Burma Chronicles, by Guy Delisle

There was a time not so long ago that I thought I didn't really like graphic novels. I can no longer remember exactly what I thought graphic novels were--a roommate I'd lived with for awhile was big on Love and Rockets and a very cursory glance made me think it was too cool or countercultural or something for me. I felt that I'd outgrown whatever interest I'd ever had in superheroes long before, ditto comics based on cartoon characters like Casper the Friendly Ghost, or Scrooge McDuck. I'd never really been crazy about Japanese cartooning style--frankly, the eyes kind of freak me out. In short, nothing really spoke to me.

Then, a couple of things happened. First, we had a really creative guy on staff who was very into them, and then I came across Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. McCloud's impassioned advocacy for the form and it's possibilities, not to mention the fact that he wrote the form in comic book form himself, won me over. I discovered Adrian Tomine's Sleepwalk and Other Stories, Dan Clowes' David Boring, Posy Simmonds Gemma Bovery,  and R. Kikuo Johnson's Night Fisher. Turns out that I really like graphic novels. I forget about them sometimes, but when I come back to them, I am almost always gratified. Such is the case with Burma Chronicles.

I had heard of Delisle before, but it took Adrian McKinty's blog post on the book a couple of months ago to get me interested. I seem to have forgotten about it until he mentioned it again elsewhere. We had a couple of copies around at the bookstore, and I picked one up and read it while hanging out at the information desk. It was a nice way to do it, actually, as I didn't race through it, a problem sometimes with graphic novels, but read it over the course of a couple of days.

Delisle has written several travel style graphic novels by now. This is because he is married to a French, or at least French speaking woman who works for the heroic organization Doctors Without Borders (or in their case, Médecins Sans Frontières). His episodic story chronicles the year they and their young son Louis spent in Burma/Myanmar. As is the case with North Korea, sometimes we forget that there are real people just trying to live a life under a repressive regime. Delisle doesn't have a huge political  ax to grind--he's just an observer. But his observations often gain an extra charge from his understated style. He portrays himself as just a guy, who often complains and often wonders why a certain thing must be so.

I like reading the printed word--a lot. But the graphic novel is a very compelling and absorbing form if you allow yourself to surrender to it. There is something about the marriage of image and word that takes you very far into a story, or at least it does me. I don't think that if Delisle had just decided to write a kind of diary of his time, it would have worked as well. He would have had to fill it out more, introduce some other elements. But as it stands the book is just right. Thanks to his illustrations, we can read between the lines.

Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi

I've had this on my bookshelf forever, having read and enjoyed Satrapi's Persepolis books ages ago, but for some reason, didn't get around to this one. However, Iran is in the news once again and after reading Adrian McKinty's blog posts here and here, which are a form of literary solidarity with the protesters' position, I noticed a copy of Embroideries in the store and had a sudden impulse to read it.

Let me start out by saying that I love graphic novels. I am so happy to have been reintroduced to the form again after many, many years, as I was never a comic book collector. And lord knows, I've never been hip enough to have caught on to all the great things people were doing with comics until, what, maybe ten years ago?, when everyone else had the same blinding insight.

I know a lot of people who get frustrated with the form--for them, it's over too quickly. But I really just love the marriage of word and image. I think it's one of the great sins of modern publishing that the divorce of these two has been so complete in all 'serious' modern fiction. Illustration is suspect. But for godssake, why? The most we can hope for these days is a decent cover.

I think one of the reasons I was slow to check out this particular Satrapi was that, in some half-conscious way, I thought of it as 'slight'. After the political work of Persepolis, I suppose I thought she was coasting when writing and illustrating this shorter tale of a group of women coming together to 'ventilate their hearts'--ie, gossip and tell tales. And of course, in this I betray my own subtle indoctrination into the idea of the importance of men's business, and the triviality of women's business.

As we read about what to all intents and purposes is an Iranian women's consciousness raising session, it's true that it's possible to feel that the subject matter is a little bit dated. Haven't we all been through this already? Well, yes and no. Perhaps women's predicaments are universal, but the way they are articulated are particular and local. The position of educated Iranian women must be one of the most delicate and excruciating of all. And let me just say that you will never view the word 'embroidery' in exactly the same way again.

Satrapi is sometimes criticized for the apparent artlessness of her images. There is a lot that is very, very simple in her drawing. But her use of the possibilities of the form are far from naive. She uses the space quite dramatically and effectively.

Check it out.