Writer and cartoonist Marisa Acocella Marchetto visits Fair Haven on Wednesday in connection with the paperback release of her acclaimed “graphic memoir,” CANCER VIXEN.
By TOM CHESEK (First published on Red Bank oRBit October 5, 2009)
October is, of course, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month — but it’s also traditionally that time of year when we like to make light of the hobgoblins that dog the deepest recesses of our nightmares. And, for one evening at least, one woman is doing everything in her considerable power to reconcile those two ‘tobers.
With a career as a regular contributor to such top-of-the-pile reading matter as Glamour, The Sunday Times and The New Yorker, a husband (Silvano Marchetto of Da Silvano) who’s the owner of one of downtown Manhattan’s most fervently followed restaurants, and a couple of acclaimed books to her credit, Marisa Acocella Marchetto would seem to be living the sort of impossibly fabulous, sex-in-the-city lifestyle that a lot of people would give their spare Birkin for — although a quick flip through her collected works would certainly bring that lifestyle into down-to-earth perspective. In addition to being a person who struggles with such real-world concerns as self-esteem issues, complicated relationships and the many frustrations and uncertainties of the freelancer’s life, the writer and cartoonist is also a breast cancer survivor — and her experiences in what Paul Cowan called The Land of the Sick form the basis for her 2006 “graphic memoir” Cancer Vixen, the paperback edition of which has just been released by Pantheon Books.
It’s actually been a while now since publishers and critics have thought of the “graphic novel” or “sequential storytelling” format as purely the province of the superheroes (Hollywood long since figured out the viability of indie comix ranging from The 300 and The Road to Perdition to American Splendor and Persepolis). And Marisa, whose first foray into the format was Just Who the Hell Is SHE, Anyway? (a project that grew out of her SHE character done for Mirabella and Elle magazines) uses the hitherto misunderstood medium to its full potential, a fact that could pay dividends if the long-delayed film adaptation (with Cate Blanchett in the lead!) ever leaves development limbo.
Despite the superheroic pose struck by the Vixen on the paperback cover, there are no caped adventurers to be found inside. There’s just the author — her weapon of choice a .35 Rapidograph pen and her secret power the ability to transform intimidating foes into figures of ridicule, from snotty too-thin chicks and new-age quacks to the personified concept of Cancer herself. With its itchy/scratchy drawings complemented by a gift for layered narrative, Cancer Vixen is rich in detail, emotionally true and able to navigate places where the standard “Sick Lit” memoir can’t maneuver.
The author, who maintains some family ties to the local area (check this interviewfor her explanation of how the Jersey Shore inadvertently played a part in her calling as a cartoonist) comes to the comfy setting of the Nauvoo Grill Club in Fair Haven on Wednesday evening, for a reading and signing event that begins at 7pm. It’s being presented by the nearby River Road Books, the owners of which (Sharon Everett, Laurie Potter, Kim Robinson and Karen Rumage) have kept their defiantly indie shop in the vanguard of local author events, even in a business landscape dominated by “stripmall strong-armers and virtual-shopping vultures.”
Red Bank oRBit spoke to Marisa, whose Cancer Vixen Fund allows uninsured women access to care at St. Vincent’s Comprehensive Cancer Center (and who has donated a percentage of the proceeds of Cancer Vixen to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation), on doctors, doing things the old-school way, and her own contribution to the national town-hall debate.
upperWETside 