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In 1977 a San Francisco State University professor named Arthur Asa Berger sent away for the birth certificate of the cartoonist George Herriman. The certificate he got back was marked “col.” for “colored.” Although Berger was convinced he’d gotten the wrong George Herriman, other people started to question their memories of him, or to go back through his comic strips, with this new information in mind. And a number of people, including the author of this biography, Michael Tisserand, must have thought, Wow, that had to have been an interesting life.
And it was. Herriman was born in New Orleans, part of a large light-skinned Creole family, in 1880. In the era he grew up conditions for the black community grew worse, as violence from whites increased and schools no longer accepted black students. And so, when George was ten, his family moved from New Orleans to Los Angeles, where they did what so many people have done before and since — they reinvented themselves.
It was fairly easy for them to become white. The parents enrolled their children in white schools, and they checked the box marked “white” on forms asking for their race. On the other hand, a lot of it must have been nerve-racking. One misstep, and your entire life was over. Once the cartoonists Herriman worked with made a joke about his hair, which they said was so kinky they could rub it for luck — because that was apparently a thing white people did back then, with no self-consciousness whatsoever. After that Herriman wore a hat constantly, even inside, even when having his picture taken.
This part of Tisserand’s book is absolutely fascinating. What did Herriman think about deceiving his co-workers? Did he tell the woman he married his secret? He drew some fairly racist cartoons — why did he do it, and what did he think of them? We’ll probably never know, because he kept his secret so well.
I didn’t like the next part as much, an account of Herriman’s early cartoons. That’s my fault rather than the book’s, though — I didn’t think his early strips were all that funny, and I kept waiting for Krazy Kat, his most famous creation, to show up.
And then, twelve years after Herriman’s career started, Krazy Kat appears. The plots are very easily summarized. Ignatz, a mouse, dislikes Krazy Kat so much that he hurls bricks at him, after which Officer Pupp puts Ignatz in jail. Krazy, on the other hand, interprets Ignatz’s bricks as declarations of love. And that’s it. Thirty-one years of brick, jail, and Krazy’s delight at being hit on the head, over and over.
Of course there’s a lot more to them than that. The language is a wild combination of New York dialect, slang, Elizabethan English, and anything else that crossed Herriman’s mind. The setting is Coconino County, a real place in Arizona, and the backgrounds are filled with surreal trees, strange rock formations, and Navajo designs. And if that isn’t enough, the backgrounds move behind the characters, so that they can start on a hilltop and end up in a boat on the ocean.
I have to admit, though, that I don't understand some of them. Or maybe they’re not meant to be understood; maybe they’re more like Zen koans, or surrealist poetry. It’s amazing to me that these strips were actually published in major US newspapers. “All right —what shall I sing?” Ignatz asks. “Sing about that ‘Lone sim road,’” Krazy says. “I wunt to injoy sedniss.”
But the more you look at them, the more you find. You notice, for example, that the strips are about a white mouse who acts with violence toward a black cat, and the cat returning that violence with love. It’s a Martin Luther King sermon, decades before Martin Luther King.
Then there’s Krazy’s gender, which is uncertain. Krazy couldn’t be a boy cat, not with an interest in a boy mouse, not for a family newspaper at that time. On the other hand, there isn’t much that’s feminine about the character. Asked the question, Herriman said, “Krazy was something like a sprite, an elf. They have no sex. So that Kat can’t be a he or a she. The Kat’s a sprite — a pixie — free to butt into anything.” So Krazy, like Herriman, was positioned on the borderland, not one thing and not another. (Author Tisserand, amazingly, goes through the entire book without using a male or female pronoun for Krazy. It’s pretty impressive.)
Herriman was a bit like Krazy, it turns out. He was a gentle, quiet man with a sense of humor that was like no one else’s. He made his friends for life, and he would do a lot for them, including giving them strips he painted himself. His artistic sensibility and his view of the world were generations ahead of their time.
And it was. Herriman was born in New Orleans, part of a large light-skinned Creole family, in 1880. In the era he grew up conditions for the black community grew worse, as violence from whites increased and schools no longer accepted black students. And so, when George was ten, his family moved from New Orleans to Los Angeles, where they did what so many people have done before and since — they reinvented themselves.
It was fairly easy for them to become white. The parents enrolled their children in white schools, and they checked the box marked “white” on forms asking for their race. On the other hand, a lot of it must have been nerve-racking. One misstep, and your entire life was over. Once the cartoonists Herriman worked with made a joke about his hair, which they said was so kinky they could rub it for luck — because that was apparently a thing white people did back then, with no self-consciousness whatsoever. After that Herriman wore a hat constantly, even inside, even when having his picture taken.
This part of Tisserand’s book is absolutely fascinating. What did Herriman think about deceiving his co-workers? Did he tell the woman he married his secret? He drew some fairly racist cartoons — why did he do it, and what did he think of them? We’ll probably never know, because he kept his secret so well.
I didn’t like the next part as much, an account of Herriman’s early cartoons. That’s my fault rather than the book’s, though — I didn’t think his early strips were all that funny, and I kept waiting for Krazy Kat, his most famous creation, to show up.
And then, twelve years after Herriman’s career started, Krazy Kat appears. The plots are very easily summarized. Ignatz, a mouse, dislikes Krazy Kat so much that he hurls bricks at him, after which Officer Pupp puts Ignatz in jail. Krazy, on the other hand, interprets Ignatz’s bricks as declarations of love. And that’s it. Thirty-one years of brick, jail, and Krazy’s delight at being hit on the head, over and over.
Of course there’s a lot more to them than that. The language is a wild combination of New York dialect, slang, Elizabethan English, and anything else that crossed Herriman’s mind. The setting is Coconino County, a real place in Arizona, and the backgrounds are filled with surreal trees, strange rock formations, and Navajo designs. And if that isn’t enough, the backgrounds move behind the characters, so that they can start on a hilltop and end up in a boat on the ocean.
I have to admit, though, that I don't understand some of them. Or maybe they’re not meant to be understood; maybe they’re more like Zen koans, or surrealist poetry. It’s amazing to me that these strips were actually published in major US newspapers. “All right —what shall I sing?” Ignatz asks. “Sing about that ‘Lone sim road,’” Krazy says. “I wunt to injoy sedniss.”
But the more you look at them, the more you find. You notice, for example, that the strips are about a white mouse who acts with violence toward a black cat, and the cat returning that violence with love. It’s a Martin Luther King sermon, decades before Martin Luther King.
Then there’s Krazy’s gender, which is uncertain. Krazy couldn’t be a boy cat, not with an interest in a boy mouse, not for a family newspaper at that time. On the other hand, there isn’t much that’s feminine about the character. Asked the question, Herriman said, “Krazy was something like a sprite, an elf. They have no sex. So that Kat can’t be a he or a she. The Kat’s a sprite — a pixie — free to butt into anything.” So Krazy, like Herriman, was positioned on the borderland, not one thing and not another. (Author Tisserand, amazingly, goes through the entire book without using a male or female pronoun for Krazy. It’s pretty impressive.)
Herriman was a bit like Krazy, it turns out. He was a gentle, quiet man with a sense of humor that was like no one else’s. He made his friends for life, and he would do a lot for them, including giving them strips he painted himself. His artistic sensibility and his view of the world were generations ahead of their time.