The ways of the world often baffle me. I sometimes wonder if I missed the memo about the most basic things. What are you supposed to make for dinner? What do you talk about in an elevator? Why do people cut in line? How do you leave a dinner party without being rude? Or do you leave it all? My tendency to see the world like I’m from outer space was a bit of a liability when I was a kid. True story.
But it’s been helpful in my career. I’m a cartoonist. When I first started making cartoons for The New Yorker about a decade ago, I kept my ideas light and quirky. And please shout out if you don’t get any of them, I’ll explain. [“The synchronized swim team quits”] I didn’t draw anything too personal. [“Unicorns do exist!”] I mean, personal for someone. I figured I was too specific, too hard to relate to and read, possibly, too female. It took a breakup. [“I know there would be a time I could wear them without destroying my feet.”] It took a breakup to get me to start drawing more autobiographically. The pain I was feeling, although objectively pretty run of the mill, was impossible to ignore. [Tunnel of love] I knew that drying was my strongest problem-solving tool. So I decided to diagram what I was going through.
[Tunnel of love. Just kidding. Wall of death.] By making these drawings, I could see how my ex and I had hurt each other. And move on. Onto other breakups. [“Again?” Pit of despair] Drawing from my own life was a revelation to me, not only because it helped me understand myself better, but because it made me see for the first time that people could relate to me. Now that I had this amazing tool, there were so many problems I wanted to solve with it. The problem of scheduling. [Work | Family / Friends] The problem of too many things happening all at the same time. [ “I’m having a birthday party! “I’m visiting New York!”] The problem, relatedly, of time. [Childhood / now] And finally, dating again.
There’s an endless amount to say about dating. There are, of course, problems that can’t be summed up in a single drawing. For these problems, you need many drawings. One more complex problem I have is with God. I’m Jewish, so I’m talking about the God of the Old Testament. My problem with God isn’t actually a big problem. It’s just, I don’t know, it’s stayed with me. My problem with God is that he’s too confident.
For me, creation is an act of solving problems, of figuring things out. God already seems to have everything figured out. He strikes me as more of a king than a creator. And I’m not sure you can be both. As an experiment, I decided to remake the Book of Genesis as a graphic novel. My version of God is not confident. And maybe not coincidentally, she’s a woman. It surprised me how few changes I needed to make to the original text, which is sparse and ancient and lends itself well to interpretation. For example, the Bible opens in this mysterious, moody way with God floating aimlessly on the face of a dark, mysterious void. In my version, I have her floating this way because she’s feeling despondent about her limitations as an artist.
She’s made this messy, wet, mixed up dark first drafts of the world, and she just doesn’t know where to go from here. My version of God doesn’t know exactly what she’s doing, but she draws a horizon line, and things start to fall into place. She banishes Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, not because they disobeyed her, but because, by eating the apple and becoming wise, she feels they have outgrown the world she created for them, and she needs to let them go. She scatters the builders of the Tower of Babel, not because she’s threatened by their power, but because, like any introvert, she needs her privacy.
When she destroys the world in the story of Noah, it’s not because she’s incensed with mankind, but because she’s incensed with herself. She knows she could have done a better job when she made us. My adaptation of the Book of Genesis is a creation story full of false starts and absurdities. But it’s a creation story all the same. One in which a self-conscious woman, even though she worries and makes mistakes, is nonetheless a successful, committed artist. When I finished my book, I did feel a new connection to the God of the Torah and a new sense of belonging to my religion.
I also felt a new sense of belonging, period. It’s lonely being someone who has no idea how to act normal. But it’s profoundly less lonely being that person in a world created for her by an equally awkward, self-conscious God. These days, when I worry that I won’t know what to make for dinner, I remind myself that God wouldn’t know either. This picture is giving me anxiety.
It’s like, literally, I drew it from life. This gives me the confidence to embrace my cluelessness and just wing it. Thank you, thank you so much.
