Ben Katchor: Conversations

"Author Michael Chabon described Ben Katchor (born 1951) as "the creator of the last great American comic strip." Katchor's comic strip Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer, which began in 1988, brought him to the attention of the readers of alternative weekly newspapers along with a coterie of artists who have gone on to public acclaim. In the mid-1990s, NPR ran audio versions of several Julius Knipl stories, narrated by Katchor and starring Jerry Stiller in the title role! An early contributor to RAW, Katchor has contributed to The Forward, The New Yorker, Slate, and weekly newspapers. He edited and published two issues of Picture Story, which featured his own work, with articles and stories by Peter Blegvad, Jerry Moriarty, and Mark Beyer. Katchor has been the subject of profiles in the New Yorker in 1993 and the Yale Review in 1998, a recipient of a MacArthur "Genius Grant," a Guggenheim Fellowship, a fellow at both the American Academy in Berlin and the New York Public Library, a dramatist. Katchor's work is often described as zany or bizarre and author Douglas Wolk has characterized his work as "one or two notches too far" beyond an absurdist reality. And yet the work resonates with its audience because, as was the case with Knipl's journey through the wilderness of a decaying city, absurdity was only what was usefully available; absurdity was the reality. Katchor seemed in tune with New York as an old city. Informed by a respect for history, a concern for living urban communities and not just the threat of urban decay, but also the possibilities it offered, Knipl presaged the themes of Katchor's work: a concern with the past, an interest in the intersection of Jewish identity and a secular commercial culture, and the limits and possibilities of urban life"--