STRAIGHT TALK
By Jeffrey Zaslow
Issue date:
April 24-26, 1998
This week: There's a Hair in My Dirt! A Worm's Story is new in stores. Larson says the book has percolated in his brain for 20 years.
Gary Larson: The Far Side cartoonist resurfaces with a new "adult children's book." Its message: Commune with nature.
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"Things can be low on the food chain, but that doesn't mean they're lowly," Larson says. |
 n the three years since Gary Larson quit his wildly popular comic, The Far Side, he's been looking down. He has looked under rocks and leaves, finding dazzling vegetation and insect civilizations. He has traveled to Africa and watched in awe as millions of safari ants crossed his path."Some people," he says, "connect to nature by viewing mountains or the Grand Canyon. They see nature on a scale that has no intricacies. They may be overlooking what's really happening, the subtleties. When I'm in the woods, I look down." In his quirky comic, Larson, 47, created a world where bugs and other creatures were far smarter than humans. Rather than feeling offended, Homo sapiens embraced Larson's work. Though Larson no longer appears in U.S. newspapers -- he says burnout made him quit -- his Far Side books (33 million sold), calendars (45 million) and greeting cards (80 million) are as popular as ever. This week, Larson releases an "adult children's book," more words than pictures, that ponders man's role in nature. In a rare interview in his office in a Seattle high-rise, a soft-spoken but earnest Larson says people don't understand "the threads that connect us to other living things. Newspapers will run a headline: 'Shark kills human.' You never see a headline from the other perspective: 'Man swims in shark-infested water, forgets he's shark food.' " As Larson reflects on his childhood pets -- pigeons, lizards, frogs, salamanders, a monkey -- he says he feels guilty for having served as a zookeeper. He was a party to mankind's "theme-park approach to nature. We judge plants and animals by whether they're entertaining to us. We gravitate toward animals and plants that are big, dramatic, beautiful and at eye-level." That's why he advises putting your chin to the ground to study an anthill. "Things can be low on the food chain, but that doesn't mean they're lowly."
Photo Credit: REX RYSTEDT FOR USA WEEKEND
ASK LARSON FOR ADVICE Larson will write or call a reader who seeks advice. By May 3, write to "Straight Talk," P.O. Box 3455, Chicago, Ill. 60654 (fax: 312-661-0375; e-mail: talk@usaweekend.com).
If you don't understand a cartoon's joke ...
"Turn the page. Go on with your life. It could be that the cartoonist tried to be creative and blew it. Sometimes, when I hear the analysis people come up with [about Far Side comics], I think, 'Boy, they're shooting way too high. I wasn't trying to be that deep.' "
Larson warns:
Before giving your mother-in-law a Far Side greeting card, "ask yourself: 'What am I trying to say?' ''
For aspiring cartoonists:
"Humor always involves risk. You shouldn't be completely sure something is going to work, or you might be slipping into a formula."
Lift up a rock:
Study the lives underneath it, Larson says. "Just be careful how you put it back down, or you can wipe out a population the size of Manhattan."
Zaslow is an advice columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.
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