and what it would be like, and what are the threats and dangers and encounters that they have in their world. And what do I know about them and their lives and life cycles, and start thinking like that.

GROSS: You have done so many comics, Gary Larson, about insects and creatures and wildlife and animals and so on, that there's been a couple of creatures named after you. One of them is a louse -- as in lice.

LARSON: Yeah.

GROSS: And you -- you reprinted in one of your books the letter that the biologist sent you -- the biologist who wanted to name the louse after you. And he said: "let me warn you, I do not work on cute insects. I am a specialist on the order malefagia (ph), which is the chewing lice." I hope I pronounced that right.

LARSON: Right. Right.

GROSS: Were you honored...

LARSON: I was honored.

GROSS: ... that he wrote you this?

LARSON: I was very honored. Yeah, I was -- that was a great compliment. I don't know if everyone would feel that way, but I did. I mean, and the fact that it was a chewing louse was fine.

GROSS: Did you get to ever see this chewing louse?

LARSON: I've never seen it, no.

GROSS: And what's it officially called?

LARSON: You mean as in like a common name or what...

GROSS: Well, now that it's named after you, is it called the "Gary Larson louse?"

LARSON: No, it's -- "larsoni" (ph), I think, is the species or sub-species name on it. And I can't -- I -- right now, you've caught me off guard, I can't think of the genus name.

GROSS: And you have a butterfly named after you too?

LARSON: Yeah.

GROSS: And what's that?

LARSON: I sort of forget what that is. I don't know too much about the butterfly. I -- frankly, it was -- I was more drawn to the louse, I guess.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: We've been talking about real creatures. I want to talk about monsters a little bit. You have some great monster comics that you've done over the years. And one of them -- a monster couple is sitting at the kitchen table. They're drinking coffee. And Mr. Monster says: "dang, look at the time, and I gotta be in little Billy Harrison's closet before nightfall."

LAUGHTER

Did you think that there were lots of monsters in your house when you were a boy -- hiding out?

LARSON: I did. I did. I was -- well, I'll tell you this. I had a real fear of my closet when I was a kid. And I mean I just -- I was convinced that something lived in my closet. And I had this little ritual as a result that every night when I went to bed I made sure that the closet doors -- I had two sliding doors -- I made sure they were completely shut before I went to bed.

And one night, I was in bed and I was -- had my reading lamp on and I think I was like reading a comic book or something. And I looked up to check on the closet because I was always checking on the closet. And the door was open like, I don't -- you know, half an inch or so and I was -- I just was mortified. I couldn't believe that I had done this. I had overlooked it.

And of course, I also knew that I couldn't get up and go shut the door 'cause that's just what the thing inside wanted me to do.

LAUGHTER

And I didn't want to walk across the room to turn the light on. And so, I just -- I just laid there and I was -- I was really in a cold sweat wondering what to do about this. And, I went back to reading for a while. And I looked up again, you know, like half a minute later, and I wasn't sure, but I thought that maybe the door was now a little wider -- that it had opened a little.

But if it had, it was very subtle. And I looked down again and looked up once more, and this time I was convinced: it was like now like an inch open -- wide open. And all -- now, all I could do was just stare at it and I was just staring at this closet and I found myself trying to look into this black slit into the closet. And eventually, I could make up -- make out an eye staring back at me -- just one eye looking at me.

And I -- oh, this primal scream came out of me. And at the same time that I was screaming, the door just slid open very slowly -- I mean, just before my eyes, and my brother stepped out. I don't know how long he'd been hidden in there, but he was -- he knew I had this fear and he was just milking it out.

GROSS: Oh, he had your number.

LARSON: Oh, boy, did he. Yeah.

GROSS: So did that -- did that reinforce or end your fear of the closet?

LARSON: Oh, it didn't end anything for me.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: What -- what did you expect the monsters would look like, since you've drawn a lot of monsters over the years?

LARSON: I think the monsters that I saw in my mind were very werewolf-like, I think.

GROSS: Lots of hair, big fangs.

LARSON: Yeah.

GROSS: Partly -- partly human, partly animal.

LARSON: Yeah. Actually, and I realize again, my -- once again, my older brother had a big influence on me 'cause he had a -- when we shared a bedroom, he had a dream one night in which -- and he woke up screaming. And my mom came running in to see what was wrong.

And he described this dream to her of this -- of being in a basement somewhere, and this wolf that walked on its hind legs was trying to get him. And the wolf kind of shuffled its feet and you could hear him coming, and he described the sound of this -- these feet going "shhh shhh shhh" down the hallway toward him.

And when it finally showed up, it was this huge wolf on its hind legs and it didn't have any pupils -- it just had pure white eyes. And it became sort of famous in our household. It was known as the wolf with the pure white eyes. And he was -- he completely forgot about it after he woke up. But for me, his dream haunted me for the longest time. I think I kind of absorbed his dream -- that story -- and worried about that wolf somewhere in our house for years.

GROSS: Now as an adult, you came up for one of your cartoons with a good device to protect against monsters. It's the "monster snorkel."

LARSON: Yeah.

GROSS: And it allows a child to stay under the covers, hidden from the monsters, while still breathing through this snorkel. And, you know, in reading that, it made me think that, you know, in my fear of monster-era, I had to vigilantly stay with my head outside of the covers 'cause as long as I was watching, they probably wouldn't come, see? So if I was under the covers, that's when I'd be vulnerable.

LARSON: Oh. No, that was very different from my own private version of how to survive.

LAUGHTER

I had -- I almost -- I think I -- I could have suffocated, maybe, some nights. I just did not want to expose any part of me, I thought.

GROSS: It was interesting that you were at the -- on the one hand so attracted to, you know, like snakes and kind of creepy, crawly type things that would scare a lot of people. And on the other hand, you were really afraid of monsters.

LARSON: Mm-hmm. Well, literally, it was -- I guess that's a difference between day and night for...

GROSS: Oh, sure. Yeah. Right.

LARSON: Yeah. In the daylight, I was into nature and you know, everything -- it was, you know, I read books on biology and natural history and I studied about snakes and other animals. I mean, I was really into that. But boy, when the sun went down, it was like, oh, this is another world.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: You have a comic -- you know, you've spoken of your brother a little bit and some of the practical jokes and so on he played on you. You have a cartoon where the character who I assume is based on you is tied to a tree while the older brother is coming at him with a match so large that it looks more like a torch...

LAUGHTER

... than a match. Did your brother like do things to torture you?

LARSON: Oh, well I had to watch out for myself, I guess. I was often saved by the bathroom, which was the only, you know, room with a lock on it, of course, to escape. But mostly, things like hiding in the closet -- whatever.

GROSS: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

LARSON: Sometimes it got physical, but...

GROSS: If you don't mind my asking, I know one of the books is dedicated to the memory of your brother. What happened to him?

LARSON: Oh, he had a heart attack about four years ago -- a massive heart attack and died. And caught us all off-guard. And he was -- you know, now when we look back on it and realize he was, you know, overweight and he had high blood pressure and high cholesterol. And a lot of things going against him. And -- but still, we were all sort of shocked. He was 46.

GROSS: That's young.

LARSON: Yeah. So.

GROSS: Do you still do cartoons about him? Or, do you feel like that would be off-limits now? Or...

LARSON: ...oh, no, I don't think it'd be off-limits. I think these are some of my -- my memories, you know, and I wouldn't want to ignore them, I guess. And he wouldn't want me to.

GROSS: My guest is Gary Larson, the creator of "The Far Side" comic strip. More after a break.

This is FRESH AIR.

BREAK

GROSS: My guest is Gary Larson, creator of "The Far Side" comic strip. The strip originated in the "San Francisco Chronicle" nearly 20 years ago.

GROSS: Was there a first comic that you can think of that got this really big reaction and made you realize: oh, people are paying attention and they're responding.

LARSON: Yeah. That happened to me with a very strange cartoon, I have to concede. I drew this cartoon showing a cow -- what else? -- but a cow standing in front of like a workbench, looking out at the reader. And on the workbench were these just amorphous shapes. And there's like a barn in the background, or whatever -- this little scene. And I titled it "cow tools."

And I had been thinking -- I remember how I got to this idea. I was thinking about how anthropologists used to define mankind as being -- man as being the only animal that made and used tools. And then they subsequently discovered that, well, even some birds and primates do that. So, they had to change the definition a little. But I started thinking about, well, what if cows start -- made tools, what would they make?

And my intention was that, well, you don't know what they are. Only the cow knows what they are. You know, and here are this display of tools that a cow would use, and only a cow knows.

But the reaction was unbelievable. I thought it was the end of my career, honestly, because I just started getting a barrage of phone calls and letters and...

GROSS: Saying what?

LARSON: Well, saying: what does it mean? And that's what happened -- everyone was just utterly confused by it. And I think there was one newspaper that posted some kind of a reward or something for anyone that could figure it out.

LAUGHTER

And I actually -- that was the first time that I realized that, you know, more than six people were looking at it. I had no idea.

GROSS: And the fact that they didn't get it, and it confused them really mattered somehow.

LARSON: Yeah, yeah. It was a very confusing week for me. I was trying to sort out: what does this mean? I mean, I was -- I can't describe what that was like. It was just very strange. I mean, I lived in a little basement apartment, you know, by myself. And drew these things once a week. I was very -- I mean, it's a very isolated kind of existence and I mailed them once a week into my editor and we'd maybe talk about them.

GROSS: Who was in a different city than you were.

LARSON: Yeah, it was in a different city. Yeah. And then one day, this thing happened and I had -- oh, it was incredible. I had this -- I mean, after I got through it, I realized well, I guess this is good news, but at the time, I thought: "oh, jeez. You don't do this. I mean, you don't confuse people."

GROSS: Did you print an explanation or a follow up comic?

LARSON: I did a lot of interviews. I was, I think -- so yeah, in a sense, I -- oddly enough, doing something that wasn't funny, but just confusing, probably did more promotional work for me than anything else. It's strange how that worked out. But yeah, I was -- I had a listed phone number and everything, so I mean I was just picking up the phone and find myself talking to some reporter and explaining it.

GROSS: I want to ask you about a story that you've told in one of your books, and that I want to hear more about. Before you started working full-time as a cartoonist, you had a job with the Seattle humane society investigating cases of animal cruelty -- cruelty toward animals.

LARSON: Right.

GROSS: And on your way to the job interview, apparently you ran over a dog.

LARSON: I did.

GROSS: What happened?

LARSON: I did. It's -- that's the most unbelievable thing that's probably ever happened to me. I mean, that's -- and that's the only time I've ever hit an animal, I think, driving. And I'm on my way to the -- an interview at the human society. You know, I look back on it now and see the irony in it and everything, but at the time, it's mortifying when something like that happens.

Well, it was out on kind of a rural road and it was like a pack of dogs, and they just -- I mean, I don't know where they appeared from, but they were just heading from one side of the road to the other. They came up from the woods and were heading across the street, I think probably chasing a deer.

And one of them -- I mean, just -- I just nailed it and hit it -- thumped it really hard with the right front fender. And I stopped and looked back and I saw the dog, and he actually moved off. He went back off into the woods with the other dogs, but I have no -- I mean, there's no way that he didn't feel that or something -- what happened to him. So I never knew what became of the dog or whatever, but I don't...

GROSS: Well, there's no way you're going to after him and be in all this pack of dogs, that you didn't know.

LARSON: Yeah, I mean it was -- yeah, it's kind of hard to describe the setting, but that was -- that didn't seem really plausible at the time, the way things were happening. But -- and it was all pretty fast. It wasn't like he was lying in the road there, or something like that.

GROSS: Right.

LARSON: It was -- almost as if he wasn't injured, in fact, but he had to have been.

GROSS: So, did you show up to the interview with blood on your fender?

LAUGHTER

LARSON: No. I was kind of rattled about it, though.

GROSS: I can imagine.

LARSON: I was just, you know, sitting there being interviewed, and I just like -- oh yes, and by the way I just...

GROSS: Murderer!

LAUGHTER

LARSON: So.

GROSS: Gary Larson is the creator of "The Far Side" comic strip. He retired from the strip about three years ago. He has a new "Far Side" calendar, and he's currently completing his second animated film. Our interview was recorded last Spring after the publication of his illustrated book about a family of earthworms called, "There's a Hair In My Dirt!"

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

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Dateline: Terry Gross, Washington, DC
Guest: Gary Larson
High: Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson has written and illustrated the recent book, "There's A Hair In My Dirt! A Worm's Story." Larson quit drawing his syndicated Far Side comic 1995. But up until then it thrived for 14 years and appeared in more than 1,900 newspapers worldwide. Larson has published more than 20 books featuring his cartoons. He lives in Seattle, Washington. The 1999 Far Side Off-The-Wall Calendar was released earlier this year.
Spec: Entertainment; Lifestyle; Media; Gary Larson

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Gary Larson
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.