From The Library: Molly Crabapple
Posted by ElizabethGenco on Thursday, November 16 2006 at 10:58 pm
From The Library is a series of interviews with some of my favorite storytellers. For the latest SCHEHERAZADE update, click here. For NIGHTVISIT, click here.
SCHEHERAZADE returns next week.
Jen Caban, better known as Molly Crabapple, is a burlesque dancer, a talented illustrator 
of twisted yet whimsical Victoriana (yeah, top that), proprietress of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti Art School, and a total babe. Her first book, Dr. Sketchy’s Official Rainy Day Colouring Book, drops on December 1.
I think I remember reading somewhere (oh wait, it’s on your website) that you learned to draw in a Parisian bookstore. That’s pretty great. Explain.
When I was 17, I graduated high school early and slummed my way across Europe. It was the usual course in poverty, skullduggery, and bathing once a week. I found Shakespeare and Company in Paris. Shakespeare and Co was a gorgeous old English language bookstore staffed with backpackers, who manned the till in exchange for sleeping upstairs.
I was flirting with a rather disreputable older gent (probably an alcoholic), who gave me drawing lessons. Having neither job nor responsibilities, I drew hours every day. My style, detailed as it is, was honed over in Paris.
I’d imagine that, like the rest of us, you have a lot of influences. If you could have dinner with one of them, alive or dead, who would it be and what would you talk about?
Me and Colette would talk about getting pasties to stick.
Got any tattoos?
Not yet.
Name a favorite book (this is From the Library, after all).
Low Life: The Lures and Snares of Old New York. An amazingly detailed history of gambling, prostitution, cops and Tammany Hall, years 1840-1890. For instance, I learned that Boss Tweed was prevented from fleeing to Spain by a Spanish border guard who recognized him from the Thomas Nast cartoons. Hark, illustrators, and learn how to do a likeness!
You pimp yourself very well. Give us your top three self-promotion tips.
1. Don’t be afraid to email your idols. The arts are a bastion of low pay and crushing ego blows, so many of your favorite creators may love to hear from you.
2. Getting into the media isn’t a mystery. It’s a science- and there’s a whole section of Barnes and Noble devoted to it. Grab a frappucino and study those books in PR section.
3. Get a website. The internet is this generation’s Gutenberg. If you’re not online, you don’t exist.
Name a guilty pleasure.
Grabbing some sugar- caffeine-whipped-cream concoction, doing nothing, and reading biographies.
Category: From the Library
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