Books
‘I DON’T BELIEVE IN POLEMICS AT ALL’
www.list.co.uk/books Hitlist THE BEST BOOKS, COMICS & EVENTS*
✽✽ Nora Chassler The Manhattanite now based in Dundee with poet Don Paterson delivers a debut novel entitled Miss Thing, featuring two lost souls and a host of intriguing supporting players. See review, page 42. Two Ravens. ✽✽ Joe Sacco See preview, left. Jonathan Cape ✽✽ Poe Ballantine In 501 Minutes to Christ, the Colorado-born writer furtherly evokes the spirit of Kerouac and Bukowski with more tales of drifting across the US. See review, page 42. Old Street Publishing.
Events
Events are listed by date, then city. Submit listings at least ten days before publication to suzanne.black@list.co.uk. Listings are compiled by Suzanne Black.
Thursday 17 Edinburgh FREE A Blackwell Christmas Blackwell, 53—59 South Bridge, 622 8206. 5.45pm. Music, poetry, storytelling, mulled wine and mince pies at this festive event for book-lovers.
Saturday 19
Edinburgh Whiskypedia Jenners, 48 Princes Street, 556 6066. 2–3pm. £tbc. Charles MacLean signs copies of his light-hearted history of malt whisky distilleries in Scotland with a few drams along the way. Book in advance.
Wednesday 30 Glasgow FREE Don’t Eat the Mic Tchai Ovna, 42 Otago Lane, 357 4524. 8pm. An evening of poetry performance in association with ToadinMud.co.uk
Wednesday 6 Edinburgh FREE Poetry Workshop: Forms Fountainbridge Library, Dundee Street, 557 2876. 6.30pm. A creative workshop looking at poetic form.
Thursday 7 Glasgow FREE Poetry Discussion Group Mitchell Library, 201 North Street, 287 2999. 6pm. Lively and informal discussions of poetry on the first Thursday of every month.
17 Dec 2009–7 Jan 2010 THE LIST 41
Gaza stripped
Six years in the making, graphic novelist and journalist Joe Sacco’s latest book is arguably his masterpiece. Paul Dale talks to him about subjectivity
‘George Orwell, now there’s a person who could write good journalism but you can’t say he was objective. He went to Spain to fight not to write a book; the book he wrote was very honest about what happened.’ Joe Sacco is no fan of objective reportage. The Maltese-born comics writer and journalist’s political and historically riven books are testament to that, whether they focus on the Middle East or the killing fields of Bosnia.
He has now returned to the subject matter of his first book Palestine (written about his experiences on the West Bank in the early 90s) to centre in on the secret histories which revolve around the establishment of the Israeli state. The genesis of Footnotes in Gaza was born out of the author’s exasperation.
‘In 2001, I went to Gaza with a journalist called Chris Hedges on an assignment from Harper’s magazine. He went as a writer with me as the illustrator. We were going to focus on one town, the town of Khan Younis. Before we went I seemed to recall something I had read about Khan Younis, about an incident which happened in the 1950s where a lot of people were killed. When we got there, Chris was asking around about that massacre and people were telling us some of the stories. But when the article was printed, that part of the story, the historical part, was cut from the article. Well that just sort of bothered me; I’m one of those people who think history is pretty damn important for providing context for what is happening.’
Sacco later ended up returning to Gaza and in
researching the nightmare that unfolded in Khan Younis in 1956, he found out about an equally horrific if more complicated incident that happened ten days later in the town of Rafah. It is these two events that form the largest parts of Sacco’s new book. Through a painstaking process of interviewing and journal writing (and a complex system of cross referencing between the two) Sacco has created a work that, like his previous books, jettisons objectivity for something far more empathetic and subjective.
Yet he refuses to see himself as a polemicist: ‘I don’t believe in polemics at all. I do believe in having an opinion but I want it to be an informed opinion. If I find something that doesn’t gel with my belief, then I’m definitely going to report it. Honesty and objectivity to me are two different things.’ Having now put Footnotes in Gaza out in the world Sacco refuses to dwell (or ‘wallow’, as he puts it) on its effect as either a testimonial or as reportage. He has already moved on from the Middle East and is working on a project with Hedges about Camden, New Jersey – ‘one of the poorest and most crime- ridden towns in America’ – and has returned to his Maltese roots for a project for the Virginia Quarterly Review about African migrants trying to make their way to Europe. ‘It’s good to be able to return and talk about the problems with your own place.’ He sighs, subjectively.
Footnotes in Gaza is out now published by Jonathan Cape.