xadrian
08-17-2004, 09:47 PM
When I was a kid, my parents would buy these $1 Peanuts books in which a year or so worth of newspaper strips were assembled. I never thought any one of those books really had a story, but I’d always felt that they had something to say and I was just too young to understand it.
When I started reading Persepolis I was taken back to those days of simple art on newsprint, of humor that was only funny to me as a punch line and a social commentary that was deeper than the language and art used to portray it. Only this time around I was old enough to get it.
Not only was I old enough, I was hungry for worldly tales that didn’t involve another super team wrongly employed by a corrupt US government or a sinister plot so vast only a handful of mysterious figures could ever hope to thwart it. There’s something cathartic about reading stories like Persepolis. It’s not regression. It’s comfort food. I still crave excitement and jaw breaking punches splashed with a dose of fart humor but a part of me really looks forward to a yarn spun with a different thread from a different place.
The main point you must keep fresh in your brain while it absorbs the simple art and seemingly clumsy dialogue is that this is a memoir. It has narrative license to be sure, but it’s as factual as The Diaries of Anne Frank and as poignant. We, regardless of the wars we’ve had in the Middle East, know very little about the people that live in the cradle of civilization. We don’t know about how their families interact, what the class structure is like or what they do for fun.
Marjane is her own main character. The young Marjane narrates, breaks the forth wall, illustrates her visions and fears and hopes. Her rebellious nature is constantly suffering set backs from the political regime and her parents own autocracy, but her will keeps the story going, it ties the vignettes together and gives you a deeper look into the lives of average, forgive the phrase, Middle American Iranians. They play cards and have parties while living in fear of being turned over to the regime police. They talk of torture, imprisonment and protests over wine and coffee. They take friends and family into their homes after scud missiles have obliterated them, only to immediately go shopping in the next panel.
It’s a balance that can only come from an autobiography. Her accounts are no doubt colored by time and her loathing for childhood misunderstandings of the world around her. But it’s also fascinating to hear talk of events that took place around the time I was a kid. Marjane would be about 10 years my senior and reading her accounts brings back reptile brain memories of Reagan and Carter and hostages and the mysterious Middle East. To hear that she bought black market jean jackets and Michael Jackson tapes resonates and draws you in. Hearing about torture and neighbors found in a blast crater keeps you in.
It’s a simple book. The art is simple, the story is simple, the concept is simple. If you have any interest in history it will be less simple to you.
__________________________________________________ __
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood.
by Marjane Satrapi
graphic novel
Pantheon Books a division of Random House, Inc NY ©2003
$11.95 paperback
-Ben Rollman
When I started reading Persepolis I was taken back to those days of simple art on newsprint, of humor that was only funny to me as a punch line and a social commentary that was deeper than the language and art used to portray it. Only this time around I was old enough to get it.
Not only was I old enough, I was hungry for worldly tales that didn’t involve another super team wrongly employed by a corrupt US government or a sinister plot so vast only a handful of mysterious figures could ever hope to thwart it. There’s something cathartic about reading stories like Persepolis. It’s not regression. It’s comfort food. I still crave excitement and jaw breaking punches splashed with a dose of fart humor but a part of me really looks forward to a yarn spun with a different thread from a different place.
The main point you must keep fresh in your brain while it absorbs the simple art and seemingly clumsy dialogue is that this is a memoir. It has narrative license to be sure, but it’s as factual as The Diaries of Anne Frank and as poignant. We, regardless of the wars we’ve had in the Middle East, know very little about the people that live in the cradle of civilization. We don’t know about how their families interact, what the class structure is like or what they do for fun.
Marjane is her own main character. The young Marjane narrates, breaks the forth wall, illustrates her visions and fears and hopes. Her rebellious nature is constantly suffering set backs from the political regime and her parents own autocracy, but her will keeps the story going, it ties the vignettes together and gives you a deeper look into the lives of average, forgive the phrase, Middle American Iranians. They play cards and have parties while living in fear of being turned over to the regime police. They talk of torture, imprisonment and protests over wine and coffee. They take friends and family into their homes after scud missiles have obliterated them, only to immediately go shopping in the next panel.
It’s a balance that can only come from an autobiography. Her accounts are no doubt colored by time and her loathing for childhood misunderstandings of the world around her. But it’s also fascinating to hear talk of events that took place around the time I was a kid. Marjane would be about 10 years my senior and reading her accounts brings back reptile brain memories of Reagan and Carter and hostages and the mysterious Middle East. To hear that she bought black market jean jackets and Michael Jackson tapes resonates and draws you in. Hearing about torture and neighbors found in a blast crater keeps you in.
It’s a simple book. The art is simple, the story is simple, the concept is simple. If you have any interest in history it will be less simple to you.
__________________________________________________ __
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood.
by Marjane Satrapi
graphic novel
Pantheon Books a division of Random House, Inc NY ©2003
$11.95 paperback
-Ben Rollman