I‘m sure we’ve all had relationships with crazy, reckless, self-destructive people who are simply too fucked up to be salvaged. Minnie, the fictionalized version of artist Phoebe Gloeckner in The Diary of a Teenage Girl, seems like one such person.
Reading this illustrated novel is akin to watching a friend shatter to pieces. You root for her to make some positive choices, but fifteen-year-old Minnie rarely complies. If you think having an affair with her mother’s 35-year-old boyfriend is a bad choice, she also gets expelled from school, runs away, and lets her lesbian crush whore her out for drugs. The problems seem to stem from Minnie’s uneasy relationship with her mother (who, in this mid-70s San Francisco setting, embraces the post-hippie “open relationship” lifestyle) and her obsession with sex. On page 26 she writes: “I need sex. I really want to get laid right now–in fact, any time–the desire is insatiable. I don’t know if I’ve made that clear–I really like getting fucked.” Is it perverted for a fifteen-year-old to think that way? Well, perhaps, but that’s why the book’s so absorbing, and with the help of Gloeckner’s cartoons, it only gets dirtier.
Diary is similar to some of Lynda Barry’s work, though not as well written, perhaps because the character is so young. The writing still rings true, though. During a heavy drug phase later in the book, Gloeckner writes, like a confused druggie who yearns to cut down without the feeling of withdrawals: “I want to practice getting high a lot so I can learn to maintain.”
Curious to know how much of the book was based on Gloeckner’s own life, I checked out some interviews on-line and read her other book, A Child’s Life. It turns out that many of the same scenarios are drawn out in that book as well, and R. Crumb even writes in the introduction that “like all the other despicable males that appear in these comic stories… I, too, lusted after the young budding artist-cartoonist.” Still, Gloeckner’s bio says she now lives with her scientist husband and her two daughters in New York. Luckily, her wild youth has turned into art instead of a wasted life. KEVIN SAMPSELL