Above: a page from The Freddie Stories, from Drawn & Quarterly, the publisher Lynda Barry says saved her career. “The Freddie Stories” comes out this week.
In the early 1920’s, T. S. Eliot wrote that “Good literature is produced by a few queer people in odd corners.”
Many years later, in the early 1990’s, one of those odd corners popped up in Montreal, in a second story flat on the corner of St.-Urbain and Bernard, where the rent was cheap and the neighbours were cool.
Night after night, Chris Oliveros sat at his kitchen table with scissors, glue pots and pencils. And those ‘few queer people?’Cartoonists.Chris Oliveros wanted the comic strips that he and friends drew to find a larger audience.
On that kitchen table, he put together the first issues of a little magazine he called ‘Drawn and Quarterly.’Now D and Q is one of hottest publishers of graphic novels on the planet. Some odd corner.
While the future of the book is in question, and independent Canadian publishers struggle just to stay afloat, Drawn and Quarterly is thriving.
The documentary will be on CBC radio one across Canada on The Sunday Edition -and streamed at http://www.cbc.ca And available as well at http://www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition and on Sirius Sat Radio 159
