June 6–13, 1996

20 questions

Roz Chast and Patty Marx

an interview by Howard Altman

Background: Roz Chast, Patty Marx and Jane Martin have just come out with their second children's book, Now I Will Never Leave the Dinner Table, a sequel to the 1993 hit Now Everybody Really Hates Me, about red-haired Patty Jane Pepper who's at constant odds with her family and environs.

In the first book, Patty Jane disrupts her younger brother's birthday party, gets sent to her room and spends the entire book plotting her revenge. In the sequel, Patty Jane disses her older sis, a paragon of virtue, and spends the book threatening to spend her entire life at the table because she hates spinach and refuses to clean her plate.

Written by Marx and Martin, who met while writing for Saturday Night Live, and illustrated by Chast, famous for her deadpan cartoons in the New Yorker, the Patty Jane Pepper saga might soon be coming to a television screen near you as an animated series akin to, say, Rugrats, for which the Abington-born Marx has also written.

Right now, Chast is working on a third Patty Jane book and a compilation of cartoons, of which she has plenty considering the New Yorker turns down 90 percent of her submissions. Marx is involved in so many writing projects you'd need an entire newspaper to catalogue them all.

City Paper recently hooked up with Chast and Marx in separate phone interviews (about an hour apart). Martin, for reasons known only to publisher Harper Collins, was incommunicado.

So, what do you think of Netanyahu's victory?

RC: We'll save that for another time. I don't want to talk about it right now.

Oh, come on.

RC: I just hope he doesn't completely derail the peace talks. Hopefully, Netanyahu will have to adopt some more moderate views if he wants the talks to continue.

PM: You know, Roz called me up and told me you would ask questions like that. I feel like I'm cheating on a test.

But what do you think about Netanyahu?

PM: You know, I lived in Abington. He lived in Cheltenham. My mother knows people whose kids knew him.

Did they know what kind of person he was?

PM: I doubt it. But I can guess what kind of things he was involved in.

Like?

PM: Oh, he was probably student council president. And was probably on the archery and riflery teams.

So, what do you think about his victory?

PM: I'm mad he won.

Why?

PM: I can't pronounce his name.

My daughter loved the books. What about your kids, Roz?

RC: They are starting to find them funny. The nine-year-old likes them. My little one prefers the books I did about animals.

Do they hate spinach too?

RC: No, my kids don't like it. I like it.

But you're an adult. What will Patty Jane be like as an adult? Will she be an angry recluse?

RC: No, she'll be happy as an adult.

Happy?

RC: Yes. She'll probably grow up to be a writer.

Did you, as a cartoonist known for a particular style, have any problems illustrating other people's ideas?

RC: In this case, it was really easy. I think that through luck we shared a common vision of who this little girl was. I had a clear picture from reading the manuscript how she should look, what facial expressions she would have. It all fell together pretty well.

How much Roz Chast is in Patty Jane?

RC: Probably a little bit. I don't have any siblings. I like spinach. I don't have red hair. I guess she is the typical little kid who feels unjustly accused.

What do you do for fun?

RC: I just cleaned up my study for the first time in five years. That was pretty exciting.

Patty, you co-wrote a book called Regaining Your Virginity. So, how do you regain your virginity?

PM: That was the first time I went on a book tour. People asked me that very same question. Many people thought the book was for real. I didn't know how to handle the question then, and I don't know how to handle it now.

But if you did know the answer, you could make a fortune.

PM: We could write the sequel.

You guys do a lot of readings for children. What do they ask you?

RC: There is a scene in the book where Patty is walking the dog from her room. A little girl asked me how did she get the dog down, from the bedroom to the ground? I was just flabbergasted. Here was this logical point that Patty and Jane never thought about.

PM: One kid asked how many inches apart Jane and I live.

Well, how many inches apart do you live?

PM: We know it down to millimeters. We live many, many millimeters apart. Oh wait, I want to tell you a story. It was about how our first book won a Friedrich's Award.

A Friedrich's Award? Never heard of that.

PM: When our first book came out, Jane and I were sitting around, lamenting how we had won no awards. Not a Calidcott, not a Newbury, nothing. We felt that in order for the book to do well, we needed a claim. An award would be nice. Or a medal. So as we were talking, I was staring straight ahead at the Friedrich's air conditioner. And I said 'what about a Friedrich's medal?'

So?

PM: At the time, Jane was working at a job that presented a number of technical possibilities and she made up stickers of that wee-bright orange which said the 1991 Friedrich Medal. We went to bookstores and started to stick them on the books. Then a customer saw us and we ran out of the store.

Besides Patty Jane books, are you collaborating on anything else?

PM: Didn't Roz tell you? We are working on a book called Meet My Staff about a little boy — it won't be out for a million years so maybe I shouldn't be telling you this — who has someone who does everything for him from Miss Peck, who is in charge of kissing his Aunt Whinny, to Lima Bean Man, who eats his vegetables.

I could use Lima Bean Man. I hate those things. So what do you do for fun?

PM: Oh, I don't know. How do I have fun? My friend's boyfriend is in the hospital with cancer. No, that's not fun. I rollerblade every day. I go to the movies a lot...

What kind of movies?

PM: Oh, anything. Then I criticize it. I go all the time. I hate everything.

Do you like comedies?

PM: Sometimes I don't. Oh God, I'm afraid that if I have an idea, somebody might have done it first.

What about sitcoms?

I don't watch TV. I don't even have cable. Everyone thinks it's odd and maddening, but one of the reasons is I'm afraid of being a plagiarist.