"The Art Part Is Always a Struggle"

"It feels like it was the last monolithic cultural era. After that, everything got so dissipated. In the '90s, or more in the late '80s, it really felt like the mainstream culture was not satisfying to anybody. There were these little things that came up around the cracks, but it felt like there was a huge expanse of cultural terrain that we could occupy and no one was even thinking of going in those directions. I think now that's not necessarily the case, although I'm not sure anything is any better now. The overall quality of movies or books hasn't improved. It's just the way it feels. I think more about 1974 than 1994. You hit this certain thing where all the decades seem really similar because all the things you're doing don't have anything to do with the culture anymore once you hit like age 22. The 2000s have zero distinctive qualities to me."


Sean Nelson in The Stranger interviews Daniel Clowes.