Lynda Barry's cartoons are instantly recognizable. They're peopled with anxious women and awkward men or, more recently, with an impressive cast of children. And they're packed with words scrawled in her distinctive hand. For twelve years now, in her four collections: Girls and Boys, Big Ideas, Everything in the World, and The Fun House, in her "coloring book for adults," Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies! in her weekly syndicated cartoon, "Ernie Pook's Comeek," or her monthly Esquire strip, Barry has used words and pictures to satirize the obsessions of American women and men and to bring to life the bewilderments of American childhood. She has just published a novel accompanied by 18 paintings, and is hard at work on her first play. And there's more. When I called to arrange this interview, she reported via answering machine that she was under deadline. Included in the usual instructions of what to do at the beep was an unusual query, "And if you have any good dating stories, leave them, too. For instance, why do you think men run, from women? Why do men run from women after one or two dates?" When we finally connected, I learned that the question was not designed simply to enliven her messages or to distract disappointed callers; it was serious research. She's writing an article for New York Woman on dating: "It's not about how to date or even how to get success on a date. It's, 'Does dating as a system work?' " After an hour's conversation with Lynda Barry, it's easy to see why her work has taken her into so many forms. She has so much to show and to tell about American culture that we will undoubtedly, and fortunately, continue to see ever-new combinations of words and pictures emerge from her studio, her drawing board, and her typewriter.

Graham: The cartoons that we chose for this feature address some of the more ridiculous obsessions of American women. "Four Ways to Change Your Profile," which suggests that a woman "can lend bland eyes an air of oriental flair" by wearing a wire hanger around her head, is clearly a spoof on the makeovers we see in women's magazines. The stick figure (in "I Think This Dieting Thing' Has Gone Far Enough!") smoking a cigarette, drinking coffee, and declining sustenance while claiming that she's much happier makes us laugh. But these images also make us cringe, because we recognize ourselves or other women we know. We laugh, but at the same time we see how dangerous and destructive our obsessions can be.

Barry: I think that humor can actually change your point of view because it shows you the dumb girl in you and the smart girl in you. It divides it out, and when you laugh, you have this really sweet moment where you decide what you want to take back in. If you can laugh at an intelligent woman with a college degree obsessed with her body, wishing she had big tits or convinced that no one will love her because she has five stretch marks on her left thigh, then you can begin to change the way you see things. A lot of times people will use a joke that they've heard or something that Roseanne Barr said, for example, or one of Nicole Hollander's strips and they can say, well it's just like this. It's like a talisman that helps us remember priorities - priorities that we have to consciously memorize in order to internalize them. These things about our body images, or our selves in relationships to men have been internalized; and the internalization process starts when we are very young. It starts with our first Barbie.

Graham: Do you think humor can also be dangerous? I'm thinking of racist and sexist jokes.

Barry: I don't think humor is ever dangerous. I don't think it's the humor that's dangerous. Laughing is a physical reaction. I don't think it's ever dangerous because for me it's a sign or a barometer of a belief system. So if you laugh at a racist joke the laughing is without blame, the laughing should let you know, it should make you take a look at your belief. A joke can divide them from us. The problem with a racist joke is that it not only divides the world into them and us but that it makes us superior. And it does it in a very quick, gestalt, lightening flash way. Any amount of just talking in racial slurs or talking flat out about why, say, black people are dumber than white people, if you would be involved in such a conversation, would take you forty times as long to get the same response as it would in a very quick joke. And also, by telling a joke, the teller remains guiltless. Because it's just a joke. That's my favorite line, "I was just joking." It's the same thing with sexist humor, it's the same thing with making a joke about women, it divides them from us, it divides men and women from each other. The kind of humor in the strips that you picked can divide the them from the us internally, so that we can see what our own belief system is. What we're laughing at is the thing that we believe. It's like having your brain split into two; part of the laughter is the realization that you didn't even know you believed it. But I don't think that there's anything wrong with laughing. I think that you can't help it. Say you found a racist joke hysterical, you could stop and break it down to see what you find hysterical about it. Was the fact that one of the characters had to be black, or had to be Hispanic or Polish or whatever, vital to the joke, or could the joke have been about two guys or two women? I was at this conference on women's humor, and I was in a panel discussion and one of the speakers began talking about what it was okay to laugh at and what it was not okay to laugh at. I'm sorry, there's no stopping it. It's like a sneeze, there's nothing you can do if something strikes you as funny. The thing you can do is break it down in your head, "Now why did I think this is funny?" Not even, "Why is this funny?" but, "Why did I think this was funny?" There are a lot of good jokes that are told in the form of racist jokes that if you remove the race from them the joke is still great. It's the ascribing of a particular racial group or a sexual group to the low man on the totem pole in the joke that makes it bad. Not that makes it bad, but that serves in that function of dividing them from us and making us superior. The good thing that humor can do is divide them from us within ourselves and make the part that is actually superior superior. The part that actually should know better than to think that by losing ten pounds you are actually a better human being.

Graham: Roseanne Barr says when she was struggling to find her kind of humor, that she realized she had to invent "funny womanness," to get inside the stereotype. She compares what she's doing to what Richard Pryor did, and that was, to claim the stereotype for himself. That's something like what you're talking about too, making the stereotype three-dimensional, making it something other than a way of putting you down.

Barry: The three-dimensionality is the key, because otherwise it's just this flat thing that you can always laugh at. The thing that I love about Roseanne Barr, that completely flattens me, is that her humor is for women, period. I mean men see it and men can laugh at it and get the joke, but the healing power is for women. I think seeing her act was one of the first times 1 just wanted to cry I was so happy. I could not believe that someone was finally doing this.

Graham: There was a front page article in the Wall Street Journal about her this summer, and the headline was, "Will A Fat Woman Who Ridicules Men Be T.V.'s Next Hero?"

Barry: A fat woman who ridicules men. "Let's see, how can we describe Roseanne Barr in the fairest terms?" What is the most threatening image besides a fat woman who ridicules men? One who has teeth in her vagina, or one who carries around a little guillotine that a dick would fit perfectly in? "Yeah, and we can't believe she's even in our paper."

Graham: The sub-heading offers, "Maybe. Because 'Roseanne' in ABC's Fall Schedule Makes Even Men Laugh."

Barry: Even men. Even got Dad to stop talking for a minute. Can a fat woman who ridicules men . . . Love it! I mean for me that's the most perfect thing to poke fun at. They did it themselves and they can't even see it. That's fantastic, that makes me really happy.

Graham: The reporter wants to know how it is that America is ready for this on prime time, and his rather superficial answer is that "male bashing" is "in."

Barry: "Can a jive talking negro from the ghetto who ridicules obvious white superiority make it on prime time television?" And the answer is "Yes," (in a high voice) "because negroes are so entertainin'. And its alright because puttin' down white people is in." I mean, how can we possibly claim this and make it so that it's our choice to watch Roseanne Barr? "It's a phase that will pass. It's in and it will pass." It's so typical that the only thing they're seeing is, one, being fat. "How dare she when she knows better?" And two, she's ridiculing men. Everything else that she does is completely invisible.

Graham: Right, like the intelligence that she brings to her humor.

Barry: Oh my God, I love it. I'm telling you, those are the kinds of things that only make me really happy, because when I see them I see how the system works. It doesn't make me mad, it just cracks me up. The minute you can name what somebody is doing and not be confused by it and laugh, it's like they've lost their power. They've lost their power. I know that's the point of a lot of humor, stealing the power away. In all the fairy tales it's always the youngest of the three sons who's the victor. The one who's least likely to have the power, he wrests away the power. And in humor, a person who normally shouldn't have power is quick-witted enough to take the whole thing. I believe that if there's any gift that's God-given to man and woman, humor is it. It's a spiritual thing for me. It can make you make that hairpin turn from suicide. If you take the hairpin turn, that's what it's about. A lot of times that's the thing that saves me in my life and continues to. A lot of times when I'm in a really rough situation and I'm thinking, "Move over homeless man and let me share your cardboard, and I'll take this last couple of bucks and buy us some wine." Or, "Hit me nearest semi." I always start laughing at the situation I'm in. On the one hand, how dare I think this? And two, as soon as I laugh at it I have power over it. I name it. When I laugh at it I see what a self-pitying, ridiculous creature I can become over the slightest thing, a thing that's so tiny in comparison to turning on the radio and hearing about people who've been devastated by the cyclone. I think that in certain ways you can work up the same anxiety over large pores as you can over nuclear holocaust. It's a shameless fact.

Graham: In Big Ideas one of the strips is about fear. And there's a point where you say that people say they're afraid of nuclear holocaust but they can't really make it real enough for themselves, really frightening.

Barry: But that a man might not love you because of your large pores is right there in front in living color.

Graham: Or those five stretch marks.

Barry: Yeah, the five stretch marks on the left.

Graham: Did you have a goal to have a professional life where you could be using humor, or how did this happen?

Barry: Well it happened by pure accident, my favorite plot twist. I had a goal to be the most depressed person on the planet. I was hoping that along with the Nobel Prize for all these other things that they would give one to the most tragically and intuitively and insightfully depressed person on the planet.

Graham: A natural.

Barry: I thought that depression meant you were looking at life's true realities. That it would get you the most boyfriends; it would make you the most serious person in the world and therefore everyone would take you very seriously. "Duck's Breath Mystery Theater" said that in college you really do believe that depression is sexually attractive. It was when I went into college that I realized the sexual attractiveness of depression. I wanted to be the most depressed person in the world. And if I thought that I would end up doing comic strips, I would have shot myself, with a magnum, in any orifice that was nearest to the gun. The thought that I would have stooped and left my post as one of the guardians and champions of depression to foster this really disgusting thing called laughing and humor. I wouldn't have been able to stand it. That would have made me really upset. I was going with this guy who was the most perfect hippie man in the world. He was adequately depressed, and we were trying to be depressed together. He left me for this blond woman - who wasn't depressed. And so I started drawing these pictures of women and men meeting, and the men wanting the women to sleep with them but the men were cactuses, with these huge spines. And the women, of course, were women, and rightfully hesitating. It started because of heartbreak and it never stopped after that. And then I finally threw aside the depression in favor of laughing warmly and laughing bitterly, and all the forms of laughing that you can take: laughing at things you should be ashamed to laugh at, laughing at the most politically correct thing, laughing at things that are just charming. But I think that laughing is God-given, I really do.

Graham: I wanted to ask you about your Esquire strip. How long have you been doing that?

Barry: About five, five or six years. A long time. I've gotten better. Some of the early ones are too scary for me to look at.

Graham: How does your work change, if it changes at all, when you're writing and drawing for a primarily male audience?

Barry: Oh man, I'm so glad I'm doing that.

Graham: You see yourself serving an educative function then?

Barry: Oh, yeah. I am the decoder ring. You know people always say "How can you stand to be in a magazine that is 'Man at His Best'? And not only that, a magazine for white men? And not only that, a magazine for rich white men?" You know, the immortal enemy to everyone else in the world. Of course, it's exactly where I want to be. What, you're inviting me into the enemy camp and I can talk about what I want? Okay. And as long as I pretend it's from a male perspective, it sounds good. Yeah, I'll take that job. I mean what am I gonna say, "No forget it, I'm against your politics?" It's ideal!

Graham: Where do you get your inspiration for the pieces?

Barry: Well, I cowrite that strip with a man named Jay Kennedy. Mainly I'll take anything. No idea is too small. I'm not proud. Sometimes doing the Esquire strip is like having my period, except it comes twice a month. It's really hard because it's not the way that I normally write. If you're familiar with the work that I'm doing now, I'm writing a lot about childhood for the last couple of years and I do it in a more intuitive way. As far as doing this real structured comic strip because the thing has to have a punch line, it has to address some sort of male issue but in a way that I feel satisfied about. You know in a way trying to show how ridiculous they are, or trying to divide them from us from within themselves. I know that there a women readers too, but mainly (lowers voice) 1 try to show men how stupid they are. That's my goal, "This is how stupid you are." Anything that can possibly help me make that point. And then sometimes I just show how crazy people are, one strip that I did was what people talk about when they are falling in love, how they forget the rest of the world and concentrate only on themselves. One of the things they do is to tell and retell and retell the miraculous story of their coming together. "If I hadn't had that matchbook or my cousin hadn't called me ... If the phone hadn't rung, and I hadn't picked it us just then this never would have happened." So sometimes it's about that, sometimes its about how everybody's crazy. But a lot of times it's about how men are stupid. But in a kind way, because I feel kind towards them. I try to feel kind towards everyone.

Graham: That's what I like so much about your work, you go at both men and women and make everybody see how ridiculous we all are.

Barry: And sweet too, I mean the whole idea is to try to judge yourself with compassion, which is what a loving God is supposed to do, what teachers are supposed to do, or what good parents are supposed to do. If you can apply that to yourself, then your trespass isn't so devastating that you can't get back up. Or it isn't so devastating that you can't afford to acknowledge it. So there has to be some sort of compassion. Otherwise there's no lesson, otherwise there's no renewal, no resurrection, no hope. Compassion implies hope.

Graham: And that's the difference between sexist humor and humor that is about sex.

Barry: Right. To divide two groups of people so bitterly against each other excludes compassion. And it reduces us to a very primitive holier-than-thou attitude. For example why would a team need team yells? It's because they're worried about their potency. And when I use the word potency its underlined with huge letters, and lights if we can work them in. They're worried about their potency. In a funny way these sexist and racist jokes are team cries. "Yes we're still pack animals, yes we're still going forward, yes we're still the best."

Graham: How did you come to write a novel?

Barry: The Real Comet Press suggested doing a catalogue for a series of paintings I'd done. And my publisher said, "Lynda, you have to write a preface." The paintings and the story come out of these real strong feelings I have about American music and racism. I believe there's a million ways to tell American history. You could do it through food, you could do it through fashion. Music is obviously a great source. I wanted to talk about how racism in America is evidenced in music.

Graham: I reminds me of what John Waters was doing in Hairspray.

Barry: Yeah. In fact a lot of people have compared the thing I wrote to Hairspray. I wanted to write about how a lot of American music comes out of these strange places. I wanted to show how music divides and how it also brings together.

Graham: The Good Times are Killing Me is told through the voice of a child. Your current strips are about children. Is it easier to write about such things as racism through the voice of a child?

Barry: Oh yeah. Children can state things baldly. And they do, whereas adults have such a way of covering up their terrain of racism and sexism, even from themselves. Racism is an unavoidable attitude in our society. The same with sexism. It's all-pervasive. At some point in one's adult life, one has to make a conscious assessment of one's attitudes and decide from there: Which ones do they want to keep, which do they not what to keep? That's the whole idea of women's consciousness raising groups. At some point you realize, "In what sort of bondage are you? In what sort of shameful bondage?" I think racism is shameful bondage. And you have to ask, "What is your obligation as a compassionate, thinking human being, as part of the species who's populating the earth, what is your obligation to try to rid yourself of this?" By telling the story through Edna, I found that I could show Edna's budding racism. And I realized it was in me too. But I think children are innocent, they're blameless; they just try to take the shape of the adults around them. You could sort of spy it at its source. Even if you're spying it at its source when you're way old, you can do this retrospective patterning where you can almost go back in time and put a band-aid on it or go back in time and remake the decision. I really believe that by going back in time and understanding where it was you came to believe this particular thing, you can begin to unbelieve it.

If you can find out where it is you came to believe for example, that boys are better than girls, if you can find out where you came to believe it, or why you believed and look at it with compassion, if you can see that maybe there was no other information to believe than that - and if you can figure out that it was a case of mistaken identity, it's almost like it topples, it can move forward into your life and topple a lot of other decisions that were based on that one seed decision. I think that's what therapy is all about. And it's what humor is about, too. It's like recognizing, "My God I believe this. How did I come to believe this?" It's a beautiful thing that humans are given a medicine, an emotional or psychological medicine to go back and fix things. If they would take advantage of it and not just use it for pure entertainment. That's what I think bad sitcoms are - pure entertainment. They don't have any soul-redeeming value. And the same thing is true in any art form. I include humor in art. A lot of people kick it out. It's sort of this low-brow thing, to laugh. Which I fell for hook, line and sinker. I thought, "What will carry me out of my roots?" And one of the things was to stop laughing. When I think about it now, I'm stunned. And happy that that's no longer true.