This book was originally published a decade ago but we can see from the reportage that so much of what is happening today in Jerusalem has been going This book was originally published a decade ago but we can see from the reportage that so much of what is happening today in Jerusalem has been going on much too long. Some of the same stuff we read about today with horror is in this book.
Delisle is a wonderful cartoonist who includes enough detail to make us feel as though we have a good portrait of a place. Trash and smells come through, gorgeous shiny domes of gold are clearly depicted. But Delisle has no axe to grind so he is almost the perfect cipher. He just draws what he sees and what he sees is breathtaking.
His wife is a doctor with Médicins San Frontières (MSF) or Doctors Without Borders and they work in conflict areas. Therefore, she works in Gaza so one may assume Delisle will have the viewpoint of "the oppressed." He never got to Gaza because of restrictions on his movement, so he concentrates his energies on Jerusalem. There is plenty to see there.
I highly recommend this book for insights gleaned while viewing a place from someone else's eyes. ...more
This is the first graphic novel in the history of the Man Booker to be considered for an award. To say it is worthwhile doesn’t capture the real slap This is the first graphic novel in the history of the Man Booker to be considered for an award. To say it is worthwhile doesn’t capture the real slap these big-bodied, small-headed figures levy. Lives of quiet desperation indeed. There may be some features missing in the frames…don’t all our lives have features missing? This feels terribly urgent, and painful, as though we cannot go another day without talking about it.
Sabrina lives in Chicago and has a life that includes a live-in lover, a cat, a sister, and a mother. One day she doesn’t come back from a walk. Drnaso shares the aftermath, picturing what life was like for those who remained, particularly for her boyfriend Teddy.
What is this story about, besides the central mystery? It is about what we do when our lives are upended, how we act, how we carry on. There are people we will remember as kind, and helpful, and others we will remember as clueless, and poisonous. We have to live in the world despite the horror it can hold. We obviously can decide not to do that as well.
The drawings have a real momentum that ratchet up our stress and fear levels. We are not completely clear on exactly what has happened until some distant midway point. We are as in the dark as the characters. When we finally get the news, we are disinclined to believe it, given all the peripheral noise. And finally, the darn conversations with Florida, and the workmates ostensibly helping with job prospects…they are so real they do not seem fictional at all.
What about the creepy guy in the white pickup looking for the cat? Why was he there, and what did he want? Was he meant to be an ambiguous figure meant to toy with us when we were so suspicious of everything? Was it the suspicion in our own minds that made the experience of meeting him and accepting his help so uncomfortable? If the frames were lighter and the background noise of a woman’s disappearance not concurrent, would we feel such strain upon seeing him in the street?
The ennui we feel upon hearing of a preventable tragedy like a mass shooting by a disaffected youth is not inevitable. Whether or not this is Drnaso’s message, I think those who pick up this book will see that we must not succumb to despair, and that sometimes we have to rely on ourselves, so inner resources are critical. We need to store up those inner resources for rainy days, while working to be kinder, and changing the way we treat one another.
The drawings and captions are extremely effective in conveying mood, attitude, situation. For some reason when characters looked through the closed blinds, I always had a frisson of energy. This sense of one hiding away and being afraid to look at reality stays with me. Maybe we’re all a little like that: too wrapped in our insular worlds an not paying enough attention to people and things around us.
Wake up, Drnaso might be saying. (view spoiler)[ Regarding the conspiracy theorist Albert Douglas, his resemblance to Alex Jones cannot be overlooked. It occurs to me now that the real Alex Jones may have been trying to see what it would take for some rights to begin to be abridged. I find it difficult to imagine the man is as mad as he pretends: Has anyone camped outside his house to videotape his interactions with family and friends neighbors to see if he is a lunatic off-screen? (I assume he has no friends. Is this wrong?) He may indeed be so conservative he wishes to hoist liberals on their own petard. For many of us who don't listen to Jones, it can be useful to actually hear what he has been saying and how close he strays to the edge...of sanity, or legality. (hide spoiler)]...more
For graphic artists, there are must-reads of the genre that direct the eye to advances in the art, and Sonny Liew’s contribution may well be one of thFor graphic artists, there are must-reads of the genre that direct the eye to advances in the art, and Sonny Liew’s contribution may well be one of those. Liew shows us many types of comic book art, discusses their genesis and early creators, but also seamlessly melds the story of an artist, Charlie Chan Hock Chye, with the story of the political and economic development of Singapore. It is a masterful work of enormous depth and sensitivity that answers questions I’d had when contemplating the entwined histories of Singapore and Malaya.
I really went down the rabbit hole with this work because it has so many layers and levels of reality and history that I immediately wanted to talk to someone about it or hear an interview. I had been constantly walking way from the piece, trying to realign my thinking about who was telling the story. Sometimes it seemed like it was written from the point of view of this artist and comic-book writer, Charlie Chan Hock Chye, born in Singapore in 1939, and all his life aspiring to be Singapore’s own greatest graphic artist and political commentator.
Sonny Liew was merely republishing, or publishing for the first time, Charlie’s un-published work, including a graphic autobiography begun late in his fifth decade of life and left unfinished until his seventh decade. But occasionally Liew would pop in and add commentary since he was showing us only representative pieces and scraps of Charlie’s body of work. Charlie took the writing of episodic and serialized comic novels to the pinnacle of political commentary, making such astute analysis that he was having trouble getting his work published in the conservative political environment of a colonial city-state and its aftermath.
A high point for me was the RoachMan comic series which imagined a man in 1950s Singapore whose back-breaking job it was to collect honey pots of night soil from houses in traditional neighborhoods. One day on his rounds he is daydreaming about the resilience of cockroaches when—suddenly— he is bitten! Over the next days and nights he feels delirious and tingling sensations only to discover when he is nearly mowed down by a car at night that he has acquired new physical abilities…
Of course, it did occur to me to wonder about the choice of a cockroach as a hero, but Liew tells us that Charlie’s idea was picked up and changed slightly for the Spiderman comics that were popularized in the English-speaking western world the following decade. What looks like formerly scotch-taped examples of his pages are reproduced for us to judge, the artwork changing and so amazingly similar to famous Marvel works that we wonder which came first.
All the while, we are experiencing Charlie’s day-to-day reality finding a publisher, and creating characters that reflect the city’s struggle for political leadership. This is no ordinary comic. It is dense with history, drama, commentary, humor, and art. When Liew pops up again to provide commentary—we can tell it is Liew who sometimes writes captions—we need to slow down and ask ourselves which person is talking because it matters to the interpretation—one is concurrent with events and one is long afterward.
Spoilers won’t ruin this piece for you, but I just want to say that the ending is terribly poignant and meaningful; we feel as though Liew has given us a great gift to have introduced us to this unknown cartoonist, who finally finished his autobiography. He’d finally travelled to Comic Con in San Diego in 1988 after an entire career in comics, bringing with him representative samples of his work. That episode is included in the final pages. I won’t tell you how it turned out—what Charlie saw or who saw him—but suffice it to say it provided grist for mill.
Charlie Chan Hock Chye’s story feels like it has burst onto the scene with the power of a neutron bomb, laying all other artists flat because of its virtuosity and depth. We are intensely curious how Charlie could escape attention for so long, but also wonder about the connection between Sonny Liew and Charlie. The book won three 2017 Eisner Awards at this year’s Comic Con, for Best Writer/Artist, Best US Edition of International Material—Asia, and Best Publication Design Winner.
Read the book first, and then get a taste of how it has been received in the U.S. by checking out the Comics Syllabus 008 podcast produced by Paul Lai who interviews Sonny Liew about the book. Also, on my blog I have posted a short Epigram Books clip of Liew talking about the book’s conception and execution. But read the book first. Get the whole experience....more
Delisle manages to capture for us what a non-working foreigner not proficient in the local languages would perceive during his/her time in Rangoon. ThDelisle manages to capture for us what a non-working foreigner not proficient in the local languages would perceive during his/her time in Rangoon. The heat. I'd always wondered about it. Delisle said his level of tolerance improved over the year he stayed there, so that he could stand up to 90degF before turning on the air conditioner, while when he'd arrived, 80degF was his limit.
Delisle's wife works as a physician for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) International as a physician, and this time we learn a little about how the process of country-siting is chosen, what kind of conditions employees endure as condition of their employment, and a little about the different roles sister organizations have within the same country. One can actually use this as a window into the work of the organization as well as into the country.
All of Delisle's graphic memoirs are interesting. This one made me laugh when he showed a picture of a pen and ink drawn made during 'the wet,' or the rainy season. The lines were all running and blurred, as though it had been dunked in a barrel of water or as if one had spilled water onto it. The rest of the year is 'the hot.' What else is striking is at that time (2007-08), permits were required for foreigners to travel around the country, due to a great deal of internal unrest.
Some of the physicians are stationed at remote outposts, and even though the organization is permitted to operate, getting permission to travel to and from those outposts is difficult and can be dangerous. But here the usefulness of having an artist making the trip is apparent. We envision the enormous ancient teak house in Mudan that is rented by MSF, and the local translation of a British village complete with fenced front gardens. You will remember Orwell was stationed in Burma between the world wars.
Anyway, Delisle is not a political writer, nor a journalist, but he adds a heck of a lot to our understanding nonetheless. I'm now officially a big fan....more
At the midway point in this graphic novel I was still smiling. It sort of clipped me upside the head as I read, and though it drew blood, I still thouAt the midway point in this graphic novel I was still smiling. It sort of clipped me upside the head as I read, and though it drew blood, I still thought it might be a little cute. I didn't reallylike the story--it seemed a bit grim--but... I thought it was going to come around.
The authors (it would have to be two, one couldn't bear that dark vision alone, for long) are making a comment on man's seemingly infinite capacity for evil--really banal, thoughtless evil. It hurts, this vision, because sometimes it looks like it could be interpreted: Hateful redheads (wearing the red caps) with virtual spears yelling their frustration into the startled faces of those without the scarcity--the scarcity of everything, including education & opportunity, but also love, generosity & kindness, warmth, food...you know...what those of us who have, call "basics."
I don't believe in this vision. It may be hurtful to even entertain a performance of it in art. But I personally am not threatened. I feel sure that there is more to us--stop chewing on my sneakers, kitty!--there is more to us than looking after our own needs...No! you may not have my last crust of bread...Arg...did you stab me for the crust? You can have half, but you know we should get more from...though we may have to fight them for it...
You know how bad it is when I have already thought of these scenarios. ...more
So this is the book that won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature in 2016. And it is a winner in every sense. The trilogy together geSo this is the book that won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature in 2016. And it is a winner in every sense. The trilogy together gets under one’s skin. It has very little black/white discussion about it, which is exactly as it should be. The marches in Alabama and Mississippi were not so much about race as about human rights.
First off, kudos to John Lewis for lasting so long in the midst of such outrageous attacks on both his person and on his humanity. His personality must have just the right amount of tamped-down rage to light a spark but not start a fist-fight. How the authors (including the informative and evocative drawings by Nate Powell, and the dialog boxes by Andrew Aydin) decided what to focus on, what to emphasize, in this telling is what I admired so much.
There was division amongst the groups raising consciousness among black people in the south, and we see that. There were egos involved in who was leading by what method, e.g., Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Stokley Carmichael, Jim Forman, Fannie Lou Hammer, James Bevel. There was real ugliness in the behaviors of resistant white folks, even mothers with children, against peaceful black marchers demanding their lawful rights. There were murders and beatings and unlawful detentions by police and state law enforcement officials—the people we pay to protect us—with no state or federal oversight for years, despite direct pleas from demonstrators.
Lewis had a front-row seat to all that was going on in the south and in Washington. He was head of Student NonViolent Coordinating Committee and as the youngest of the “Big Six,” representatives of the most impactful civil rights organizations, he met with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Lewis has a story to tell, and in this collaboration with two younger men, shows us how momentous his contribution.
One thing that struck me is how much learning readers experience about how movements of resistance operate. Should we ever need to use nonviolent protest to preserve our rights as citizens (against a government or corporation acting unlawfully) there is much here to glean. How to prepare for pushback and what to expect, how to notify and organize the populace who may be supportive, and how to preserve unity among groups or ideas in the face of divisiveness. How to keep the economic, political, and social pressure on those we resist against, never giving them a peaceful nights' sleep.
Get this one if you have kids. This is worthy. Reviews of Books 1& 2....more
Book 2 in the March series about the life and work of civil rights activist John Lewis is absolutely propulsive in telling the story of racial preBook 2 in the March series about the life and work of civil rights activist John Lewis is absolutely propulsive in telling the story of racial prejudice in the southern United States in the early 1960s. As with Book 1, the early frames describe a cold day in January 2009 when all of Washington, D.C. and many more gathered in front of the Capitol Building for the inauguration of President Barack Obama.
The joyous scenes in 2009 are interleaved with the contrasting history some 50-odd years earlier when black people were protesting the right to sit at the same lunch counter with whites. John Lewis was involved in these nonviolent “actions” at that time which entailed silent continued resistance to refusals to serve, waiting until nightfall or arrest, whichever came first, only to be replaced by others once the first protesters were taken to jail. It was nonviolent on the protester side, but not on the side of those who disliked the protests. Not just the eating locations, but movie theaters, swimming pools, buses were all segregated and targeted for protests.
The actual start of the Freedom Rider action, testing the Boynton v. Virginia Supreme Court ruling which outlawed segregation and discrimination on buses and in bus terminals, is a fascinating one which the authors tell in great detail. The continued pressure of constant resistance across the southern states provoked violent push-back, but the peaceful protests were surprisingly effective. As the movement grew bigger, it had to accommodate many more points of view and opinions, and in some cases was encouraged to lose its pacifist methods. This section of the civil rights movement led by John Lewis at least held to its position through the early 1960s, though more radical voices were warming up in the wings.
Part 2 of the three-part series draws to a close with the hugely-successful March on Washington in August 1963, but the book's final frames show an explosion at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in September that same year, less than one month later. Violence now came unprovoked and the pressure to resist in kind was building. All the time protesters asked for national guidance and support, without definitive response or intervention by national leadership.
These books are terrific material for teens on up, reminding us of the difficulties faced in the struggle for racial equality not so very long ago. The authors have won all kinds of prizes, awards, and praise for this series, deservedly. Highly recommended....more
The third book in the graphic novel series March won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2016, prompting me to have a look atThe third book in the graphic novel series March won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in 2016, prompting me to have a look at the series. Book 1 depicts John Lewis’ childhood in rural Alabama, where he grew up on a farm. His personality was revealed early, and his relatives took to calling him “preacher.” He cared more about words and concepts than the back-breaking reality of labor in the fields. He liked to wear a tie and read books any day and escaped to school even when he was needed in the fields at home. The "boy preacher" gave his his first sermon five days before his sixteenth birthday, inspired by Rosa Parks' protest in Montgomery, Alabama, fifty miles away.
First frames for this series open in Washington, D.C. in January 2009 and Lewis’ history is told in flashbacks. Black and white drawings of Representative Lewis’ office in Cannon House Office Building are interspersed with visions of his childhood. It is more than fifty years between the two periods and yet they are connected in some way we know will be made clear. Our perception of those fifty years changes like a hologram as we read, sometimes thinking fifty years sounds like a long time, and then realizing it’s only fifty years, and yet how radically different living conditions were then, outside of cities. Blacks were still being blatantly discriminated against in every way, and the first civil rights legislation was just being proposed, passed, and enacted.
This book follows Lewis from his early schooldays, through high school and his first discovery of the “social gospel” being taught by Martin Luther King, Jr. Lewis knew after hearing King one day on the radio that the gospel King was spreading was something he believed in whole-heartedly. And he gravitated to places where that message was being taught, ending up in Nashville, Tennessee with a group of like-minded activists. The first book ends with a series of sit-ins in Nashville cafes and restaurants, forcing them eventually to serve black customers along with whites.
The authors simplify the twists and turns in Lewis’ life, but hover carefully over turning points, and moments of decision. This biography is aimed at young adults, not children. But even young adults may need someone to explain how and why there was so much opposition to integration, unless they have already seen and felt those sentiments in their lives. I expect black youth will know exactly what Lewis is telling them, and white youth will be aghast, even disbelieving, unless they, too, live in the south. But these books are absolutely necessary at this time, to refresh our collective memories. It is not so long ago that all of us can’t get first hand corroboration of Lewis’ history, and remind ourselves those attitudes were not appropriate then, and they aren’t appropriate now.
The encapsulation of a real life in a series of picture frames and dialog boxes is a difficult thing to pull off, but Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell do it beautifully, never talking down to the reader, nor reaching so high that the concepts can’t be grasped immediately, viscerally even. This is life and death stuff, and they leave a little of the horror in for us to contemplate, but the steady focus and preparation necessary to challenge political power comes across as well. As does the bravery of those who dared to resist.
Highly recommended for a basic understanding of what the fight for civil rights looked like from an individual's perspective in the south of the United States in the 1950s and early 1960s. Conditions experienced by blacks, attitudes of whites, the time period, the first resistance groups, and key figures are introduced. More material and discussion will be needed to answer the questions students and readers will surely have when confronted with this information for the first time....more
Volume II is a continuation of the adventures of Riad as a young French-Arab in Homs in the mid-1980s. Riad is still a child, blond-haired and six yeaVolume II is a continuation of the adventures of Riad as a young French-Arab in Homs in the mid-1980s. Riad is still a child, blond-haired and six years old. He is ready to go to school for the first time, and is terrified. With good reason, it turns out.
Sattouf positively outdoes himself drawing scenes from the classroom. The headscarf-wearing teacher has a skirt so short and legs so large that our eyes widen in fear. Riad takes a frame to zero in on the impossible narrowness of her high heels, her calves looming dense and heavy above, like a boulder snagged over a walkway. She looks dangerous. That is to say nothing of the smile she holds a second before she strikes the boys on the palms with a wooden rod. Nothing so thin as a ruler, her tool is a rod that looks very solid and hard in her hand.
"Ha, ha, [Riad’s father chortles that evening] you’re funny. You’re just like me at your age. Scared of everything…Don’t worry, nothing will happen."
More false words were never spoken. Lots happens, and much of it is life-threatening. But perhaps most importantly we see the utter cruelty with which people treat one another. If there was ever a time to be grateful for political correctness in our daily interactions, after reading this you will breathe a sigh of relief for those tedious niceties. You will remember the menace of schoolyard bullies, and realize Arab society, in Syria at least, is taught this is normal human behavior: to be admired if you win, killed if you do not.
Sattouf takes his time with this installment of the story of young Riad. We spend a couple of days sampling the coursework in first grade: patriotic songs, basic characters for writing, reading skills without comprehension, and inventive slurs and punishments. We meet the neighbors: a police-chief-cousin whose stash of gold jewelry could finance a bank, and whose home is a huge unfinished concrete pile cratered with moisture-seeping cracks. We go on a day trip to Palmyra with a general while Riad’s father spends his time trying to wrangle the general into “putting in a word” for his advancement at the university where he works. Palmyra is littered with ancient-looking pottery shards which Riad’s father disdains.
"In the third century after Jesus Christ [Riad’s father says dully, lighting a cigarette] Zenobia turned the nomad’s city of Palmyra into an influential artistic center."
Riad returns to France and enjoys it at the same time he begins to realize he is changing…has changed. He is a desert child now, confused with the plenty that surrounds him in France. It is a poignant section we all recognize for its dislocation. He does not read or speak French particularly well. The French language is difficult, and complicated. Where does Riad fit in? Where does he belong? Where will he be accepted?
The scenes of RIad with the men in his community when he returns to Homs are memorable. Very little is said; the drawings do the work here. I did not understand all that was implied, but someone will. Perhaps the punchline will be revealed in another installation of the life of Riad in Syria. Riad’s father is becoming more and more unbearable as a husband, as a father, as a man. He is hopelessly out of his league wherever he is, and always aspirational, never in control. His wife is losing patience, and he himself is recognizing a few hard truths that have him sitting by himself in some frames, smoking and silent.
Sattouf leaves us feeling unsettled and unsure. Do we want Riad in this place with these people? I think his mother is feeling similarly unsure. The father…one gets the sense that however much the father thinks he is the man, there is precious little he does control.
This installment just cements my sense that this kind of graphic novel may be the easiest, most immediate, most fun way to learn about a culture. When it is done well, a boatload of information can be transmitted in a couple of frames. Sattouf appears to be completely frank about life in Homs as he sees it, and it is remarkable for its insights as well as its humor.
I love this series and will insist upon reading everything about Riad growing up. The Tintin series was the first set of books Riad had access to, the series being only one of two books his academic father had in his personal library. The other book was the Quran. Will look to see if I can see the influences from Tintin in Sattouf’s marvelous story of growing up Arab before his third book hits the stands.
The terrific translation of this work is done by Sam Taylor, and the U.S. publisher is Metropolitan Books, a division of Henry Holt. ...more
This memoir in the form of a graphic novel by Riad Sattouf is positively terrifying. It only takes an evening to read, and I can guarantee you will noThis memoir in the form of a graphic novel by Riad Sattouf is positively terrifying. It only takes an evening to read, and I can guarantee you will not want to put it down.
A cartoonist and former contributor to Charlie Hebdo, Sattouf now has a weekly column in France’s L’Obs. This graphic memoir is translated from the French by Sam Taylor and published in 2015 by Metropolitan Books, and tells of Sattouf’s early childhood in France, Libya, and Syria.
The memoir is terrifying for what it tells us of the consciousness of a Sunni Arab man and his extended family, as well as the conditions in the cities of Tripoli and Homs. Sattouf engages our sympathies immediately by starting out his descriptions from the eyes of a blond two-year-old, who we might expect to be perplexed wherever he was, being new to the world. But this turns out to be the perfect vehicle for presenting the things he sees, hears, smells, and experiences with a disingenuous honesty (though, I must admit, the consciousness of a child). It is as disarming as it is damning. We laugh and cringe at the same time.
Sattouf is choosing what to tell us about his upbringing with the consciousness of an adult. He shows the peculiarities of early education in France, and Syria. Both have failures, as a system. It’s a wonder we survive at all, but less surprising that we exhibit the flaws we do. He has a finely honed skill for cutting away the extraneous, and revealing the kernel of his experience. He makes it laughable, but at heart, it is also terrifying.
Riad’s Syrian father, Abdul-Razak, is the first of his family to read and is (therefore?) considered a great scholar in Syria. He is sent to study history at the Sorbonne and manages to wed an unworldly French student, Clementine, who is studying in Paris. Clementine is from a small village in Brittany and when they both graduate, Abdul-Razak accepts a position teaching in Tripoli, Libya. You have got to read this to enjoy it. I don’t want to spoil your fun. It sounds just about what you might expect with Qaddafi in charge, only even worse than you could imagine.
The family returns briefly to France, and then pack themselves off to Abdul-Razak’s home village outside of Homs, Syria. By this time Riad has a new dark-haired brother, but his own hair is still blond. He is teased (and beaten up) mercilessly in Homs, where the children harass him with expletives while calling him “Jew.” Conditions of everyday life in the 1970’s in Syria sound positively crushing in this period Hafez al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad’s father, was in charge. Riad’s family was Sunni; Assad was Alawhite. Segregation by religion, by sect shouldn’t surprise me, but the extent and result of it is stomach-roiling. Riad’s dear father, Abdul-Razak doesn’t sound more enlightened, for all his education.
I am reminded of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion in which Dawkins writes of early childhood inculcation into any religion as one of the most damaging things that can happen to the impressionable mind. One cannot help but agree when one sees what it has done in cultures all over the world. In this part of the world hatreds last for millennia, perhaps due largely to childhood inculcation. Riad’s father buys him a plastic revolver as a toy. “All boys like weapons,” he says. Does it follow, I wonder, that all who like weapons are still boys?
What Riad captures in this work is the deeply ingrained and insufficiently informed nature of the racism and sectarianism in each of the countries in which he has lived. He also captures realistically grim pictures of living conditions in each country, as well as the good bits: in France, we see an education system that seems to work well for enrollees; in Libya, we see ancient ruins by the sea that evoke history better than many other ruins; in Syria, we see the memories of a school-aged Abdul-Razak bring him back to a simple life. But each is a comfortable deception that people feel comfortable telling themselves. Family ties were more important than whether your relatives were good people or not, and obligation takes the place of generosity.
Riad’s drawing skill is such that one can envision the environment quite clearly. It is better than a photograph since Riad can add the elements he wishes to emphasize. In the New York Times review of this title, as well as that in the New Yorker magazine, called "Drawing Blood", we learn that Riad has a few more installments planned for this series, and I look forward eagerly to other adventures as he grows older. He has a viewpoint that is not all sarcasm. He so far has spared his mother, who comes across as a bewildered alien in a hostile environment.
Riad’s work has the sting of criticism, but since he presents it through the eyes of a child, adult readers are meant to add their own gloss, knowing what we do about the perceptions of a child. Let’s see what he comes up with next, enjoying this and making up our minds later about whether he oversteps the mark. ...more
Both the writer, Brian K. Vaughan, and the illustrator, Fiona Staples, are such profusely talented collaborators that their work must be outstanding eBoth the writer, Brian K. Vaughan, and the illustrator, Fiona Staples, are such profusely talented collaborators that their work must be outstanding examples of the genre. Perhaps best of all, in the final pages of the hardcover version of Volume I Vaughan lets us in on the magic of creating graphic novels. Since the writer and illustrator both have unmatched imaginative and artistic skills, their generosity in sharing the techniques of creation seem unlikely to infringe upon their respective positions at the pinnacle of graphic novels.
Residents of a world are war with the residents of their moon. Their fight has drawn in residents of other locales throughout the galaxy to fight proxy wars on their behalf, “waged mostly by unlucky draftees or conscripts from other worlds.” The original enmity remained and fighting had gone on so long that offspring of the surviving combatants knew only to hate “those with horns” or “those with wings.” When Marko finds himself an “enemy combatant” and falls in love with his jailor, special agent Alana, they escape but must live on the lam.
The explicit images and language at the beginning of this book strangely do not label it “not for teens” because the language and temperament are all about teens and youthful idealisms. But it can be satisfying fare for adults as well because of the exquisite portraitures and expressions we recognize, and the heavy doses of physicality and fornication elicit something more than morbid curiosity.
“The opposite of war is not peace.”
Both Marko and Alana are devotees of a particular self-deprecating author, D. Oswald Heist, who churns out volumes of sci-fi bodice-rippers from a lighthouse on the on the planet of Quietus “to pay the bills.” Heist has a major following because his books have a philosophy and a worldview that his readership find enthralling.
I take Vaughan’s point. I don’t agree with it necessarily since the idea is (literally) sketched and not fully developed as a concept, but I see what he is about. But perhaps we should just take Vaughan’s graphic novels as the starting points for discussion in or outside the classroom. Surely just the awesomeness of the paired writing and drawing should be a subject of study: the difficulty of culling physical and verbal communication to their essence without losing the particular personality of the speakers.
Personally I was more taken with the visual component of Saga Vol I rather than the arguments presented in support of the anti-war philosophy, but I think together they make a marvelous combination. And I appreciated the To Be Continued section of the book in which the finesse, attention to detail, and the agonizingly slow process of creation, correction, and distillation is highlighted. Vaughan claims to be quoting Twain when he says “Try to feature at least one hideously enlarged pair of testicles in every story you tell” and he’s right—it adds to the overall drama. ...more
One imagines the word “cartoonist” should be paired with “funny,” and certainly I am accustomed to think “funny” when hearing the name Roz Chast. But One imagines the word “cartoonist” should be paired with “funny,” and certainly I am accustomed to think “funny” when hearing the name Roz Chast. But not any more. The only thing I thought was funny enough to laugh at in this book-length cartoon about the decline of her parents was the part she did not draw out: the photographs of her parents’ apartment after they left it one day for a ‘trial run’ at an assisted living facility. For some reason, the 1950’s vintage ammonia inhalants placed prominently in the small bathroom medicine cabinet struck me as very funny.
But for the first time I felt Roz Chast and I could be friends in some alternate universe where our circles intersected. We are nothing alike, but she opened up her world and her thinking and her motivations in this piece and made herself very vulnerable. And I cannot help but find her experience and explanations interesting and worthy of respect. It is so different from my own way of thinking that I feel sure I could learn something—a new way to look at the world, perhaps. I have never understood the distance that adult children have toward their parents’ needs though I honestly think that is the norm, and this book went some way to giving me one person’s explanation.
In an interview with Terry Tazioli for the TV segment Well Read, Chast said she used her parents’ decline and death as a subject and she would encourage her own kids to do the same when her time comes because “it is all material.” She spent a couple of years agonizing over this stuff, and it is the agonizing stuff that makes the best material, for cartoons, for literature, for music or film. That this book made so many of the “Best Of” lists shows how it resonated with the public at large.
But it wasn’t funny, really. What kept me reading was not “wondering how it would turn out,” since I already had an idea about that, but how Roz was managing it. When Elizabeth Chast, Roz’s mother, was diagnosed with an intestinal fistula at 96, her sister, a retired R.N., recommended she “have the operation” to remove it. In my experience, this devil-may-care attitude towards the actual hands-on nursing care required in such a situation (even if it goes well!) is typical of the R.N.s I have known…it’s almost as though they have no idea, or so devalued is the day-in and day-out effort of recovery and of care in their eyes that they don’t even see it. How can that be?
Anyway, Chast's description of the assisted-living facility caught many of the weirdnesses therein very well. I always thought the door art was helpful for those folks who were looking for their rooms, though I suppose if you’ve forgotten your room number and floor, you’ve probably also forgotten what was decorating your door. But Chast caught the dinner-table cliquishness, the empty game rooms, the choking and falling over very well. That is not so funny for me. It is more awful than anything. I am not sure how things will go for my loved ones and me, but I’m not looking forward to that.
I admire Chast for putting together this book. She spent a few years with this problem and was able to digest it enough to share her experience. It wasn’t the “waste of time” so many of us fear. I argue that it is the point. A lingering death is what we may face and it is infinitely preferable to know what it can look like, so that we can make modifications to that outcome that if we can. I am sorry for folks that don’t have the chance to see what the future can hold. My great aunt wanted to live to 102, and darn it, she did. But I know now I’m not going to set my goal like that. I’m sure it gives some folks the impetus to carry on, but I am not sure that carrying on is the point, exactly.
Chast provokes strong feelings in this book, and many of us that face these issues may very well handle them differently. The book began to resonate when Roz talked about her mother’s emotional distance, denial, and lack of empathy. It will be important to remember when we get to that place: the mental strength and indomitable will that keeps us independent may not be the same skill we need when we can no longer cope on our own. We need to start thinking again about others—what they are experiencing, and how best we can fit in a changed world. If you want others to care, you must care also, and show it. ...more
Ulinich does something extraordinary here by combining her storytelling and drawing skills to create an absorbing graphic novel featuring the drama ofUlinich does something extraordinary here by combining her storytelling and drawing skills to create an absorbing graphic novel featuring the drama of an adult woman searching for love. This is not ordinary entertainment, but instead a realistic and riveting examination of the vicissitudes of finding love and keeping it.
Lena Finkle is the twice-divorced mother of two who is about to get herself involved in an inter-continental relationship with a married man. When a friend wisely suggests Lena get more experience with men before she jumps into another unsuitable relationship, Lena forays into the world of online dating. Lena’s trenchant observations about her stumbling first steps in this direction are cringe-worthy best friend talk, admitting confusion, bad choices, and failure. To top it off, Lena has a homunculus on her shoulder making snide asides and expressing the observations Lena’s less rational side needs to hear.
There is an energy in this novel that derives from the combination of cartoonish drawings and the wrenching real-life agony of misplaced and unrequited love. References to the online dating site OkCupid lower the tone; comparisons of Lena’s work as a novelist with Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, Anton Chekov heighten the tension. It is an absurdist romp with heartbreaking consequences, and yes, this is indeed a sort of classic literature filled with naked vulnerability and deep intelligence. There is movement, introspection, growth, and understanding.
The central character, a Russian, a Jew, and a mother, has all the strengths and weaknesses of those categories we use for shorthand. Lena denies her Jewish background (“I fail the faith test in God”) at the same time she pulls out her angst for us to contemplate. “Oh my God, I’m turning into a Russian wife!” she exclaims when she instinctively over-cares for her sick lover. In the next line she denies being slotted into that category: “I will never, ever be a Russian wife!” She is practical and loving as a mother, and also claims to be “impersonating a mother” when her love affair goes sideways. She tosses her homunculus into the gutter: “Your knee-jerk skepticism, your materialist rationality, and your stupid irony—what use are they to me now?”
Buying a pair of shoes might set off a flood of introspection, self-criticism, and a peering into the larger society: “buying a pair of red shoes wouldn’t constitute a punishable offense, but would certainly invite questions…which would load the shoes with too much significance to ever actually wear…which is why married people in Brooklyn are stuck in horrible moccasins and fleece sweaters they buy online…” The Scottish philosopher-lawyer-author Alexander McCall Smith couldn’t have said it better.
The man she chose to learn from was not the perfect man: he was a device for making her more self-aware and accepting. Lena wanted to ignore her homunculus and friend Yvonne who told her not to close her eyes to the bright yellow caution tape in his conversation. Lena needed to be able to see, to listen to her homunculus even when she didn’t want to. Finally, understanding dawns.
“No one ever really arrives. We just nudge each other along muddy ruts of suffering, occasionally peeking over the edges of our ruts in search of a better way.”
The name of Ulinich’s central character, Lena Finkle, is derived from two references that situate the character in the absurdist canon. Lena Dunham’s droll movie, Tiny Furniture, about a college graduate moving back into her mother’s apartment in the City, has an unforgettable scene about the struggle for intimacy—in a street-side construction pipe. This same hilarious and breathtakingly painful description of the nakedness of one’s need is keenly described in drawings and thought bubbles by Ulinich.
The second reference is derived from Bernard Malamud’s story, “Magic Barrel,” in which a man, Leo Finkle, asks for help from a matchmaker in finding a mate. Leo Finkle is a rabbinical student doing what was expected of him until one day he realized he had no faith! This set off a depression which led him to a “panicked grasping” of a young woman which he called “love.”
I can’t recommend this novel more highly. Its dark humor and anguished understanding ties into some of the great literature of the 19th and 20th centuries but in a format that is finally coming into its own in the 21st century. The graphic novel format is uniquely suited to Ulinich’s skills. As always when an author manages a breathtaking high-wire act, I wonder if it can be replicated. But no matter, enjoy this one for what it is—an astonishing and absorbing example of high-intensity literature for our time. Many kudos to Ulinich for reminding us of Malamud's delicious little story once again....more
This book left me feeling depressed and bereft for a number of days. I wonder if anyone has ever been so bald before in revealing America’s most heinoThis book left me feeling depressed and bereft for a number of days. I wonder if anyone has ever been so bald before in revealing America’s most heinous errors of judgment and fairness. In the Introduction, Hedges writes that Sacco and he started out to look closely at the “sacrifice zones” in parts of America that have been areas of exploitation and neglect. It is horrifying, but necessary information.
This book is a collaboration between two highly talented individuals who separately have achieved international reputations for looking at how we live, how we resolve conflict, and how the system seems to develop “forgotten areas” where human rights are not as they were promised, and are not what many of us enjoy.
They start with the Indians, American Indians. Just saying the name already develops in us a sense of wariness. We’ve heard…but these men stare. They investigate. They conclude. The conditions of their survival are completely heartbreaking. We do more for bison than we do for native Americans, and I am not talking about government “handouts.” I have long thought that these folks should be dukes and duchesses in the supposedly classless American society instead of reviled and degraded, and reading the report of these two men makes me even more sure that we can hardly right the wrongs without changing something fundamental in our thinking.
The book has five parts. In four of those parts, Hedges and Sacco look at different areas of the country, but also areas of our discriminatory behaviors…places like Camden, New Jersey “left for dead” while others areas of the country carry on with growth and abundance. It is disgusting to read about, and even more disgusting to realize no one can really talk this away by blaming it on the folks that are suffering. These are national problems.
Sacco’s work as a graphic artist is brilliant and unforgettable. You may remember his work from several books on the Middle East (Palestine, Footnotes in Gaza) or his work on Yugoslavia (Safe Area Goražde: The War in Eastern Bosnia, 1992-1995, or War's End: Profiles from Bosnia, 1995-1996). He literally illustrates the lives people lead in these crisis areas and dares us to turn away. What he chooses to draw in these chapters is clearly clipped from reality. If a picture is worth a thousand words, he has written an opus.
This book is an unusual collaboration that reads like a gut-punch. The last chapter talks about Occupy Wall Street, how it began, how it spread, what it means. The occupation in Zuccotti Park began during the last months of the writing of this book, and in Hedges’ words, “permitted us to end our work with the capacity for hope.” Perhaps so. For weeks I could not see or hear of indignities in our daily life without thinking of this book. It is instructive, and truly horrifying. Should definitely go on high school reading lists, but really we should all read this. ...more
Satrapi relates the death of her great-uncle and celebrated musician Nassar Ali Khan with the cool detachment of a reporter. Her drawings and captionsSatrapi relates the death of her great-uncle and celebrated musician Nassar Ali Khan with the cool detachment of a reporter. Her drawings and captions do not reveal how she views the events she shares with us. Her uncle took to his bed one day and decided he was going to die. It appears to have taken him eight days.
The explanation Satrapi offers us is that he lived for his music. When his beautiful instrument was broken by his wife in a moment of rage, he never imagined his talent would abandon him. But Khan believed he played so well because he carried within his heart an unfulfilled but requited love that sustained him and fed his talent. When he believed that love was withdrawn, he lost the will to live. Was he foolish?
I have heard that it is possible for a person to give up their will to live, but I have always thought it a conundrum: it takes enormous will to give up one’s will. I would not have thought it so common in majority Christian Western democracies to find such abandonment of will, but I believe the Asian countries have many examples of suicide by simply refusing to live, and now Satrapi tells us it is apparently not unusual in the Middle East as well.
It looks like a relatively peaceful, painless way to go, emotional trauma aside, if she describes it correctly. Since she wasn’t there, it’s possible it wasn’t quite as comfy as it looks. This observation is separate from the discussion about whether it was a good choice. I would have to say, in his case, with the information we have of his life, it was not a good choice. He seems to lack the maturity to make a reasonable moral choice on the matter.
Regarding the love affair: bosh! Unrequited love has been the impetus for, and subject of, many a grand piece of music. The more unrequited the love, the grander the music. Nassar’s old lover may still have loved him. We don’t know, and neither did he. But she’d been mature in making the best of what she did have. He should have, too.
I think his wife was right. He was a selfish bastard.
This book is hard to rate with the star system. Satrapi’s drawings, writing, and presentation of the issues deserve at least four stars. That I don’t condone the activities described therein does not alter my praise of her skills. Nice controversial piece. She's a devilish one, that Satrapi. Keep your eye on her. ...more
In one of his interviews, the great graphic novelist Craig Thompson cites Daniel Clowes as a must-read graphic artist he admires. I admire Thompson’s In one of his interviews, the great graphic novelist Craig Thompson cites Daniel Clowes as a must-read graphic artist he admires. I admire Thompson’s work, so it makes sense I would seek out Clowes. This graphic novel was made into a movie in 2001 starring Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson. I haven’t seen that yet, but it may well be the first sighting of Scarlett Johansson before big stardom.
A GR friend of mine wrote a deeply insightful meditation on the development of American cities in response to this work, going big in the face of adolescent alienation. As much as I enjoyed that piece, the book made a different impression on me. I’m going to go small: this is a novel of ideas that happen internally and out of sight. All we see is the petulance, the ripple on the surface of a psyche.
A young thin blond girl and a much edgier dark-haired friend who sports an aggressive haircut and heavy-framed glasses are nearing the end of high school. Contemplating their futures, the dark-haired girl wishes to become someone else. “I totally hate myself,” she cries late one night lying on the couch of a boy she’d just admitted she loved. Poor guy.
At that age we are both afraid of and jealous of the complexities adults wrestle every day; we want to try out our problem-handling skills to see if they can measure up. We want the next thing to happen so that we are not merely sitting ducks when it does. Desire for the world and fear of that same world mix unsteadily in our gut. We’re not ready, but when will we ever be?
The ideas shown in this graphic novel struck me as completely within the range of normal adolescence angst, disaffection, confusion, and fear about the world and one’s role in it. We’re pretty obnoxious and self-absorbed at that age, as anyone with a teenager in the house will readily commiserate. Clowes actually plays it so low key we are as bored and unimpressed with their lives as the characters are.
My favorite frame comes near the end when the dark-haired girl is driving the hearse her father graciously bought for her to take to college. Despite having a vehicle and a direction, the girl says she is depressed: “Everything is all the same no matter where you go.” The Buddhists say it like this: “Wherever you go, there you are.”
The tricolor palette in this book works fine: black and white with a green wash. The pen drawings capture the sprawled-leg teenager-y postures, the trying-so-hard-to-be-cooler-than-thou clothing choices and the deliciously descriptive backgrounds absolutely fill in the picture. I thought Clowes was brave to take on the challenge of depicting the mind of a teenaged girl, but he caught that moment in the lifecycle of a female of the species perfectly.
This is another example, if we needed one, that the writing—including what isn’t said—is as important as the drawing in great graphic novels. So many things have to come together to make a satisfying and lasting work. I admire the heck out of artists working in this medium and encourage anyone who hasn’t picked up a graphic novel lately to try one. It’s hard to read just one....more
I thought I had read some other things by Charlie Huston, but now I don’t think I have. Huston’s American crime novels have a noir quality that is unlI thought I had read some other things by Charlie Huston, but now I don’t think I have. Huston’s American crime novels have a noir quality that is unlike anything I have seen before. To say his writing is clipped does not really encompass the extent of its abbreviation. It is thought fragments. One of his main characters, Jae, tries to make connections or linkages between ideas and information coming from widely disparate sources. Trying to understand his characters’ conversations is a little like that, too.
Skinner is current. It mentions the Tsarnaev brothers, for goodness’ sake. And it has lots of very alienated folks—unusual folks that are outside the mainstream. For that reason, it feels futuristic. These folks apply a great deal of cerebral muscle to take the technology we use every day to the next level.
However, meeting so many unusual people in one book made me feel a little alienated. I felt as though I were reading about comic book characters, which is another of Huston’s fields.
But let’s go to the heart of the mystery: I loved it. I loved the concept, the endgame, the central core of the story. It plays out beautifully, and mocks the gatekeepers of “security” in this age of terrorism. It has us rooting for the disenfranchised among us, and tells us to trust our overseers less and trust our own judgment more.
Part of the story features the slums of Mumbai, India and part is played out throughout Europe and in the cyberspace occupied by American security companies contracted to defend the United States. I can’t help thinking a very good companion book is a very serious and important book of sociology produced by Katherine Boo, called Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. In that book Boo shows us the [almost] limitless survival capacity of slum dwellers who have nothing to lose and everything to gain by innovating to live. Skinner carries the same theme.
In the end, I felt this was a very masculine voice talking to other masculine minds in a sort of video game mentality and graphic novel sort of jargon. His female character was aberrant, as were many of his male characters. They had a quality of unreality. For the reason that I could actually see in my mind’s eye the graphic depiction of his scenes, I found it interesting. It seemed less like literature than amusement, but that’s probably what he was aiming for. ...more
This gorgeous, sumptuous collection of graphic episodes in the life of John Blacksad, Cat Cop, is involving and adult. This is graphic art at a pinnacThis gorgeous, sumptuous collection of graphic episodes in the life of John Blacksad, Cat Cop, is involving and adult. This is graphic art at a pinnacle of sorts, where the characters are speaking animals who demonstrate both their animal and human natures. The text and the art is loaded with references to familiar cultural touchstones so the meanings are many-layered, often amusing, always fascinating.
I am curious that the authors were both born and living in Europe, and yet the stories are American-based. Perhaps the medium, born (?) and developed in the United States, carries so many references in its form that the authors wanted to keep that authentic feel. This is noir, and Canales and Guarnido excel in depicting the gritty streets.
The stories are good—always some difficult resolution to a thorny ethical issue--but the drawings are spectacular. I particularly remember a depiction of a street in the shadow of leafy trees, the clear or reflective glass of eyeglasses or skyscrapers, and two people talking in an aquarium--the angle being from inside the tank. But every pane is a miracle of sophisticated artistry that one can marvel over again and again. This is not child’s fare, but for a discriminating adult. ...more
In an interview Craig Thompson told his audience that artists must become vulnerable if their work is to mean anything. This dark and agonized work haIn an interview Craig Thompson told his audience that artists must become vulnerable if their work is to mean anything. This dark and agonized work has a great deal of nakedness in it, both literally and figuratively, and a lot of staring directly at human experience and trying to make sense of it. It also looks with a colder, more dispassionate and assessing eye at the overlap in the religious teachings of Christianity and Islam.
This is Thompson’s fourth published work, and one glance inside gives some idea why it took six years to complete. The graphic work is fantastically detailed and patterned, which over more than six hundred pages becomes claustrophobic and oppressive with patterns repeated again and again in different combinations. This is partly due to the size of the pattern, which seems to become more and more compressed as the story progresses, and the more-black-than-white palette.
The patterns are beautiful, and may represent mathematical principles that sustain the progress upon which the world is built, but by the end I got the distinct impression Thompson was asking us to question even that progress: is it good? Who is it good for and how can it be modified to suit a different world with better outcomes? One is not accustomed to such weighty questions in the work of graphic artists.
Thompson is unique in many ways, but certainly the source of his questioning may come from his fundamentalist Christian upbringing in rural Wisconsin, an upbringing he explores in his second graphic novel and the first large-scale project of his career, Blankets. Thompson freely admits he still believes in God, but he is less sure now how best to worship him.
That his father was a plumber Thompson credits with the understanding that water is precious. This book is plumbed through with references to the primacy and importance of water in our world, our lives. This aspect of the book was another piece that elevated the story-telling to something essential.
Some discussion among reviewers condemns the sex, violence, and numerous representations of the naked human form depicted in this work as gratuitous. I will argue that is not the case. There is no question that the storyteller in this case is frightened by and ashamed of his powerful sexual feelings, but his arousal is well within the bounds of normal male sexuality and should, in fact, educate readers about the conflicted emotional trauma that can accompany the physical manifestations of desire.
In the years Thompson worked on this book, he learned to appreciate and to write some Arabic script, but never learned to speak. His translators and friends in the endeavor to understand Islam—its culture, science, and art—reviewed the story he created to check for realism and racism. In the end, any understanding readers take away about the religion or culture of the region belong to Thompson alone, but I suspect he feels confident in his depiction.
Simply sketched, the story is as follows: a light-skinned girl and a dark-skinned boy find themselves orphaned in the desert. They make a life and grow up together for a period of years before they are violently separated. They spend a long period of time hoping to find one another again and then one day, they do. The story has an impetus and emotion even without the later personality-defining moments of coercion and despair depicted with the same pitiless camera-eye that captured their earlier life.
If I say that there are many complications and observations along the way, it will give you scant warning for the deluge that is to come. This work is huge, covering enormous ground, picking up and putting down again many topics worthy of examination and discussion. It is overwhelming, as it undoubtedly was to write. I have never determined how an editor deals with slimming the opus of an auteur. The only thing I can think of is that cut pages or threads could be sold separately once the work has been published to acclaim.
Thompson’s willingness to look closely at who we are evinces in me admiration and gratitude, not censure. I look eagerly forward to what he decides to do next, whether it be drawing, writing, or something else of his choice. He is extraordinary in every way....more
Loading...
