According to Gary Larson, creator of The Far Side so strange, unpredictable, and endlessly fascinating. By recognizing beauty where others saw ugliness, he developed the ability to find hilarity in tragedy and absurdity.
In an interview with Terry Gross for NPR's "Fresh Air," Larson spoke about how having snakes as pets from his early years into his adulthood was formative, not just for him as a person, but as a humorist and an intellectual.
Though Larson was creative even as a kid, he never intended to pursue art as a career; instead, his interests in nature, science, and history helped make him such a singular artist when he did become successful with The Far Side.
Gary Larson Explains How His Love Of Snakes Shaped His Perspective On Life
From A 1998 NPR Interview With The Author
For an artist, everything is formative; every interest and experience they have contributes in some way to the art that comes later. When talking about, or talking with artists, there is a tendency to focus on the things that led them to their medium of choice – prose, painting, or single- newspaper comic – and what shaped their sensibilities in that medium. That said, it is often valuable to look at the non-artistic aspects of an artist's early life, in order to find some insight into what forged them into the creator they became.
The Far Side Complete Collection
Fans of the far side can't up this master collection of Gary Larson's finest work. Originally published in hardcover in 2003, this paperback set comes complete with a newly designed slipcase that will look great on any shelf. The Complete Far Side contains every Far Side cartoon ever published, which amounts to over 4,000, plus more than 1,100 that have never before appeared in a book and even some made after Larson retired.
In a 1997 interview with NPR's Terry Gross, Gary Larson offered a sterling example of this, by connecting his childhood love of reptiles with his artistic perspective. Early in the interview, Larson discussed his youthful interest in snakes and other cold-blooded creatures, and how it informed his later career:
I always had an affinity for animals that live in swamps. Especially snakes. I always liked snakes, and caught them and brought them home. And I had very tolerant parents, I think, that allowed me to bring things into the house like that...That has always stayed with me. On into my twenties I had a strong interest in reptiles and amphibians. But when you do that, you start to encounter a lot of reactions from people who walk into your place and are horror-stricken at what they see. It always made you feel like you had to explain yourself. And I just never had any fear of those things at all, and, in fact, I thought they were beautiful.
Larson's innate understanding of the beauty of nature's slimier creatures, in turn, prompted him to reflect on what distinguished him from those who saw snakes as scary, or frogs as yucky, or in general didn't appreciate their inherent charm.
The artist further elaborated:
It started me thinking about, 'well, is it me, or is it you?' 'Why is someone else looking at this and saying it's ugly, or whatever?' And I started to realize that maybe we all bring prejudice to nature, as well. We decide what's beautiful and what's ugly. What's dramatic and impressive, and what's not.
In other words, he began to question what made liking reptiles "strange" rather than "normal," and realized it was a matter of perspective. This insight came years before Gary Larson began to draw The Far Side, but in due time it became the core precept of his cartoon's humor. Larson soon developed the ability to recognize this subjectivity in everything – and it was from this ability to look at things from an unfamiliar perspective that everything great about The Far Side was born.
How Gary Larson's Perspective Defined The Far Side
A Lesson In Looking At Things Differently
Of course, Gary Larson's childhood love of serpents resulted in snakes' frequent Far Side appearances, but in the context of his comments to NPR, its influence is evident in almost everything that made the strip iconic. During The Far Side's time in publication, he routinely transformed beauty into ugliness, and at times, converted ugliness into a strange kind of beauty. He took the darkest aspects of life and made them funny, and often made the innocuous seem into something shockingly dark – and also funny.
The success of The Far Side was more than just a matter of Gary Larson having a different perspective than his readers; it came from his ability to play with perspective in ways that his readers would not have ever considered.
This was a result of Larson building an artistic perspective around the same principle that he identified in his interest in reptiles. Yet it is important to note that the success of The Far Side was more than just a matter of Gary Larson having a different perspective than his readers; it came from his ability to play with perspective in ways that his readers would not have ever considered. The Far Side's humor was, in many ways, an exhibit in how to look at things in a novel way.
The Best Far Side Made Readers Rethink The Familiar And Embrace The Unexpected
Gary Larson Expertly Played With Perspective
The Far Side's brand of comedy was the result of a trained manipulation of perspective, as Gary Larson twisted and tweaked each cartoon to achieve the most unexpected angle on any given idea. It is more complicated than simply saying that Larson "made jokes from an alligator's perspective," or "made fun of humans through a frog's eyes" –because what The Far Side was really doing, with its strangest comics and its most hilarious, was forcing readers to audit their own perspective, even if momentarily.
It can be argued that with each Far Side cartoon, Gary Larson sought to replicate his moment of revelation about subjectivity and beauty in his reader.
In lofty , it can be argued that with The Far Side has prompted generations of readers to ask "why is this funny?," it can be said that in this sense, Larson was wildly successful. For humorists, this is generally considered a bad question to hear – but Larson is considered a singular talent for a reason, and perhaps part of that reason is his goals were unique among comedians.
Gary Larson's Humor Subverted Expectations And Confronted The Conventional
And It All Started With Keeping Snakes For Pets
ittedly, Gary Larson's ambitions for Far Side cartoons were not so high-brow – at least not consciously. Instead, Larson simply wanted to get a reaction out of his readers; sometimes a laugh, sometimes a befuddled "What-the?" and sometimes even an audible gasp of dismay. Yet the underlying impulse to confront his readers' understanding of humor, and nature, and history, along with a great number of subjects, clearly motivated his work at some level. This is especially apparent upon hearing his comments to Terry Gross on NPR.
Why Gary Larson Changed One Of The Far Side's Weirdest Cartoons Nearly 20 Years After It Was Published (Is the Second Version Funnier?)
In 2003's "The Complete Far Side," Gary Larson offered a revised caption for one of his strangest comics ever, 1984's "Slug Worship" .
Larson's "Fresh Air" interview came just a few years after ts most confusing comics explained. Though Gary Larson didn't intended to offer such a valuable insight into his legendary career as a cartoonist, in retrospect his comments about his affection for reptiles serves as an odd – though appropriately so, for The Far Side – signpost in directing readers towards a greater understanding of him as an artist.
Source: NPR "Fresh Air"
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- Gary Larson
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- Gary Larson
The Far Side is a humorous comic series developed by Gary Larson. The series has been in production since 1979 and features a wide array of comic collections, calendars, art, and other miscellaneous items.
