I haven't checked the weather, but I know it is a perfect day to chat about adult Jewish literature. I'm Sheryl Stahl. Thanks for joining me here at Nice Jewish books. All right. In a first for the nice Jewish books podcast, we're talking about a graphic novel. I am pleased to welcome Eric Glickman to talk about his book Camp Pock-a-Wockne and the Dyn-o-mite Summer of 77. Welcome, Eric.
Hi, Sheryl. I'm really excited to be here and speak with you.
Oh, great. So tell me about your book. What's it about?
Oh, wow. Okay,
what's the elevator pitch as they say,
Oh, this is gonna be longer than an elevator pitch unless we're going all the way up to the top of the Empire State Building. Let's start off. We should you know, say that, as you said camp Pock-a-Wockne in the dynomite summer of 77 as a graphic novel. And there are many definitions of graphic novels out there, but I thought I would share the one that's my favorite. It comes from Art Spiegelman, who did the amazing graphic novel Maus and he wants to find graphic novels as, quote, a comic book that needs a bookmark. And I just love that. So I am the writer and illustrator of what is really just a glorified comic book I am that's what this graphic novel is. The story is a 300 page 300 Page coming of age graphic novel and it celebrates really the magic and the memories and the mishegoss that make up summers at Jewish sleepaway camp. It is a work of fiction those some people have argued with me as to whether that is the case or not. But it is a work of fiction and it follows my alter ego Glick, who is sort of a dorky, 15 year old boy, we follow him through his last summer as a camper in the summer of 77. And Glick really feels that camp is the only place that he feels comfortable in his own skin. He proclaims that he lives his life 10 months for two. And there's a lot of kids who go to camp who say that phrase, which basically means you have to suffer through the interminable school year just to get to those eight glorious weeks that you would get to go away to camp. And this is his last summer as a camper. And he really hopes to squeeze everything he can out of this summer, you know, whether it's with his friends, whether it's partaking in the traditions of camp, or the possibility of having a wonderful summer romance and falling in love. And I think at the end of the summer, really what he wants to do is, you know, somehow figure out how to harness the power of what he calls, quote, The Jewlusion of sleepaway camp and carry that beyond the summer and take that into the rest of his life and sort of be the best version of him self that he can in the rest of his life, not just a camp.
That was actually my next first question is, what Jewlusion?
Well, I think the solution is this feeling that, you know, at home, a lot of times kids feel like they can't be the best version of themselves. But when you're in the insular world of Jewish sleepaway camp, where everybody else is Jewish, suddenly, you know, the two most important things for a 15 year old boy, or at least to me, as a 15 year old boy, and a lot of my friends were sports and girls, and, you know, at home, you were never the best athlete, I was smaller, I was less athletic. And I never felt comfortable enough to even you know, speak to girls beyond, you know, just just being friends, but it can't you go there and there is this delusion, this illusion or delusion. I don't know which one. But this feeling that you know, for eight weeks, you are, you know, a better athlete than you really are. And for eight weeks, you have the possibility of you know, being a boyfriend to a girl. And so it's sort of this wonderful feeling that I felt at camp and I think a lot of people do.
Yeah, that was one thing I definitely caught was that there's kind of a bubble that is summer camp, and that things can happen there. That would never happen at home. And one of it as you say, is that you feel more athletic compared to your ... umm
your home self or your real your real life self. I used to call that my real lifestyle. But yeah,
but it seems like there's a lot of the camaraderie that borders on bullying is fun in summer camp, things that would be horrible in their real life, you know, or in their home life, right?
Yeah, I think what, what, go ahead.
So Just gonna say he has a great relationship with his bunk mates, but they kind of abuse each other a bit.
They certainly do. Um, I think, you know, I think there's a few things going on there, there definitely is this incredible camaraderie and and you have to think about it, you are living in a cabin for eight weeks, you know, from the moment you wake up until the moment you fall asleep with, you know, 10 other guys, and it bonds you very quickly in ways that you could never just by being in classes with someone or a sports team at home with somebody. So that exists. I think that the you know, the relationships hopefully is taken in the right way. I think they all appreciate the sort of physicality, they appreciate the sort of like banter back and forth, the bullying. And then on top of that, I will have to say something, this is 1977. And it's clearly anchored in the time of 1977. And I think there's a lot of things in this book, that wouldn't necessarily be okay today. And I'm sure they aren't, you know, at camp. So I am really reflecting on the true nature of our relationships. I hope it comes across in a sort of a joyous, you know, strong friendship way, and not in a bad way. But I think you could certainly see it that way. And there's a lot of people who went to camp who might have felt that way.
So you said this isn't autobiographical, but do you have a camp experience? There's a picture of you in the book as a camp counselor.
Yes. So I said
Did you go up through the ranks?
Yeah, I mean, it's fiction. So you know, what, there's a good saying that is, don't let the truth get in the way of a good story. So you know, I think what I was trying to do was I really wanted to tell the story of a full camp summer, the eight weeks in all its minutiae and details, sort of the guardrails along the way that happen. The month limits the traditions, the everyday nonsense along with the sort of the big tent post events that happen and sort of capture all of that because it lives in my in my heart, really, in my soul so strongly. So, yes, I did go to camp, sleepaway camp for 10 summers. So I did go up through the ranks I went every summer until they dragged me away kicking and screaming. The camp that I went to my parents actually met at that camp. And all three of my children who are adult children went to the same camp also. So I feel very, you know, closely connected to sort of that experience.
Alright, so so far, you carefully didn't name the camp. Would you like to name the camp or you want to keep it a mystery?
Oh, it doesn't need to be a mystery. The camp is called Camp Nockamixon. And so it does sort of sound like Pock-a-Wockne, but it's, it's, it's in Kernersville, Pennsylvania. And it's existed for quite some time. Obviously, my parents met there in the 50s. So it's been there for quite some time, and it still exists. And it's still a wonderful place. And I'm going to a reunion there this summer. So
sounds like fun. Yeah. So, so you do have camping experience. But was there anything that you had to research for this?
Yeah, I did have to do a bunch of research. Just to help my memory kick started a little bit. But um, you know, I think I decided to anchor it in the summer of 1977. And so I started doing a lot of research about that, like, what songs were popular than you know, what kinds of candies existed? Exactly, then what was the prices of those candies back in those days. But to be honest, most of it just came from my memory. My memory for this is incredibly strong. I have great nostalgia for these times. And I think I've been telling these stories since I've been at camp and I think part of me wanted to get them out of myself and put them into a book and have them exist for other people to experience.
So why did you choose graphic novel is a medium and not a non graphic novel?
Words only thing Well, I'm, I am an artist by trade and a cartoonist by desire. And I really thought that there would be kind of a cool way to do this. I don't think that I could just write a novel. It's not really in me and I really wanted to do something where both the pictures and the words contributed to the story, you know, when a graphic novel, you have to read them both sort of together, and some people don't know how to do that yet, or they start to figure it out as you go along. But um, you know, one of the things that I wanted to do was sort of use this very cute, black and white comic strip style of art. And combine that with this not for Q his story to kind of capture that tension that I really felt with the innocence of my childhood, you know, crashing into the messiness of adolescence. And I think that this really captured that in a really interesting and fun way, I got to draw some really interesting. And, you know, it, it, it really is the medium that I feel most comfortable in. And I felt like it would really capture the story in the best way. I also, one of the things I love about graphic novels is people revisit them over and over again, it's rare that you will read or reread a book. But I know that graphic novels sitting on somebody's
Speak for yourself!
I apologize. But the thing is, though, that you will, you can pick up a graphic novel and kind of just open it in a spot and read a little bit of it and kind of get back into it or remember something and I know that I do that all the time. So from my personal experience, that's a graphic novels work. And I enjoy that that about it.
I think we could continue this argument for a while, but but I do want it to say that I think that people who haven't read graphic novels, think of newspaper comic strips, where it's three squares or, or one square. And in a graphic novel, it uses much more of the page creatively. So the page isn't just divided into equal squares. So each one really is, each page is constructed as a whole illustration, you know, broken down into many parts. Also, it's not just rows of squares to read.
Right, and, you know, I'm glad you brought that up in a way, because it's one of the real challenges of creating a graphic novel, creating the flow of the story within the page happens with the sizing of frames, they give different emphasis, they almost speak to the reader whether they know it a lot, or not how to move through that page. Am I supposed to move through this page slowly? Am I supposed to stop here and take this all in? Is this something sometimes there are things that get repetitive, and that's done purposefully, to sort of like give the idea of something happening in a very repetitive way. And one of the really challenging things about creating a graphic novel is that if you change a little bit of it, it's not like in tax where you pull out the paragraph and everything falls in there. It's like a Jenga, and you pull something out. And suddenly, it affects four pages in front of that, and three pages after that, and you have to go back and kind of rebuild things, because you want certain things to, you know, open up on a spread and work within the spread, or you'd like the last frame on the bottom right page to lead, you know, lead the reader on to the next page. And so, editing these is quite the challenge. It's, it's, you know, it's insane. Because of that, that challenge. And so yeah, you're right, that that's, that's part of the fun of them, too. And I think, you know, I really spend a lot of time making sure that my illustrations, worked with the words and they, they they helped each other, they helped each other and they were they became more than the sum of their parts, and that each page and each frame even was contributing something and kind of moving the reader along the way the good prose would do also, but if you're using different you're using different forms, but yeah.
So you say this is not for kids?
Yes.
And partially, it seems, it's because of the nostalgia thing that it sounds like you thought that people who remember 77 might appreciate it more, although I was I do remember 77. So I was mildly offended at the footnotes explaining things. It's like, yes.
That's awesome. That's awesome. That's so funny, because, you know, I thought not to interrupt you. But I thought about the footnotes really, and I was trying to figure out how to do that. And I tried to at least make them fun and add a little bit of information or knowledge. So that was another space where I would do research, you know, like, I would have to find out exactly, when was rocky released? Does this make sense that Rocky is even referenced in this summer or Donny and Marie and it's funny that you say that because I've had a lot of people read it who and they were there and they were alive and they don't remember any of it. So so you know really good on your gray matter and that you're that all your neurons are still firing but there are a lot of people that didn't. And I also wanted it to work for people who hadn't been there and could could understand it in that way. I'm sorry, I interrupted you though, so
that's quite alright. But it seemed like I didn't know if another part of that was that the kids curse a lot. Of course, they're adolescent boys. I mean, girls do too. But you focus more on the boys. And you have full frontal nudity. So which is shocking that, you know, boys have penises?
You were shocked by that information?!
I was shocked. Yeah. So I didn't know if part of it was just fear of kind of conservative backlash?
No, I don't think it was that, although that has been in the back of my mind. And my publisher talked to me a little bit about that. I think what I really didn't want to have happen was I wanted, it's really for 16 plus is, you know, the way it's listed in libraries and on in book selling, so I, what I didn't want to have happen was this book sitting on a shelf, and my drawings are so cute and adorable. I didn't want a mom to just pick this up and say, Oh, my kid loves camp and take it home. And then they open it up. And there's, you know, cute cartoony drawings, but of you know, an old man's hairy testicle, they are in front of their face. So I didn't want that to happen. And so I put this little warning as a way of just saying, you know, I understand what's going on here. Hopefully, hopefully, the person would at least flipped through it and kind of like, understand what's going on and then make a good conscious decision. But I think 16 plus is a fine space that I just didn't want 11, 10, 9 year olds reading it, and it looks cute. And they love graphic novels, you know, that age range is really into graphic novels and graphic novels play into that space. And my illustrations look cartoony, and like they might be for, you know, middle middle school kids. So that that was what my thinking was with that.
All right, that makes sense. I want to switch tracks a little bit. So this is about summer camp, but it's about specifically a Jewish summer camp. And I think one of the reviews mentioned that among all the camp books out there, this is the only one where they say the motze at meals with, you know, pray. So I'm wondering, what else about your book is specifically a Jewish experience?
Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of it was the insular world element to it, that, you know, suddenly we all went from places where we were often in, you know, culturally mixed neighborhoods, where we were probably the appropriate minority amount within those neighborhoods. And we came into this space where everybody was Jewish. And I think that there was a different feeling being in that space, we just felt culturally really connected to everybody. And I think of myself as a cultural Jewish person, not a religious Jewish person. And our camp was culturally Jewish. We, you know, back in the day, we did up Friday night services, and Saturday morning services. And we did cover our hands with our heads and say, say the prayer over bread. But that was about it. I mean, there were kids that would be studying for their bar mitzvah, who would be having a Bar Mitzvah right after the summer, my characters a little old for that. But if I was doing a 13 year old kid, there definitely been the kid who had to go off and, and you know, have the cassette tape and the old boom boxes, put the tape in and do it. So I think there was that element. And then I think the, you know, the overall feeling was that this space was a, you know, this term didn't exist, but it was a safe space for us to all of us sort of be be ourselves and sort of culturally revel in our personalities, which all kind of matched you know, it was just had that, you know, it was a lot of Philadelphia, Jewish kids and a lot of Long Island Jewish kids. And culturally, we all kind of like lined up our senses of humor were the same, the ways that we bantered making cultural references were the same. And so I think that's how the the Judaism was there. It was sort of just in the air at all times, I think without it being religious, or, you know, specific, I think.
So, which part of your book was the most challenging for you to write and illustrate?
Wow, that's a good question. Let me think about that. I think that, you know, I think trying to figure out how to keep it fictional was a big challenge for me, you know, to make sure that I was telling a story. That was the best story possible, not necessarily the full and 100% truth. I think that I wanted to try to keep a narrative throughout it a little thread and we haven't spoken about it, but there is sort of a story of a man in a poncho who roams the woods and that sort of became a through line throughout the book, which I think became one of my favorite things in the end how the reveal happens. And I think in my early iterations of the book, I was just sort of saying everything that happened. And I think that helped give me an arc to the story in a way that I felt you felt really satisfying to me, at least at the end that, you know, nailing the endings of books is hard. I don't know whether people have said that to you. But yeah, you know, write
a few have a few have started with the ending, and then work their way up to it.
So that's yeah, I didn't. Though, find finding the ending was was was a challenge. I think that was a long and rambling way of finding my answer. So I appreciate you making me figure that out.
So just to clarify, so the man in the Pancho started out as sort of a spooky nighttime campfire thing about this man in the poncho. But then Glick actually start seeing him. And is he real? Or is he going crazy? Yeah. So there's the whole
Yeah, and he is based on a thing that is a camp and sort of a myth. But there is some physical thing that inspired it, that you know, a person who basically stood by the side of the road, and it really just started with that concept, and then trying to play that through and, and figure out what that might be able to mean. So yeah.
So were there any fun camp stories from your life that you had to cut from the book or that didn't make it in?
Yeah, you know, I did a lot of performances at camp and I didn't get to those a lot of stuff where I would get on stage. And again, this would be another delusion, as if I could should be able to be on stage and performing singing a song, I cannot even carry a tune. And yet, I can't me and my buddies would get up on the stage. And, like performance, if we were a doowop group, you know, around a trash can with a fire, you know, on the streets of Philadelphia. And we can't carry a tune to save our life. And yet, we stood up there and there was this magical mystery with this delusion that kids loved it. We got standing ovations as we got older. We did it every summer, we had little kids who would imitate us, and they would start doing it during talent shows. So there's another example of another, you know, delusion that happened. And yeah, I didn't include that. But I did try to include some of the sort of parody songs and singing because that's such a part of camp and, and, but I did not include that that would have been good to do. You know, I decided at some point, I'm making this book end at 300 pages. I could, I could probably ramble on and on. But I wanted. I wanted, I wanted to sort of wrap it all up. So I did cut some things like that.
So this is obviously told from the point of view of this young, young man, this adolescent and the boys bunk. Did you speak to any women about what their experience was like as girls at these camps?
Yeah. So that's, that's also another great question. So first of all, I have two daughters, who went, as I said, went to camp for years and years and years, and they're adults now. And we've had all kinds of conversations about this. umm the person who is Amy I am still friends with and so she, she saw drafts of this book, and she then read it in its finality. And she wrote to me, you know, she said, she laughed and she cried, she remembered things that she had forgotten. And she, she learned things that she never knew. And she thought it was great. And I have a bunch of friends who are women now who I've gone to camp with, I share my midseason tickets with an old friend of mine who she I've known her since I was 10 years old, and she's read the book a bunch of times. And you know, I definitely was concerned about how that was, but I do think that I created a well rounded character of Amy, I think she's clearly smarter than everybody else. And she's funny and she's confident and I wanted to make sure that I represented the way that I felt about her back in the day and I was really happy that she was enjoyed the book that way, but it is from a boy point of view and it is an inside peek at unfortunately the way 15 year old boys.
Yeah, yeah, worrying about getting to first base and second base and how you unbuckle a bra.
These these are the challenges that a young boy has you know, I think the other thing is that, you know, this takes place in the 70s. And it was obviously a time where everything was very heteronormative. And so, you know, I reflect the way that the times were, this is not the way things are now, I don't wouldn't have, you know, I don't think all of these ideas in this book are completely appropriate for this time. But I did, I hope it's not offensive in any ways. And I hope that it's taken in the spirit that I intended it, which is really, you know, this space is a joyous place, all my friends and I have a bunch of friends who I'm still friends with from back in the days men and women and we think of campus, the happiest place that we've on Earth to us. And our memories of this are strong. And I've gotten a lot of, you know, texts and Facebook messages from people I haven't heard from in 30 years who picked up the book, I didn't even know they got it. And they just thanked me for sort of like sparking memories that they they had forgotten and and reminding them of things that they loved about camp. So that's really what makes me happiest about about the book being out there in the world.
So do you have any points that you wanted to bring up that I haven't thought to ask you about?
I don't think so. You know, I think I was curious whether you were a camp person or not. Did you go to any sleepaway camps and like it or not like it, I've met all all sorts and they've liked or disliked the book. So I was just curious whether whether you were a camp person,
I spent one summer at camp, I think it was the summer before my senior year of college senior year of high school. And they had it was called Avodah core. So it was not the regular campers, but we weren't old enough for counselors yet. And they had sort of a work study thing. So we cleaned the bathrooms and did work around camp. But then we also had classes and the lake and, and all that stuff. So one one hand I had a great time. But on the other hand, most people there had been there for years. So I didn't have as much of that history and camaraderie that a lot of other people. Yeah,
I was, as you were saying that I was thinking my head Well, that's, that's a tough age to come into the groups because a lot of them have formed formed bonds, they have, you know, sort of like this shorthand language, I think that's another thing that I was trying to capture in the book, you know, the sort of way that they can talk with each other. And you kind of know, they have a history that they've been there since they were seven or eight, and they've gone through puberty, they're, you know, on the other side of puberty, but not quite into any like, you know, full adolescence or young adulthood yet. And so, I think that's what I was trying to capture. But I think I really wanted to share my camp experience, which was very joyous and and really have people sort of like have a have a, an opportunity to sort of experience the way that summer at least felt felt to me, so
wonderful. Do you have any projects in the works that you'd like to talk about?
Well, I'm actually graduating right now from grad school, I'm getting a MA in art, education and community practice at NYU. And, wow, I graduated in May for that. And, you know, I think I'm gonna spend the summer trying to talk about my book, I've done some some library events, I have one coming up, I do a multimedia thing where we show old home movies of my parents at camp in the 50s. And then me and my brother's and then sort of the process of, of making a graphic novel with the pencils, and then how they turn into the sort of final pencil illustrations in the inking. So I'm going to do a little bit of that. And then I'm going to try to figure out, you know, what my artistic practice will be, I'm going to try to connect cartooning maybe, you know, in community and sort of use the idea of comic making to help young people investigate their identity. And, you know, the give them some ways to amplify their own voices, tell their stories, I think it's a great medium for that. And so I'm going to work on sort of creating how that program is going to going to work. So that's kind of the stuff I have going on.
Wonderful. So I like to give all my guests and I stole this from one of my other favorite podcasts. chance to have a soapbox moment. And if you would like to call on people to do any act of tikkun olam of repairing the world, what would it be either connected to your book or not?
Right? So I have listened to your podcast and I know you do. That's why I had to think about that. And I decided that the thing that popped into my head was that there was an article in the Washington Post fairly recently that sort of said that more than it doesn't stop In recent years, I've measured the positive and restorative power of nostalgic memories. And I love that and you know, there's a lecturer and and psychology author, Erica Hepper. She says in this article that far from keeping people living in the past, nostalgia can be a powerful resource both for coping with difficult times, and for propelling us positively into the future. So I also enjoyed that and then just say a little bit more from that article. She says that nostalgia makes us feel safe, loved and reminds us that others care about us. And experts say that studies indicate that nostalgia can promote empathy, and psychological resilience, which we all need right now. foster creativity, for loneliness, build deeper connection, encourage a sense of community and volunteerism. And it's been shown to evoke inspiration, and even give people the sense of being physically warmer. So these are tough times now. And while none of us should live in the past, and there's certainly very problematic things with the past, I am well aware of that. I do think that taking some time to sort of like reminisce and being nostalgic in this in this spirit can help us all in some hard times. And I was I was happy to see that this was the case because I sort of feel this, but a lot of people think, oh, you know, don't stop thinking about the past and whatever. And the fact that there's all these positive things, both for one personally, but for the community and society as a whole is super interesting to me. So that would that would be what I would say in relationship to my book, which is obviously a huge piece of nostalgia to me.
All right, thank you. So if people would like to connect, or contact you what is the best way?
I think the best way is on Instagram. I have two accounts. One is sort of my personal one. But there's lots of stuff about Camp Pock-a-Wockne dynamite summer of 77. So that is at Glick. G li CK 23. And then there's a book devoted Instagram account which is "dynomite," summer of 77 Dynamite. So if we spell it probably not properly, but the way that I pronounce it. So that's that's the other way. You can definitely inbox me within that. And I make announcements about any appearances that I'm going to be making of the C class or quits. I love talking about this.
Wonderful. Well, thank you again, Eric Glickman for speaking with me about your graphic novel, novel, Camp Pock-a-Wockne. dynomite summer 77.
Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. I really enjoyed it.
If you are interested in any of the books we discussed today, you can find them at your favorite origins brick or online bookstore, or at your local library. Thanks to de Yong ki for use of his fraleigh which definitely makes me happy. This podcast is a project of the Association of Jewish libraries. And you can find more about it at WWW dot Jewish libraries.org/nice Jewish books. I would like to thank AJL and my podcast mentor Heidi Rabinowitz Keep listening for the promo for her latest episode.
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