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The Austin English Interview (page two of three)
Through the Habitrails
My personal favorite of all your works is "Through the Habitrails" and, first off, how auto biographical is "Through the Habitrails"?
Let's see. (Picks up TTH, and flips through it). That's a hard one to answer. In a percentage? In proportion?
What types of things are autobiographical?
Well, I always like to let people know that all the animal metaphors, the killing of animals, is completely fictitious. Some people come up to me, and they want to know about that.
That? Out of all the stuff in there, that's what they want to know?!
That is the highest amount of metaphor in this book, and is the farthest removed from reality. The closest to reality, probably, the interaction with women.
So you were really married to someone that was similar to the cat lover? I don't want to make you answer anything you don't want to…
I was married to someone very much like her. Very much similar to this. I have no idea if she's ever read this or not. But yeah, this is pretty much on the money.
And did you work in a business that was similar to the one portrayed in TTH?
I worked in a small newspaper and I was a full time illustrator. And it was really a small corporation so, looking back, it was nothing like working for PG&E, which is a true big, bloated corporation. This was just a little small-town corporation. But it still had the sense of being creative for someone else's vague goals.
Could you talk a little bit about that story "Be Creative" where they tap you for creativity?
That's basically the idea of being creative just to…just to sell soap or whatever. But it's worse than that, because it's not like you're working for the company that makes the soap; your working for the company that sells ads, to sell the soap. And so your drawing basically a bar of soap, and the original manufacturer isn't even aware of this illustration. Y'know, it's all so far removed from any real creativity.
Is it easier to work in a job like PG&E, where creativity isn't even a question?
Definitely. Especially when not only do you have to fake creativity, but you have to fake enthusiasm. And I think I tried to get at that a little bit in a story called "The Infiltrator", with a guy who would come around behind you and say "Oh! That's really great! That dumbass bar of soap you're drawing!" and you don't want to just be rude to the guy and say "Fuck off! I hate this!" So your just stuck kind of smiling and nodding, saying "Yeah…"
One of the things I'm sure you hear from a lot of people is that, your work, from piece to piece . . . I mean I don't know if there could be something more different than Colonia and TTH. How different is your creative process, when you work on something like TTH? Is it more draining to you?
Definitely. Definitely.
I mean you talked about having joy from doing Colonia. I don't feel that's something you'd get out of doing TTH.
No. I think TTH was more like therapy. It was more cathartic. And it was draining. And it was hard… because at the time I did this, I was re-married, so y'know, here I am doing a story about the cat lover, when I'm married to someone else…
To the women you meet at the end of TTH?
Yeah, and so, y'know, it's draining, and it's also disruptive of your personal life, because people don't like to watch you be cathartic.
They think that you shouldn't have to be cathartic.
Right. They don't like the idea of you spending eight hours a day, drawing about someone else. Like songwriters, they still need to write love songs, and they're not all about their current love.
Okay. Many of the other office personalities in TTH are very fleshed out, kind of stereotypical office personalities, so did you actually take co-workers personalities, and try to flesh them out more. Or are some characters like the doomed one, more creations?
No these are…now that I think about it, I think almost every character in here is from a real person. Some of them are augmented in some way, and some of them are just virtually that person. The Doomed One, the Dark Spiral character, this person is virtually (him) without any alteration. The Infiltrator is one that just becomes way more surreal and metaphorical, because this person didn't really die. But yeah they are all fleshed out versions of real people.
Could you talk a little bit more about the metaphors or gerbils, and putting people in cages and stuff like that?
Yeah, that was the initial idea of the whole Habitrails series, which I think I came up with while I was at work. They're by products of the worker's emotions. They're sort of there to remind you of what you are, as you sit and work for this company, and then they're also there to relieve you of your own stress and strain to help keep you there.
There's that great image of when you're trying to get the gerbil to pour you a glass of beer.
Yeah alcohol played a big part in the creation of this series.
(Sarcastically) Oh your kidding. There's no alcohol anywhere in this story.
(Laughs). Yeah. Not just the drunkenness, but the... I think this is more relevant to people who know about drinking, there's more to it…The drying out aspect of alcohol is seen in this series. When your drying out is really when you're kind of buggy and…it's hard to put my finger on.
Stephen Bissette describes Habitrails as Kafkaesque. What's your opinion? Do you think that's an accurate description of it?
(Reluctantly) I guess so. I actually hadn't read any Kafka until recently. Stephen says in the introduction that he wasn't sure if I had read Kafka, and I actually hadn't. And so I read The Trial…I guess it's kind of Kafkaesque, but mine has an undercurrent of optimism, um, not just at the ending, but here and there, if you know where to find it…and I couldn't find any in Kafka. It was just so incredibly bleak. It was disturbing.
What was it like working for Taboo, with Stephen Bissette?
That was really rewarding but also a little bit frustrating as far as the timeline.
Because Taboo just collapsed.
Yeah, and it just took longer and longer for each issue to come out and so, it was just a situation were I was so grateful to be in the book, and to be paid as well as I was, but there was always the frustration of, will this ever come out? And some of it didn't, and so you're in a position where you're grateful but you want to complain about it at the same time. Unfortunately, there's not much you can do about it.
You talked about there being a little optimism in TTH ("The Escape" stories convey a lot), but to be frank, a lot of TTH, contains a lot of depressing stories. But then at the end there's this, y'know, it becomes a happy story as you meet the other woman. But then in the second edition of the collection, you publish a 3-page epilogue, which tears apart the happy ending. Was it that you kind of felt dissatisfied with the happy ending, or did events really dictate that things needed to end this way?
Yeah, that's a good question. I don't like the epilogue personally. I don't like it because, um, the whole story, the whole book, other then the epilogue, really had a lot of thought in it, whereas the epilogue…
Could have been a whole book in itself, but you describe it in a couple of paragraphs.
Right. Exactly. I almost thought it could be a sequel, but I just didn't want to do it (laughs). But, I did it too hastily and so, while the whole series is thought out and reviewed, and kind of self-edited, the epilogue I did really quickly. I think with too much…too much emotion. Too much autobiographical, emotional jabbing out, instead of stepping back and thinking (it through). I think it was all a little too hasty.
Because I think in "The Cat Lover," you presented exactly what happened, and in this one, it just your view.
Right. I think that's the problem with it. And I probably just did it up in a week or two…and off it went to press.
Was it kind of added for people, so they could buy the second printing?
No it really wasn't that, it was something more. I think we all go through different levels of bitterness about past relationships. And I think at the time I did the second edition of TTH, I was probably at a peak of bitterness, about the relationship that starts at the end of Habitrails. It was just my own inner demons that got in the way of telling a good story.
Well, it does kind of work as like a warning that, things don't always work out like they seem they will or should.
And I did get a lot of criticism for the original! So, I was thinking this would satisfy those people, so I did have the audience in mind a little bit. I think a majority of people said about the first book, "I really like the book, but the ending is a cop out." So the new ending is kind of saying to those people, "Well, take that!" (Laughs). But then there were people who just said, "I can't handle this new ending, it's just way to depressing." But it's reality, isn't it?
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