The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures

Rating:
Summary: The other side of Tales of The City, 1970's San Francisco
Review: ... I did enjoy the book, although--as the
mother of 4 young adults, some of the writing was a little
too real for enjoyment, for me. It's not that I was overly
shocked by the sexuality, though that is abundant. It was
more that I've read enough teen writing to recognize much of

Gloeckner's "diary" style as painfully authentic.

I would recommend this book as a good way to sample Phoebe
Gloeckner's writing, but personally I prefer graphic
novels written from more adult perspebtives. ...I
have not read other works by Phoebe Gloeckner, so I can't
compare this.

"Diary of a Teenage Girl" is part graphic
novel, part illustrated novel. The cartooning
is excellent.

Rating:
Summary: Diary of a Teenage Girl (Phoebe Gloeckner)
Review: Ever since reading 'A Child's Life,' I'd been looking forward to this book, and I was not disappointed. Phoebe Gloeckner's 15-year-old fictional alter-ego, Minnie, keeps a journal that is sharply observant, articulate, and funny, without crossing the line into the 'adult over-writing' that often plagues adults' versions of children's diaries. The setting (1970s San Francisco) makes many of the things that Minnie describes matter-of-factly seem jarring when you step back--affairs with older men, 'responsible' parental drug use, etc. Yet when you're reading the book, Minnie's world envelops you completely.

Unlike many other (quite believable) teenage characters, Minnie does not even pretend to be cool or detached. She blatantly states her craving to be loved, hugged, touched. The dynamics of her affair with her mother's boyfriend, in which she tends to be the sexual instigator, are fascinating and heartbreaking at the same time. The juxtaposition of the sordid and the innocent is seamless: one minute Minnie and her best friend are swigging schnapps and passing joints on their way to a sexual encounter with a married man; the next, they're running down the street laughing, stuffing their faces with dime-store candy.

Gloeckner's drawings are plush and emotional, detailing specific blocks in San Francisco and capturing facial expressions with equal care.

Anyone who likes to be swept up wholly into a character's life should enjoy this unusual book.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, disturbing, haunting, unique
Review: I am the first to admit I know very little about the world of underground comics. A student of mine recommended this book to me, and I ordered a copy from Amazon out of mild curiosity; I ended up reading through it in one sitting.

Gloeckner's fifteen year-old protagonist, Minnie Goetze, is a superbly realized, multi-dimensional, picaresque character like few others I have encountered in adolescent-oriented American fiction. Though the frank descriptions and visual images of Minnie's often self-destructive sexual encounters may disturb some readers (and perhaps titillate others), the genius of this book lies in Gloeckner's extraordinary ability to capture the mercurial, labile emotions of this clever, troubled young diarist. As a male reviewer, I realize that it is problematic for me to write this, but from my professional and personal experience, Gloeckner's understanding of "American female fifteen year-oldness" is pitch-perfect, even if Minnie's actual life is unlike that of most (but not all) of the adolescents with whom I work.

"Diary of a Teenage Girl" is also a damning indictment of the world in which Minnie grows up. The adults in the book are, for the most part irresponsible, incorrigibly self-obsessed, exploitative and ineffective. Minnie was born at the dawn of the 60s, and has come of age in the immediate aftermath of the "summer of love". The rhetoric of the age of Aquarius is on the lips of many of the adults -- but the free love of the adult world has meant nothing but exploitation and alienation for Minnie. She fantasizes that she is a powerful and independent woman; a sexual aggressor and a rival to her mother (she is sleeping with her mother's boyfriend); in reality, she is heartbreakingly naive, self-centered, frightened, childishly romantic, and above all, desperate for authentic love.

I have never read the work of R. Crumb or other similar cartoonists; I might do so now. The comics sequences are stunning; they bring a pathos, a humor, and a richness to the text that would not otherwise be there.

A bit harrowing, all in all, but a tremendous achievement. Brava!

Rating:
Summary: Hmmm
Review: i didn't enjoy this book. it was not funny, and it was not interesting.
Minnie is the main character. the book is supossed to be loke the life of a real teenage girl, but it's not. most girls don't have affairs with their mom's boyfriends. overall, the book was kinda disappointing.

Rating:
Summary: Truly a tour de force
Review: I'm a fan of graphics novels in general, and anything associated with the "Twisted Sisters" collections especially. So after reading it, I'm not surprised that "The Diary of a Teenage Girl" by Phoebe Gloeckner ranks among my favorites. But am surprised by the incredible force in this book. As I reached the end of the book, I had to leave the room sobbing.

The drawings are exquisite, of course -- Gloeckner's art always is. The content is frank and unflinching to the extreme. But what is more easily overlooked is that the voice of Minnie rings so true, without artifice or pretense. To handle subjects as complex and difficult with such dead-on observations is unique and utterly gifted. It is not for the weak of heart -- it is explicit and haunting.

This has qualities similar to a very unrelated book I also recently read by Nuala O'Faolain, "Are You Somebody?: The Accidental Memoir of a Dublin Woman." Although they are *quite* different, they are both very authentic voices of lives examined. And if you like Gloeckner and the format of a graphic novel, please be sure to check out "Dori Stories" by Dori Seda.

Rating:
Summary: the best of diary fiction
Review: I've read other fictional diaries, and this book puts the others to shame. It reads like an actual diary- full of insight, misguided intentions, lies, doodles & what reads as the real thoughts of a young girl- not the adult hindsight of what it was to be a teenage girl. Minnie feels so real it's hard to believe it's fiction! Kudos to Pheobe Gloeckner for accomplishing such a difficult task.

The drawings & comics are marvelous & I cannot wait to get my hands on the rest of her work.

The text is raw, engaging & harrowing. The disconnection between Minnie & the adults around her is tragically realistic. I felt emotionally connected to Minnie, as though she were a friend & not a fictional character.

Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: the best of diary fiction
Review: I've read other fictional diaries, and this book puts the others to shame. It reads like an actual diary- full of insight, misguided intentions, lies, doodles & what reads as the real thoughts of a young girl- not the adult hindsight of what it was to be a teenage girl. Minnie feels so real it's hard to believe it's fiction! Kudos to Pheobe Gloeckner for accomplishing such a difficult task.

The drawings & comics are marvelous & I cannot wait to get my hands on the rest of her work.

The text is raw, engaging & harrowing. The disconnection between Minnie & the adults around her is tragically realistic. I felt emotionally connected to Minnie, as though she were a friend & not a fictional character.

Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: Never a false note
Review: It was probably a decade ago when I first began seeing Phoebe Gloeckner's work in a handful of low rent independent comics. Initially it may have been the intensely rendered pornographic sequences that snared my attention, but there was something about her work that always drew me in further; a kind of downward-spiraling confessional verisimilitude one seldom encounters in any medium. She depicted familial discord and childhood cruelties with precisely the sort of raw, unflinching honesty that seemed to elude every other R. Crumb wannabe on the circuit. And her stories had a way of churning uncomfortably in my mind long after the last bitter panel, almost as though a close friend had revealed a dark secret.

With "Diary of A Teenage Girl," Gloeckner revisits the same dodgy terrain of her earlier comics, with strips and illustrations now being used more as a kind of episodic punctuation to the diary-based narrative. The cumulative effect may lack some of the signature boundary-crushing sting exhibited in her 1998 collection, "A Child's Life," but readers are rewarded with an eerily convincing character portrait and a disquieting coming-of-age story that avoids cheap coming-of-age clichés.

Set in San Francisco during the late 1970s, the main (presumably autobiographical) story recounts a tumultuous span in the life of Minnie Goetze, a likable, artistically precocious 15-year-old girl who has become caught up in a sexual relationship with her mother's sleazy, self-actualizing boyfriend. Longing for genuine affection and trying desperately to make sense of her situation, Minnie makes the usual self-destructive choices, finding clarity and purpose only in her slowly emerging identity as an artist. Gloeckner doesn't condescend or gloss over ugly details. And because Minnie's ordeal is never couched in easy victim rhetoric, the true depth of her victimization is shown in poignant relief against the hedonistic Bay City backdrop.

All is not dark and heavy going, however. References to "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman," and EST seminars, and first-wave Rocky Horror habitués capture the 70s zeitgeist with humor and authentic nostalgia. And some of the most memorable scenes center on Minnie's private ambitions and her guarded fascination with the nascent underground comics scene. (Her correspondence with "Bunch" alter-ego Aline Kominsky-Crumb is an especially nice touch.)

But "Diary of a Teenage Girl" is a serious book, perhaps best understood as an account of childhood trust cast against adult hypocrisy. The salient motifs are familiar: there is a general aura of disaffected affluence, the breakdown of family bonds, and always the specter of absent fathers and predatory men. Above all, however, we are left with that uneasy sense that something precious has been lost.

In recent years, major works by such writers as Chris Ware and Dan Clowes have led critics to begin taking graphic novels seriously. Let's hope this one doesn't get overlooked.

Rating:
Summary: Refugee of Aquarius: A Young Woman's Cartoon-Catharsis
Review: Now acclaimed for her work as a bio-graphic designer and underground cartoonist, Phoebe Gloeckner developed her prodigious skill through a trial of fire: enduring the hormone-clouded squall of pubescence amidst the flotsam and jetsam of the San Francisco post-Aquarius `free-love' era. Precocious to a fault and lacking serious support from her immediate family, young Phoebe embarked upon the adolescent journey with karma to burn, seeking love in all the wrong faces and finding life-experience with equal measures of trauma and understanding. Part of this harrowing path was detailed in Gloeckner's graphic-novel *A Child's Life*, and many of the gaps in that compilation are filled in with her first novel, *The Diary of a Teenage Girl*, which, though nowhere near as explicit or shocking as that first endeavor of purgation, is a fairly stressful read by itself - and an invaluable testament to the mindset of a young woman trapped in an indifferent, exploitative world, with nowhere to go but down.

The story, in a nutshell: Minnie Getz, age fifteen, has moved out to San Francisco with her mother and stepfather, who promptly split up right after arriving. Her mother's boyfriend, a pathetic alcoholic by the name of Monroe, seduces Minnie, indoctrinating too early the pleasures and pain of intimacy. The people around Minnie still swim in the more dangerous ideals of the late 60's - the `Aquarius Ethic' of free love, drug abuse and casual exploitation (never mind that the actual astrological Aquarius-shift won't occur until 2160) - Minnie floats among her mother's degenerate friends and paramours, and soon enough finds her own in the gutters and alleyways of South San Fran.

More than anything Minnie desires, and is denied, a loving presence in her life: her mother is judgmental and jealous, her seducer/boyfriend oblivious, her sister addicted to the television and her step-father distant, communicating only by letters. Minnie seeks solace in reading underground comics and trying her hand at the artistic craft (R. Crumb noted her talent), in exploring the turbulent waters of sexuality, and, eventually, succumbing to the pain-numbing elements available on the street corner and, more often than not, her own house: for example, her mother smokes pot in front of the kids and dates a lawyer colloquially-called `Michael Cocaine.' The self-destructive path Minnie chooses to embark upon, in the later part of this novel, comes as no surprise; after being privy to the innermost reflections and torments of this young woman's mind, via the diary-format, one can almost see it as an inevitable conclusion, and all the more disturbing given that the events described within are based on true-life experience - and happen everyday, to hundreds of Minnies around the United States and the world at large.

As I mentioned above, this book is somewhat `softer' in approach to the borderline-pornographic *A Child's Life*, but the subject matter contained still holds enough power to upset and/or titillate, given the individual reader's mindset. Indeed, despite some post-authorial doctoring, the text reads very much like the day-to-day scribbles of an (a)typical young woman fighting through the normal difficulties of the teenage era: the complications of relationships, the insecurities regarding the physical shell, mundane events and random digressions, the angst of trying to `find' oneself while inundated with the confusing messages of consumer-culture. It feels ~real~. And probably is. Gloekner's artwork helps chronicle the passage: illustrations range from `cute' design work, to initial stabs at talent-development; from a surreal portrait of Mexican-clad cats to a startling examination of her and Monroe's post-coitus arguments. At key points the narrative switches from written word to comic-form progression - an effective technique that gives a face to the events and characters.

*The Diary of a Teenage Girl* - a profound, riveting account of feminine development, of human nature in its myriad sordid forms, and of catharsis - the ending being especially powerful. This is a disturbing read, yet ultimately illuminating; and, I think, essential to anyone seeking insight into the trials and turmoil that afflict the (psychologically) abandoned.

Highly Recommended.



Rating:
Summary: A Great Book
Review: You feel for Minnie. Gloeckner has succeded in capturing those years of teenagerdom where you can successfully ignore your head because the world must be okay. You will cry for Minnie's blindness to the faults of those around her and adore her for her attempts to let everyone be good. Minnie is a real picture of the mental state of teenagers (even if her actions are less restrained by family than most), and once you pick up this book, you will want nothing more than for her to turn out allright.