HTMLGIANT Lynda Barry Neck Goozle Daddy's and Hunter.

Quite happy we are to see the Lindsay Hunter interviewed by Blake Butler at the HTMLGIANT. You?

BB: I find the voices that come out of you often really surprising, both as image and in the odd colloquial phrasings and manners of speaking. Is this entirely invention, or does it come out of a place you grew up or spent time, or a mash of both? Do you ever scare yourself?

LH: I think there is a more specific way to get at an image than to rely on something people are used to reading. Like “yellow sun.” Or “crowded teeth.” These phrases get the point across but they don’t tell you anything unique about the brainspace the character inhabits, and they aren’t accurate enough visually, they just aren’t. Like right now I am having a hard time not rewriting those phrases to something like “pee dribble in a sky wedge” or “gums like a collection of driftwood,” and even those phrases aren’t enough, aren’t it.

So I think the cadence in the language and the accent is maybe something that comes from a place I hold dear, but the phrasing is all invention, I feel confident in declaring that.

I’ve scared myself plenty, and I sometimes want to get up and walk it off, but if I stay and keep going, man that shit is good. That moment of surprise, if you can shock yourself like that, that’s all the reason in the world to keep going.