Man's best friend outside of a dog, 7: Persepolis 1 and 2, by Marjane Satrapi

Continuing the Iranian theme we had in the last book review, tonight we've got a pair of graphic novels from an Iranian expat who now lives in France. For those unfamiliar with the term, which seems unlikely given the known preferences of most of our readership, graphic novels are long-form comic books.

Compared to most of the other prominent graphic novelists out there, Satrapi is quite the crude illustrator, preferring a rather simplistic drawing style with a black and white palette. She has a few pretty poetic touches, but nothing to compare to the more artistic panels in Maus or something done by a professional illustrator, like V for Vendetta or The Watchmen. Then again, that's not really the point. She has a story to tell, and comics are her medium of choice. The graphic elements certainly are there to add to the story, but it is the narrative that makes or breaks it. How is that narrative you ask? It is interesting certainly, a very personal take on growing up, first in Iran during the Revolution, later in Europe as a teenager, and finally in Iran as a twentysomething.

Satrapi lacks much of the intellectual grounding that Azar Nafisi, the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, but she may be better at describing her own situation (Nafisi is certainly more gifted at describing that of others). This is both a blessing as a curse in her case: she is able to describe her own reactions to situations throughout her childhood and teenage years in great detail, but the result is something less than sympathetic at times, even though she is the one telling the story about herself. Maybe it's me speaking as someone who kind of missed out on their rebellious phase, but while I understand that life's troubles can be hard to deal with, I can't help but have mixed feelings about some of the situations the author put herself into. Then again, this may be part of her point: life can put us in impossible situations, frequently in the case of Revolutionary Iran, but we can also put ourselves into similarly difficult spots through our own handiwork.

Just like in the reading Lolita, we see again that the standard perceptions of Iranians is a poor reflection of the society as a whole (one could make the same claim about Iraq, or just about anywhere else, of course). The upper class in Iraq was, and remains, extremely Western in outlook, and the middle class seems to be more concerned with what people in the middle class are typically concerned about than about most of the religious nonsense put forth by the government. Iran, like many nations, is propped up by the blood of the masses (who were slaughtered during the Iraq-Iran war), and that seems to be where the current religious officials still draw most of their support. Somehow, reactionaries always seem to know that they can prey upon the religiously guided ignorance of large segments of the population in many nations, even those that one would think too modern to fall under their spell (cough, Karl Rove, cough).

In the broader sense, these books should serve as a reminder that wars are really, really bad. Yeah, I know, some insight there, but go with me on this one. The US was busy supplying arms to Iraq in the 80's, in order to contain the Iranians, to whom we were also supplying arms, but less publicly. This containment managed to strengthen the mullahs in Iran, strengthen Hussein to become the figure we became familiar with during our wars against him, and generally made a mess of the region. Scarily enough, these weren't our biggest strategic mistakes at the time. That would be our support for the Taliban in Afghanistan. I think it is fair to suggest that when we encourage our bastards over there to fight against the other bastards over there, the result is generally a lot of dead people, a lot more poorer people who will be more likely to get behind unsavory leaders, and a bunch of formerly weak unsavory leaders who are now much stronger unsavory leaders. This is not idle speculation, given that we are rather actively supporting the government of Ethiopia during their current efforts to boot out Islamic militias in Somalia. Needless to say, I predict that this will likely lead to the standard awful results in the coming years, which is really saying something when you are talking about Ethiopia and Somalia getting worse (think famine and Black Hawk Down for our current images of both nations).

Anyway, back to Persepolis. I'm not entirely sold on Satrapi as a particularly good storyteller, but she lived through incredibly interesting times, and that counts for an awful lot in a memoir. I learned more than a bit from the books, and would recommend them to anyone in a heartbeat. They are two long comic books in the end, not War and Peace, and more than justify the minimal time it takes to read them. Go do so!

BTW, we announce the next Rooted Cosmopolitans Charity of the Month tomorrow, so donate to Doctors Without Borders today of you haven't done so already. Also, the Mets won the first game of the season, so let's see if they can go wire-to-wire in first place. Expect much more baseball here coming soon!