As I often say, one of the best things about working at Carleton is going to all the excellent events that the College sponsors. Tonight’s example was a wonderful lecture by the cartoonist/graphic novelist Ben Katchor, best known for his comic strip, Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer – a strip I discovered in the Chicago Reader newspaper soon after graduating from Macalester and moving to Chicago. It was then unlike anything I’d ever read, and Katchor’s lecture – which he said he delivered to meet a special request from someone here – was no different: a “picture story” entitled “The Great Museum Cafeterias of the Western World: An Illustrated Lecture on the Design and Culture of Museum Cafeterias.”
Yes, that really was the topic, and yes, it really was that weird, as well as charming and hilarious and moving. More than anything, the story reminded me of the sort of story that Jorge Luis Borges might have written – a few bright threads of truth and reality woven into a cloth of fiction. Katchor’s story had some magic realism, some silliness, some heartstring-tugging , some facts, and tons of great pictures, of which my friend Doug Bratland took some shots (thanks for sharing them, Doug!):
