The Gaza Flotilla Raid in May that left nine dead and dozens wounded has already faded into the background of oil-soaked news. While in Seattle earlier this month, the Rabbit witnessed attempts at keeping the issue alive: dueling protests on the University of Washington campus in which both bullhorned sides invited the other into the space between them for “real” discussion (neither side budged while we watched), and a large, pro-Palestinian march the following day through downtown. Similar actions have been  reported around the country and the world. The opposing UW protests emerged in our mind as an symbol of how little chance there is of worthwhile resolution to the West Bank and Gaza issue. No doubt,  by the time summer is over, the flotilla incident will be just another footnote in a long, cruel and bloody struggle.

The death toll in the flotilla incident is small compared to that alleged in the two incidents illustrated in Joe Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza. The book is a long account of Sacco’s investigation of two actions in Gaza that occurred back in 1956, one in the town of Khan Younis that left 275 Palestinians dead, another in Rafah that left 111 dead. While the overall effect of Sacco’s narrative is one of shock, disgust and shame it also serves as a reminder of the on-going nature of repression and killing that has marked the Palestinian-Israeli struggle for some 60 years.

Sacco, author-illustrator of Palestine and Safe Area Grorazde is the premier graphic journalist, the creator of detailed, researched, investigative comics that are no laughing matter. He approaches his subject in classic Gonzo style, injecting his search for stories into a larger narrative. This injection strengthens his reporting with its wide-angled, contemporary background to, in this case, events over 50 years old. That he concentrated on personal accounts, often to make up for a lack of official documentation, makes his work extremely engaging. Perspective–no pun intended– is everything in his work.

Sacco traveled to Gaza in 2001 with reporter Chris Hedges for Harper’s magazine and soon returned to collect accounts of the massacres that occurred during the ‘56 Suez conflict. As readers of Palestine know, his sympathies are with the Palestinian people and this will disqualify him as a legitimate source for many readers. Yet anyone reading his book and examining the illustrations cannot help but conclude that the Palestinians suffer overwhelming poverty, repression and the effects of  what amounts to war. His infrequent sympathies for Israelis thrust into terrible situations as well as infrequent but obvious disapproval of some Palestinian actions offer precious little balance to a story that has little of it to offer.

In his introduction, Sacco acknowledges  the “scant” official documentation of the events he investigates as well as the questionable reliability of oral testimony. What documentation he was able to discover by sending researchers into the Israel State Archives and the archives of the Israel Defense Forces is listed (and quoted) in the Appendix. He issues the hope that his work will cause some Israeli veterans to come forward with accounts of their own.

Sacco also cautions readers not to see his illustrations as fact. Despite using historical photos when drawing his landscapes, he says that drawing comes with “a measure of refraction” and should be seen as such. (It’s surprising how little things have changed from his depictions of 1956 to the  current day drawings.)

Sacco makes clear the complications of life in Gaza; the waste, the shortages, the crowds, the filth.  He claims that the half of Gaza’s workforce which once worked in Israel have found themselves replaced by Thai, Romanian and Chinese workers.  Invited by a United Nations Relief Worker Agency employee to visit a home in Khan Younis, Sacco sweats and becomes claustrophobic at the tight conditions in which 11 people live.. He considers what little work is avaialble hunting scrap or the rare teaching position funded by UNRWA. He finds that the Palestinian Authority hires police whose only duty seems to be to collect salaries. The most well-off man he meets works for an American aid agency as a facilitator of “democratization.”  “Basically, it’s bullshit,” says the man.

These modern-day accounts of Sacco’s investigation and story gathering make the book far more relevant than just an account of the massacres. When those accounts do come, they are filled with horror, grief and inexplicable cruelty. Some of Sacco’s most extreme panel’s are over-sized Hieronymus Bosh-like nightmares depicting killing, detention and states of cruel pandemonium. Cross-hatched scenes of darkness or those with the story-teller super-imposed on his own story are done to chilling effect.

Unlike Palestine, the art work doesn’t evolve but maintains a direct, composed style. The strongest work in Palestine is its portraits. Here, the portraits are all of a kind, similar in mood and expression. Footnotes’ best illustrations comes in the narrative flow. Sacco is a master at finding the right action and composition to move his story forward and even the scatter of spent shell casings on a blank background has an impact on his story.

Comic touches are few. A restaurant menu is rolled open to reveal “Bombings! Assassinations! Incursions!” Sacco makes laughs at his own expense and his is the only overly characterized face: large lips, receding hairline, eyes constantly whited out behind  large, round spectacles. He also makes fun of the press corp and their proclivity to drink and party even as duty calls in sections that recall the indifferent press in the movies The Year of Living Dangerously and Under Fire.

That party scene  serves to illustrate his frustrations — and hopes — beyond the murderous bickering. Among the international crowd of reporters and N.G.O.s are “hepcat Arabs from Ramallah and right-on Jews from Tel Aviv sharing salads and grooving to the same post-bop jazz. Are the dark-haired cuties who jump up when the dance beat kicks in Palestinian or Israeli?…Ahhh, even in the belly of the world’s most intractable conflict there’s a glimmer of hope in which to exalt!”

At end, Sacco feels shame for what he’s lost while gathering his accounts, “for losing something along the way as I collected my evidence, disentangled it, dissected it, indexed it, and logged it onto my chart.” This confession comes as something of a surprise as he has shown nothing but compassion for those who experienced the killings. In a series of almost four wordless pages he runs a final account through his mind, from a perspective inside the punished crowd, as if in attempt to develop an empathy he didn’t have. If he didn’t succeed with himself — and what preceeds it suggests that he did — Sacco certainly succeeds with the reader.–Cabbage Rabbit

Imagine the quandary of Gregoire Bouillier. Conceived in one of several three-way encounters between his father, his mother and his mother’s lover, he can never be sure who he really is. His mother tells him it doesn’t matter, that “when two men ejaculate, in a woman’s vagina, instead of competing, their sperm cells fertilize the egg and give birth to a mutant.” And what a wonderful mutant he is. Bouillier, French author of the brilliant little book The Mystery Guest, is not only an insightful memoirist but a disarmingly honest one. He weaves together his anxious childhood with an unpredictable mother and his later, always ill-fated relationships with women. Despite bullies, adolescent frustrations and an encounter with a sexually ambiguous older brother, Bouillier trumpets a happy childhood and it’s almost true. He’s not without proclivities. He likes to pour his mother’s nail polish on toy soldiers and his hands and set them all on fire. He obsesses about a school mate’s prized marble. The simple lessons here (“you have to use your hands to help in penetration”) come at a cost and Boullier buys them in bulk. The larger lessons come from repetition as he draws the threads of his youth and knots them to his later romantic experiences. He finds laughs—big ones– in his existential puzzle. “Life impossibly mischievous?” he writes. “You think you’re living until what you’re really living dies, revives…” Happiness, he seems to say, comes from endlessly starting over and never getting over what you started before. Playfully written (translated from the French by Bruce Benderson) and full of ironic introspection, Bouillier’s book excuses us all from the self-obsession that haunts our day-to-day life.–Cabbage Rabbit

We’ve written before about comics as a vehicle for memoir. Now comes Alison Bechdel to show how comics can be applied to memoir criticism. Bechdel’s illustrated review of Jane Vandenburgh’s A Pocket History of Sex In the Twentieth Century: A Memoir in the March 29 New York Times Book Review contains all the components of thoughtful criticism: a decent summary of the book, our relationship to its subject matter, where it suceeds and where it fails. To be sure, Bechdel’s own Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic bares certain resemblances to Vandenburgh’s story, specifically a closeted father. And Bechdel’s skills at telling her own story, applied to her examination of Vandenburgh’s, make her review so rewarding. The pacing and architecture of her panels, the innocence and madenss of her character depictions and her ability to seek out the most appropriate image are all on display here. Who knows? Bechdel may have just launched a new form of illustrated criticism. If so, let’s hope that all its practitioners are as gifted at it as she.–Cabbage Rabbit

UPDATE, March 30: We’ve heard back from Alison Bechdel after alerting her to our post (something akin to getting a smile from Miles Davis after applauding a solo) and she points out that the great Milt Gross did some “wordless” book reviews which can be seen at “The Fabuleous Fifties” blogspot. They were done for the late ’30s magazine (previously unknown to me)  Ken and included illustrated accounts of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. Certainly worth the work to view.–CR

“Long distance running suits my personality,“ writes Haruki Murkami in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Murakami’s memoir isn’t a book exclusively for runners, nor does it try to make running a grand metaphor for life or writing, though there’s some of that (Chapter Four: “Most of What I Know About Writing Fiction I Learned By Running Every Day”). Generally, it’s a training journal, a compendium of accomplishment and failure, descriptions of the sights and sounds on Boston’s Charles River, from Athens to Marathon and other locations where the author of Kafka On the Shore has picked them up and put them down. The book speaks of an irresistible relationship with discipline, an obsession with body image and the boredom of going on and on. Novelists: draw your own conclusions.

What seems most important here is the mental process, what thoughts the solitude of running conjures. “What exactly do I think about when I’m running?, “ he writes. The answer? “I haven’t a clue.” Actually, he does have a clue. It’s just that what goes through his mind is mundane, not the kind of lofty thoughts we’d expect of such a remarkable writer. “On cold days, I guess I think a little about how cold it is. And about the heat on hot days.” Sadness when he’s sad, happiness when he’s…well, you get the idea. “…hardly ever I get an idea to use in a novel. But really, as I run, I don’t think much of anything worth mentioning.”

Really, he tells us, he runs to be empty headed, to gain a sort of Zen state, a void. With solitude, he develops a level of comfort. He accepts random thoughts as they come. But it’s that solitude thing that’s important to writing.

This matter-of-fact tone makes the book, like much of Murakami’s work, so readable. It’s all no big deal. Murakami’s a master of stating the obvious, often employing anecdotes to set up the nose on his face. The anecdotes end or are introduced with direct statements to convey their meaning.  Just like that.

This isn’t one of those feel-good Chariots of Fire running tracts. Competition does play a role, both against other runners and himself. But there are more tangible goals. Ultimately, it’s a book of declining performance and failing knees, disappointment despite hard work and discipline. If you keep going in the face of this, he seems to say, you win without winning. Novelists–again–draw your own conclusions.–Cabbage Rabbit