Palestine by Joe Sacco

[sam]

I just finished reading Palestine by Joe Sacco. Using the comic form the author investigates just what it is like to be a Palestinian living in Palestine. His reporting was first serilized in comic books in 1993, and it is now collected together in one trade paperback.

I found that the graphic or sequential art form worked very well to communicate the abject horror of living under those conditions. Sacco walks a very fine line here in delivering such difficult and unwanted material. He writes himself into his narrative and at times he can come accross as a bit narcississitc. But he has taken on a tough job very few others have attempted and he pulls it off. He, of course, was criticized for not giving enough of the Jewish side of the equation, to which he basically replied that the Jewish side was already well represented.

The book certainly helped me to empathize with the Palestinians. His investigation was completed back in '93, and I can't imagine anyone still living in those conditions - only much worse - 14 years later.

In an interview with January magazine he comments about his revisitng the area:

And how did the situation there compare to the last time you were there?

It was just a lot harder, a lot more violent. You know, life's pretty bad, pretty rough in certain parts. It's very different in different parts of the Occupied Territories. Where I was was a refugee camp called Rafah, which is on the southern border of Gaza, with Egypt. And there were a lot of house demolitions going on there, and there are just some sort of spooky parts of the town because they're basically under fire, or in zones where there's a lot of bullets flying around at different times, so it was just a different sort of feeling from where I was before, where I could just sort of travel, get in a taxi and go anywhere. Getting down to Rafah was hard. You know, there are checkpoints, and you can get trapped there. There's only one road out, basically. And if it's closed for three days or four days, you're stuck there. In the first intifada I was kind of going from one place to another, sort of doing a little tour. In this case I just wanted to be in one place, much like the Gorazde book, I feel it was a better way of doing it, get to know some people well.

Edward Said wrote in the introduction, "With the exception of one or two novelists and poets, no one has ever rendered this terrible state of affairs better than Joe Sacco."

If you want an idea of what life is like for the Palestinians I can't recommend the book enough. Better than a documentary film.

From the same interview quoted above:

So you feel like the book is just sort of a byproduct, incidentally, of your curiosity?

Not incidental, but I want to produce something, and I plan to do something. The major factor is that I'm just interested, I want to see. And then -- yeah -- I want to do something. What can I do? I'm a cartoonist. So I'll just do that. I'm not the kind who goes to demonstrations or anything like that. I'm just doing my bit, my very limited bit.

 

[Beau]

I really enjoyed reading Palestine. Throughout the book he took me through many separate emotions, from humor to outright disgrace at the treatment of the Shin Bet to the occupied people, all the way to feeling like I want to go to Palestine myself and exact revenge on those fascists.

He puts himself as just a bystander in most of it, letting the people he is "interviewing" do most of the talking which helps because those are the people who can best paint a picture of what life is like. Like Sam said, he does come across as being selfish at times, commenting that he "hopes there is a shooting" or essentially a confrontation, because it helps his work. But those instances are very few and far between.

The drawings are very cool, original works which really do well to help you feel as though you are with Joe in his travels. Pretty much the whole time I'm thinking, if this is what it was like in the early 90's, before the Second Intifada, I can't imagine what the conditions are like right now. Overall, it's a great introduction to not only a unique perspective on life in the Palestinian refugee camps but also to using a comic form of journalism, which in this case was highly successful.

 

[sam]

he does come across as being selfish at times, commenting that he "hopes there is a shooting" or essentially a confrontation, because it helps his work. But those instances are very few and far between.

Even when he does use that device to tell the story, it does come across as him attempting to deal with the fact that he has gone there to witness horror and that he gets to leave. The Palestinians have no hope of leaving or anything getting better.

There is a one page joke that the Palestinians tell him several times about CIA, KGB and Shin Bet agents taking a walk in the woods that is worth the price of admission alone. I won't spoil it here.

 

[Joe]

I want one! Where do I get it? On amazon? Hang on, lemme check...... cool!

Joe

 

[Beau]

Here's a cool preview from Amazon: http://www.amazon.ca/gp/reader/156097432X/ref=sib_dp_pt/702-0715694-7938467#reader-page