But I am interested in the other side of knowledge, the cultural side of knowledge and the truthful side of knowledge. I’m a lousy electrician– I couldn’t fix a plug. I wouldn’t say it was an intellectual explosion. PITTS: That was your first exposure to sci-fi? I didn’t dare to be seen with it, so I just picked it up and hid it under my arm, took it home and I began reading it and I learned to love science fiction. It was one of the first Hugo Gernsback Wonder Stories. I found my first pulp magazine floating down the gutter on a rainy day toward the sewer and I picked it up because it had a strange looking object on it. The strange fact was that, on my block, we hadn’t even gotten to the pulp magazines. I’m a first world war baby and I was brought up with two wing airplanes… the Empire State Building wasn’t there yet, the Chrysler building wasn’t there when I was born, and Von Richthofen was the guy they were all talking about… flying aces and pulp magazines. KIRBY: We’re talking about the middle ’30s. Later on, I even went to industrial school, because I understood that they had drawing tables there and I wanted to practice drawing. I can’t say I was great in math (laughter), but in a very strange sense, my schooling was very good–all through junior high and high school and elementary. And so, despite the fact that we’d be running loose, just doing what we liked, like any other kids– playing stickball or baseball or boxing somewhere– we had a fine schooling. Strangely enough, our school curriculum was very good and our subject matter was very good. We had blocks of Italians and blocks of Irish and blocks of Jews. And it was at a time when the immigrants were still coming in and they settled in certain parts of New York City, among their own kind. It was a restricted area in the sense that it was an ethnic area. KIRBY: I was born on the Lower East Side of New York. PITTS: Let’s start with a little background-the “origin” of Jack Kirby. Thank you, Leonard, for allowing this interview to be presented on the Kirby Effect. A nationally-syndicated columnist, Pitts was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2004. A transcript of the interview was included in the papers that Greg Theakston gifted to the Museum a few years ago. Leonard Pitts, Jr., a commentator, journalist, and novelist, interviewed Jack Kirby in 1986 or 1987 for a book titled “Conversations With The Comic Book Creators”.
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