In Which Trai Reviews 'The Complete Persepolis'

The Book: The Complete Persepolis

The Author and Artist: Marjane Satrapi

How I Found It: I saw the film in theatres upon its release, but didn't get to read the graphic novel until it was assigned for my course.

The Review: I'm sure I'm not the only one to have seen a movie long ago, not having read the book first, only to read the book years later, realize it's amazing, and then find the movie doesn't quite measure up to it. I had that experience with this book and its movie. I vividly remembered loving the movie and being outraged that it didn't win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature that year, even when I knew that as an animated film, Ratatouille far outclassed it. I loved the book just as much as I remembered loving the film, fortunately, and was more than pleased to talk about it in class.

Persepolis is the story of Marjane Satrapi's girlhood and then her teenage years, all taking place during the tumultuous years of the Islamic revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. Her parents are somewhat more modern than their countrymen, and Marjane grows up surrounded by rock music, forbidden parties, and a certain knowledge about what's really going on in the country, contrary to the filtered version given to her by teachers and even the television.

Marjane grows up among the horrors of war; before she is even fourteen, she will see her friend's dead body following an explosion, learn some painful truths about class differences, and eventually have to leave Iran to live in Austria, when her parents decide she could have a better and brighter life ahead of her. In Austria, Marjane is faced with unraveling the complexities of her identity: in Austria, she is too Iranian; in Iran, she is too Western. Not only that, but she must begin to make sense of boys, politics, and her emerging artistic sense.

There are just certain things, I've realized now, that can only be conveyed by a graphic novel, by words and images combined. Silent panels, as I will mention in a forthcoming review of another graphic novel, have been the thing that most captivated me thus far in my coursework. There's a few here that really strike me: Marjane's horror upon seeing her friend's body in the rubble, or the silent chaos of a party interrupted by the guardians of the revolution. There's nothing that can match a series of wordless panels, frozen images of terror or nothingness, in emotional power or intellectual stimulation. Satrapi uses the graphic novel format to great effect.

It's one thing to have a recurring motif in a novel; it's another to have a visual motif in a graphic novel, so that the reader can see the repetition of certain images and how they change over time. The raised fist, the all-seeing eye, a farewell at an airport--all of these images are repeated more than once, and the meaning is different each time. That was another thing I found worked better in a graphic novel than straight prose. Even the color scheme was effective--the black and white color scheme meant, to me, not to get hung up on the details of what someone looked like, what that might mean for their nationality, and to instead look at the characters as people.

Technical considerations aside, Marjane's story was an emotional ride and an eye opener, one I'm not sorry to have read. Marjane's parents explain the truth behind the Shah's rule to her, but it also serves as an insight for Western readers, a look into what went on "behind the scenes," so to speak, the things that occurred in Iran that didn't make it to the Western news-watching public. This isn't always about the grand narrative of the revolution--it's about the lives of the individual people caught up in it. Marjane's parents, who risk their lives several times by protesting. Marjane's grandmother, full of wisdom and often helping the young Marjane on her path to self-discovery. Marjane's Uncle Anoosh, a former political prisoner Marjane becomes attached to. It's clear how much Marjane cares about these people, and how much we should care, and as a reader, I became emotionally invested fast. I cried several times as Marjane lost friends and family members, or came to some sort of revelation about herself or her country.

There are several incidents that will really stay with me--Marjane learning about class differences as she sees that poor young men are being sent to war (99-100), her grandmother's life advice (150), Marjane telling off some guardians (301), Marjane's mother's reaction to her impending marriage (317). Even if the story was painful at times, it was still an unflinching look at growing up, one that I could even relate to at times, despite not having gone through nearly as much as Marjane had. I'll certainly want to reread this in the future.

The movie was a good representation of the story, for sure, but so much was condensed or cut out entirely that it just didn't stack up in my mind. There's none of the graphic novel's insight into the ideology of the veil, and we barely see anything of Marjane evolving into an artist, which perhaps the most fascinating section, to me. Moments like the lineup in the second volume, where we see the hair and clothes each girl has under her veil, highlighting her individuality, are gone, and I felt that a good portion of the story's meaning went with it.

This graphic novel is an especially good choice for teenage girls as well as older women, and educational to boot. If someone is hesitant to read it, I'd say show them the movie first and see how they react--if they like it, be sure they read the graphic novel to get the full story. If there's a teenage girl in your life who might not appreciate graphic novels just yet (or a boy who's interested in history, or vice versa!), I'd say give them this one and see what happens.

In Which Trai Reviews 'The Complete Maus'

The Book: The Complete Maus

The Author/Artist: Art Spiegelman

How I Found It: This is the first of the new-to-me books assigned in my Graphic Literature course at college. Before then, it had been recommended to me by a friend or two.

The Review: This is one of the most difficult-to-classify books I have ever seen. We had a long discussion about it during one of my classes. I found this, along with Persepolis (one of the future texts), at a Borders closing sale, but not without agonizing over where to look. First, my mother and I checked the graphic novel section. No dice, although surely it should be there. I go to check nonfiction. No luck. History. Nada. Finally it dawns on me: memoir! And there they were. Look at the tags for this post, and you'll see my dilemma still. How many categories does this work fit in? A whole lot.

Maus: A Survivor's Tale, a two-volume comic (Volume I: My Father Bleeds History and Volume II: And Here My Troubles Began), is the story of Art Spiegelman's father and mother, Vladek and Anja, and how they survived the Holocaust. Vladek was in Auschwitz; Anja was in Birkenau. Often, their survival was a matter of luck. Though Vladek and Anja survived, their family was torn apart, and Vladek and Anja are forever changed. Vladek, to Art's dismay, becomes a cantankerous caricature of the Jewish miser; Anja commits suicide when Art is twenty.

It is Art's idea to write his father's story, to make it a graphic novel. Here is where the story differs from other tales of Holocaust survivors--not only is it a graphic novel, the central metaphor is to equate the people involved with animals. The French are frogs. The Americans are dogs. Germans, particularly the Nazis, are cats. And no matter where they are from, the Jews are mice--they are vermin, just as Hitler sees them.

Maus is the only graphic novel to ever receive a Pulitzer Prize--it was so rare an event that a special Pulitzer Prize had to be created. Undoubtedly, the work has a complex history. The work went through many forms (its earliest appeared in 1972) and there was a five-year gap between the first volume and the second (1986 to 1991). Vladek died in 1982, and so probably never saw the work as it came to be. The history behind the book is so complex that Spiegelman has just released a book about its creative process, MetaMaus. I went into this work with only a vague idea of the conceit behind it, and came out staggered by just how complex it was. This is so much more than a Holocaust story--not only is it a rumination on a man's complex relationship with his father, it is a commentary on the process of creating art and how taxing it is for the artist.

Vladek's story is framed by what went into the book's creation. We see Art coming home for the first time in years, wanting to ask his father about his story and Anja's, allegedly recorded in her diaries. The book is transcribed from Art's notes and, later, his tapes of Vladek talking--almost all of it is in Vladek's own words. It's so hard to describe the effect this has, when coupled with how Art chose to represent the story in drawings. For example, Vladek's story as he tells it to Art is in somewhat broken English, but whenever Vladek is shown in his younger days--when he would be speaking a language he knew fluently and did not have to learn later in life, like English--he is very eloquent, as he would be. It's something you barely notice until it's been pointed out to you, but when it is pointed out, it's something that makes you pause and really consider how much thought and time Art had to put into his representation.

One of the most interesting parts of the book, for me, was how hard Art struggled to put down his father's experiences. At one point, he even goes to his therapist with his agonies over getting every detail right (eventually, he settles on a few compromises when his father's account contradicts documented facts about the camps). A favorite exchange of mine is early in Volume II, when Art talks to his wife about his difficulties:

Art: There's so much I'll never be able to understand or visualize. I mean, reality is too complex for comics... so much has to be left out or distorted.
Francoise: Just keep it honest, honey.
Art: See what I mean? In real life you've never have let me talk this long without interrupting.

Spiegelman's art is done in stark black and white, and though it seems cartoonish and rudimentary (though not nearly as much as his early drafts did), he really did make some fascinating artistic choices. One panel shows Vladek and Anja at a crossroads, looking for a place to seek refuge--and they stand in the center of a road that forks outwards like a swastika, symbolizing that no matter what path they take, the Nazis will be waiting. Another shows Vladek and Anja trying desperately to disguise themselves so they won't be recognized as Jews--they were pig masks, trying to pass as Poles. Vladek has no problem, but Anja's physical appearance hews more closely to traditional Jewish features, and it's easier for her to be recognized. Spiegelman represents this by having her mouse tail sticking out of her coat. Often, the choices he made were clever and really interesting to think about; I certainly found myself poring over different panels.

Vladek himself is a complicated, flawed person. He is highly prejudiced, for one thing, though Art tries to point out to him that he is essentially harboring the same attitudes towards other races that the Nazis held against Jews. He is cheap enough that it infuriates his second wife--he even returns a half-used box of cornflakes to the local supermarket so that the food doesn't have to be wasted. What he chose to do with Anja's diaries, when it is revealed, is a shock. It is often easy to see why Art had such a difficult relationship with him, but despite that, Vladek's story of survival and of his love for Anja is truly amazing.

While I was fascinated by the book's insight into its own artistic process, and by the insight into Art's relationship with Vladek, I think that what ended up dampening my appreciation of the book just a bit was its central conceit. Having the characters pictured as animals, as brilliant an idea as it was, left me feeling perhaps a bit too distant from them, and I couldn't feel as much emotion as I should have. There were definitely some emotional moments still--the first time Vladek and Anja see a swastika on display, when Anja makes the conscious choice to go to the camps since Vladek will be there, when Vladek hears in Auschwitz that Anja is still alive: these moments had me crying. I just wish there could have been more emotion towards the end, for me.

Though I felt the book was not as emotional as it could have been, I still really appreciated the story it told, and it did move me. The way Spiegelman chose to tell his father's tale reminded me at first, in the best way, of my favorite song from my favorite musical, Cabaret. By portraying the Jews as mice, Spiegelman makes the reader confront not only how the Nazis saw the Jews, but how the Jews still see themselves. He strips the story of the Holocaust down to its most human elements and does so in a way I don't think I'll forget anytime soon. Recommended for someone with an interest in a seminal work of graphic literature or in Holocaust stories.

In Which Trai Reviews 'A Jane Austen Education'

The Book: A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter

The Author: William Deresiewicz

How I Found It: As ever, the book received several glowing reviews from Janeite bloggers whose opinions I trust.

The Review: Oftentimes, men aren't Austen fans. It's just hard for them to see what's so great about stories primarily about young girls finding their way in the world. Oh, there are exceptions. There are men like the ones that frequent the same Austen sites I do, and there are men like my stepdad, willing to sit patiently through every Austen adaptation I could find a few years back. But there are also men like my prom date, who forged valiantly through half of Pride and Prejudice on my recommendation before he confessed to me that it just wasn't for him.

William Deresiewicz was one of those men. He was twenty-six and being forced to read Emma for one of his graduate school classes, determined not to like it. He was sarcastic and sullen, a rebel who often spoke or acted without regarding the feelings of his friends. He was the youngest of three kids and infantilized by both parents, to the point that he knew almost nothing about living on his own. After Emma brought him to a painful revelation about how he treated others and how he should view the world, Jane Austen was the one who showed him the light and helped him grow up.

Emma - Everyday Matters: Deresiewicz starts his book with an examination of the book that made him love Austen. I'll admit that Emma is my least favorite of the six novels, mostly because I find Emma to be an insufferable snob, but it was enlightening to read about how Emma's snobbishness is exactly what made Deresiewicz realize how he was treating others. "Emma's life finally became real to her, and in reading about her life I felt mine finally becoming real to me. ... Reading Emma, being asked to take the lives of characters like Harriet Smith and Jane Fairfax as seriously as they did themselves... made me finally begin to take my own life seriously." (33) It was sad but somehow uplifting to read about Deresiewicz coming to the painful revelation that he wasn't connecting with others the way he'd thought. The good thing is, he realized he had to change and actually took the initiative to do so.

Pride and Prejudice - Growing Up: It's really an eye-opening experience to see Jane Austen through the eyes of a man. Now that I think about it, I read a book two summers ago (Two Guys Read Jane Austen) that tried to give a man's point of view on the subject, but it was written by two older men reading Jane, men who'd already done their growing up and figuring out who they wanted to be. Deresiewicz might be writing as an older man, but he's sharing the experience of his younger self, and it's truly fantastic to read about.

I had to laugh when he talks about being in love with Elizabeth Bennet, about wanting to wring Darcy's neck for hurting her and Jane. Men are just as susceptible to crushing on Austen's characters! That was nice to know. I could really relate to Deresiewicz's depiction of university life (reading while brushing your teeth, eating ramen, walking down the street--all of which I've done), and his examination of what Austen had to say about growing up really hit home with me. “… my father was wrong: you can’t learn from other people’s mistakes; you can only learn from your own. Austen was making her beloved Elizabeth miserable because she knew that that’s what growing up requires. For it is never enough to know that you have done wrong: you also have to feel it.” (60) I cheered for him as he made the decision to move to Brooklyn, away from his father's attempts to do everything for him.

Northanger Abbey - Learning to Learn: Here, Deresiewicz examines Austen as a teacher, helping readers to form their own opinions by expanding their horizons, not telling them what to think. His emphasis is on Mr. Tilney and his relationship with Catherine, and can I just say that I now have a newfound appreciation for Mr. Tilney? Northanger Abbey is so slight and sometimes silly that often it's just the one I think of when I think of being amused, but now I realize how profound it really is at times, and how Mr. Tilney is just awesome. (My friends at Austenblog realized that some time before I did, however.) "Now he was inciting her to speak, then pretending to misunderstand her, even at the risk of looking like a dunce, in order to force her to fight her way back to what she really meant--and thus, to figure out what she really thought in the first place." (90) Deresiewicz compares Tilney to his most-loved professor, imparting a sense of how effective teaching can be if a professor is doing more than just imposing their own ideas onto a student.

As a college student, wow, could I see what he was talking about. (And he is spot on; I had a good laugh at his bit about college students hunting for symbolism and foreshadowing and Christ figures, as that was exactly what I was taught in high school by How to Read Literature Like a Professor.) He also examines Austen as an aunt and mentor to her young nieces and nephews, and it was touching to see how active a role she took in helping them make decisions and become better writers. Again, I'm impressed at Deresiewicz's willingness to recognize his own flaws and make the effort to change. This was certainly a useful insight into the world of being a professor, and it makes me appreciate the efforts of all the wonderful professors I've had thus far.

Mansfield Park - Being Good: It's no secret that I am an unashamed fan of Mansfield Park. I love Fanny, I love Edmund, I love the whole entire story. I champion this book like nobody else. So it was nice to see Deresiewicz gradually coming to appreciate it and recognize the very things I find wrong with most pro-Crawford arguments I see: that the Crawfords are master manipulators, with very few genuine feelings about Fanny and Edmund. Indeed, it was the Crawfords who made Deresiewicz realize that people in his social circle were not people he should have wanted to spend time with.

Deresiewicz compares Fanny's life at Mansfield Park to his own experiences as the less-privileged friend among the rich Manhattan socialites he met during graduate school. He was the friend that was looked to for funny stories, to be a constant source of entertainment for people like the Crawfords, people with no inner lives, no ability to be entertained by intellectual pursuits, and above all, little ability to understand those without their privileges. "Mary was not just advertising her wealth, she was displaying an ostentatiously metropolitan insouciance in the way she handled it. People in London, she was saying, don't dirty their hands with the details. They snap their fingers, and the world jumps." (134)

With experience, Deresiewicz came to recognize how flawed the Crawfords truly were and how really listening to others, just as Edmund listened to young Fanny, is key. I didn't quite agree with all of his sentiments at the end of the segment (I don't think Austen meant us to dislike Fanny as he asserts, and can't quite see why he'd say that given the pains he takes to point out that Austen has much in common with Fanny), but I really appreciated his take on the novel and how it helped him recognize he was being used.

Persuasion - True Friends: This chapter and the next were more about Austen's side of things than Deresiewicz's, but the book was still worth reading for the insight in his statements and his perspective on the novels. I especially enjoyed this chapter because it gave me an opportunity to revisit Persuasion--the second of Austen's novels I read, and one whose adaptations I've only seen once or twice apiece, so one that's definitely fuzzy in my memory. Deresiewicz discusses the revelation that true friends are ones who are honest, ones who point out your mistakes even if that might hurt your feelings. He examines the relationships between Anne and Lady Russell, Anne and Mrs. Smith, and Anne and the naval officers, in particular.

I hadn't really considered, when I first read it, that by having Anne seek the company of the naval officers instead of her own family, Austen was putting forth the idea of a family of one's own choosing. It was certainly an idea that's come up in my college literature courses, but mainly in discussions of newer novels, so it was surprising to look at Persuasion from this angle. Then there is Deresiewicz's examination of Austen's idea of true friendship--that the best friends are the ones who are honest. "True friends do not shield you from your mistakes, they tell you about them: even at the risk of losing your friendship--which means, even at the risk of being unhappy themselves." (194) It's definitely a lesson worth keeping in mind, given how many of us undoubtedly hesitate to tell our friends the truth for fear of hurting their feelings. Perhaps, Deresiewicz is telling us, we should consider how much more those feelings would be hurt if we were to witness them making mistakes without saying anything.

Sense and Sensibility - Falling In Love: Lastly, Deresiewicz discusses his experiences with dating in his late twenties to early thirties, and how he learned what a relationship really consists of: not perfect harmony, but occasional disagreements; not a perfect match of interests, but enough differences to be able to teach each other something. It's entertaining for me to read this now, when a few months ago, I watched the 2008 Sense and Sensibility with a friend and ended up giving a discourse on just why I felt Marianne and Willoughby wouldn't have lasted if they had gotten married: they were too similar, with little else in common besides loving fun and poetry, whereas Brandon could better understand Marianne's depth of feeling, and had experience and culture that Marianne could learn from. My friend looked at me a little while later and said, "You know, I'd never thought of it that way before."

"True love, for Austen, means a never-ending clash of opinions and perspectives. If your lover's already just like you, then neither of you has anywhere to go." (237) It was really nice to see Deresiewicz coming to recognize that conflict was necessary in a relationship, that a whirlwind romance wasn't the ideal match he thought it was, that the supposedly unromantic Sense and Sensibility actually had some reasonable points to make about love. I was a bit disappointed he didn't dwell more on Marianne's relationship with Brandon (it gets barely a few mentions), but given that this was the final chapter, it was basically a culmination of all of Austen's lessons, not just the ones to be gleaned from Sense and Sensibility.

This review is already far too long, so I will close it by saying that this book is just perfect for seasoned Janeites and newcomers to Jane alike. It was everything I hoped it would be, and I came out of it really charmed by Deresiewicz's perspective on Austen and how he had taken her lessons to heart. I got this from the library, but as soon as it comes out in paperback, I'll surely be getting a copy of my own to read again. It's a fast read and one I will definitely be recommending to my Jane-loving friends!

In Which Trai Reviews 'Growing Pains'

Again, as ever this year, my sincerest apologies for the lack of reviews lately. My time has been yet again monopolized by school, and things will slow down just a few weeks from now, so I'll hopefully be able to pick up my slack during the summer.

The Book: Growing Pains

The Author: Billie Piper

How I Found It: I'm now desperately in love with Doctor Who, and I loved Billie Piper's role on the show, Rose Tyler, and her acting in general.

The Review: Only my love for Billie Piper could have tempted me to read this. I don't normally go for nonfiction, but when I looked up Billie on Wikipedia, I was struck by how interesting and inspiring her early life sounded. She was only 23 when she released this book sometime in 2006 or so, and it sounds absurd--a 23-year-old having enough life experience to fill a book? But she had enough and more, and I was surprised at how much depth and relevance her story still has five or so years later.

At 15 years old, Billie was signed to Innocent Records, pushed to be an artist with the longevity of Madonna and the success of the Spice Girls. It was a pretty tall order for a 15-year-old, and you can't help but wonder what her team was thinking. Billie was more than game, looking forward to fame and money and with an endlessly positive attitude, but upon recording her first single, she started to feel like it wasn't what she wanted. She could sing, but not quite well enough to be a true performer, but she pushed on and decided to stay in the business for the sake of the people making their living off of her.

Billie had already been growing up far too young--she was an only child for the first seven years of her life, but then her mother had three children in three years, which lead to a nervous breakdown for Billie's mother and the responsibility of parenting her siblings for Billie. After loving acting classes as a child, Billie made it into the Sylvia Young Theatre School, and from there her singing career kicked off.

The pressures of her singing career and personal life ended up putting Billie into a destructive spiral. A television presenter's comment about her being fat sparked a two year battle with anorexia and laxative abuse, which led to many painful health problems. Her manager warned her not to date a member of a boy band, saying that it would make her core audience (young girls who would fantasize about dating that same boy band member) hate her. They dated anyway, and it quickly led to Billie receiving hate mail and being poorly received at her concerts.

All of that would change when she got married, at 18, to Chris Evans, a DJ and television host sixteen years her senior who literally saved her life. Billie left the music world in order to be a wife and, eventually, an actress, something she's kept doing ever since.

Just reading what I saw of her life story on Wikipedia had already endeared me to Billie, and I knew I'd probably really like the book, but I didn't expect to love her even more and find the book truly life-affirming. This one is a keeper and something I will be re-reading and recommending to friends of mine.

For one thing, I was stunned at how incredibly honest and candid Billie was about her struggles and mistakes. She is fully willing to talk about her struggles with anorexia and even an attempt at suicide, and admits freely that the way she treated her friends and family oftentimes was wrong. She was humble and totally honest about her shortcomings and feelings during what must have been incredibly turbulent times, and I was stunned at how much she'd had to go through.

What touched me the most were the details of her struggle with anorexia. Several people I knew in high school have struggled with eating disorders, and while I knew bits and pieces of what it was like for them, I'd never really read a true firsthand account until now. No detail is spared, and it's wrenching to read but painfully true. Billie doesn't divulge every detail, in order not to give anyone ideas, but she urges those who are struggling to get help, and the fact that she was able to recover from her eating disorder is ultimately hopeful. I certainly felt a little better about myself after reading it--she had the same insecurities about herself that I'd had when I was a bit younger, and it really made me realize that she's just a person, too.

The insight into the music industry was also interesting in a really twisted way. I liked that what Billie went through seems to have soured her team on putting another artist that young up to the rigors of the industry. It's truly sad how much she had to deal with on her own: "It had been eight months of non-stop work, I'd barely been home, I was tired, I'd split up with my boyfriend in Swindon and I'd had to deal with my first period with no one to confide in" (34). She was living in a hotel room on her own at 15, and I'm sure that this type of thing is still going on with the young Disney performers and such today. It was the lack of supervision that did her the most harm, something she admits. I'd never considered how quickly backlash could happen, either. Her manager's bit about not dating a boy band member and all the hate she received was really an eye-opener, considering the behavior of some of the tweenybopper fans that are around today.

Overall, I was truly surprised at how much I ended up loving this book. Billie went through a lot, but she managed to emerge from it a funny, kind, self-aware person who has a lot of love for the people she's worked for and a lot of advice to give. My favorite bit: "Then I thought, ‘You’ve got to sharpen up, girl, sort it out. Be more headstrong and believe in yourself more. Because if you don’t, why should anyone else?'" (286-7).

The story was emotional (I was crying when she recounted her almost attempt at suicide, and when she finally found happiness again on the set of Doctor Who) and I think that Doctor Who fans would enjoy it in particular, because it gives a ton of insight on what she has in common with Rose and why she was chosen for the role, which made me appreciate her work on the show all the more. It's a story of hope and figuring out what you love to do, and for that reason I'd recommend it to almost anyone, but in particular those who are struggling or have struggled with eating disorders, any young person thinking about going into a music career (there's some salty language and a bit of content, so perhaps no one younger than 15 or 16), or someone who loves Billie's work as an actress. This one's a keeper.