At Bumbershoot this year, cartoonist Allie Brosh appeared onstage with Stranger Genius Ellen Forney in a huge, sold-out show. She didn't even have any books to sell yet—her first book based on her blog, Hyperbole and a Half, was published this month—but people still lined up after the show to get Brosh's autograph on a postcard promoting the book. Or maybe they just wanted to talk to her. The primitive cartoons on Brosh's blog focus on uncomfortable topics that don't often get a lot of play in the mainstream media: Depression, the discomfort of pretending to like something because the people that you love expect you to love it, and dogs who are assholes. And the audience was largely young and female, the sort of crowd you don't traditionally see crammed into a long expectant line for a book signing, especially when the book doesn't even exist yet.
These pieces are presented without the usual memoir cliches—no overwrought morals, no unbelievable self-aggrandizement, no too-heavy symbolism. They're funny, they're sad, they're often a little standoffish, and they're wildly relatable. Brosh has a voice and a style unlike anyone else, and that's why all those people came to see her do her thing: She's saying something valuable, and she has a platform to say it in exactly the way it needs to be said.
Brosh is reading tonight at University Temple United Methodist Church. The reading is either sold out, or very close to sold out. To find out about all the other readings going on tonight—including a book about George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's relationship, a talk about Rupert Murdoch, and a debut party for a very promising-looking novel by local author Nicola Griffith—visit our readings calendar.
