Ellen Forney
	Monkey Food

Published by Fantagraphics Books, Inc, ISBN 1-56097-362-5, 1999 September, collecting material originally published in newspapers and magazines: The Stranger; The Rocket; City Pages; The Austin Chronicle; Pulse.

Ellen Forney is, literally, a child of the Sixties. Her parents clearly had a ball during that time (and thereafter). Their peace and love produced Ellen and her elder brother Matt, as well as an enduring enjoyment of marijuana and other aspects of the alternative lifestyle. When Forney began a weekly cartoon strip, she drew on her experience of growing up in mainstream America with this slightly skewed home life, to produce I was Seven in '75. After publication in several more newspapers and a magazine, the complete collection has been made available in book form as Monkey Food.

Being New Age before the term was coined, the Forneys had no truck with baby language, particularly when it came to bodily parts and functions: "Matt & I were 'penis/vagina' kids (as opposed to 'dinky/pee-pee' kids)". The children were well aware of their parents' spliff smoking, and the associated semi-secrecy (or lack of it) is the basis for several tales within the collection. Some of their parents' friends seem to have been active exponents of free love, since one of the cartoons about the children making their (brief) circuit of an adult party includes one guest commenting "Home many people at this party do you think I've slept with?" These differences from the lives of most of their schoolfriends seem to have produced little or no embarrassment, but the associated doublethinking and self-censorship are a rich source of material for the cartoons.

One fairly regular Forney family activity was to go off camping at weekends, featuring such obstacles to a good time as "stinky outhouses" and mosquitoes. Despite this, they seem to have enjoyed the outings. That is, they looked forward to them until the announcement that the upcoming trip would be to a nudist camp. The children's reservations and apprehension are shown clearly in the cartoons, along with their fairly rapid conversion to the joys of clothes-free leisure. Sadly, this produced an unfortunate aftermath, when the young Ellen Forney happily told her friends about her weekend, only for some of the friends' parents to take exception to the joys of healthy social nudity being promoted. Ellen's mother has to advise her that, like smoking grass, this is something to be talked about only within the family.

All the stories and incidents in the book are beautifully told and illustrated. You can get an idea of the graphic style from one page of the sixteen showing the nudist camp episode. Monkey Food is the third cartoon book to be included in Yarns Without Threads, after The Emperor's Underwear and The Koala Bares. Whereas both of those are fictional, this is firmly rooted in reality. As another reviewer put it: "On beanbag chairs and shag rugs ... in nudist camps and custom vans ... it was Family Life in the Decade of Decadence!"

An edited version of this review appeared in the 2004 October issue of H&E Naturist magazine.

Ratings:

Nudity	Naturist nudity	A good read?

Last updated 2004 August 13.
 
Images Copyright © various authors, photographers, graphic artists, illustrators and publishers
Other content Copyright © author Tim Forcer

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