A ver. En principio está el mundo y el mundo está dividido en cuatro pueblos: el blanco, el negro, el indígena y el mongol. A veces domina uno y a veces –durante un parpadeo que puede durar siglos o milenios– rige otro. Ahora reina el blanco. O para ser precisos: el anglosajón. No hay de qué preocuparse: ya será desplazado. Esta vez –la última de las veces– no por otro de los cuatro pueblos elementales sino por una nueva cultura, una quinta raza –“una raza universal, fruto de las anteriores y superación de todo lo pasado”. La raza cósmica.

Joe Sacco’s Footnotes in Gaza is his most ambitious work to date, both in page size and in the depth of his reporting. It is not only a book about current events as all of them are, but a detailed examination of events in Gaza in the mid 50’s. The search for witnesses of the events in Khan Younis and Raffa not only make the book more involved, opening questions of memory and truth, but also creates a contrasting history that is frustrating in its continuation of a conflict that has existed over 60 years.

The book is covers two different areas, the events in Khanunis and Raffa and what led up to them, and the events in Gaza during the early 2000’s before Hamas took over Gaza. Sacco spends most of his time investigating the history in part because he wants to look at some lesser known events in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For Sacco it is not only the events themselves that are interesting, but the process of creating the story, the way memory is shaped by the survivors, current events,  and those taking down the stories. Sacco makes it clear that the memories of the survivors and witnesses to these events vary in reliably. Often Sacco would find people who mixed events, or, worse for Sacco, wanted only to push a political agenda. When Sacco finds a fidayeen veteran he shows repeated scenes of the man talking about events he thinks are important, avoiding what Sacco is after, but Sacco continues on, sure the man has the story he is looking for. Eventually he get what he is looking for, but throughout the book is the interplay of the journalist and the story. As the he goes deeper and deeper into researching the story it appears he becomes intoxicated by the act of searching for the story, knowing what will actually be relevant. In doing so, he controls the narrative, yet his depiction of the process is a refreshing reflection on the act of journalism. Sacco has always been aware in his works how journalists become adventure seekers and how that distorts part of the story. His Christmas with Karadzic in War’s End: Profiles From Bosnia 1995-1996 is probably his clearest expression of the phenomenon.

From all the interviews and archival research (20 pages of the book are reprints of archival documents) Sacco tells the little known story of mass killings of Palestinian refugees in Khan Younis and Raffa by the Israeli Army. While exact numbers are not clear, all together a few hundred may have died in these incidents. In Khan Younis the survivors tell of a systematic rounding up of men between 15 and 60 and their mass execution and the forced quick burial. Since most of what happened in Khan Younis was witnessed by just a few survivors, Sacco only has a couple testimonies of Palestinian men who escaped the shooting. There are plenty of post incident witnesses, the women and children who helped in the burials, along with UN reports that say something happened, and Israeli reports that say the soldiers were panicked and shot in self defense. Sacco’s rendering of the survivor’s testimony is vivid and it is clear that he thinks that the Palestinian story is what happened.

The events in Raffa, on the other hand, were less brutal and so there are many more survivors. In Raffa, the Israeli army rounded up all the men and sent them through a gantlet where they had to jump over barbed wire while being clubbed by soldiers. Sacco notes that the memories of the survivors don’t always agree, but from each of repeated images he finds he structures a narrative that he thinks is most likely what happened. As with Khan Younis, the Israeli’s come off as brutal and arbitrary, more interested in killing and terrorizing than finding fidayeen in amongst the refugees. The story of Raffa is the most compellingly researched and has the best interplay between memory and journalism.

But what preceded the incidents? Sacco explains some of the history that had occurred since the 1948 war when Palestinian refugees spilled into Gaza. He notes that the border was easy to cross and little by little a series of tit-for-tat  killings and attacks by refugees, Israeli’s and Egyptian sponsored terrorist squads called the fidayeen, led to a state of violence where the refugees in Gaza became victims of power plays between Egypt and Israel. The cross border attacks had gone on for several years and both sides had hardened their positions substantially. Sacco includes a quote from Moshe Dayan who noted that Israel had to be strong, but in doing so the Palestinians, too, would harden and continue to fight. It is amongst these incidents the larger incidents in Khan Younis and Raffa occurred.

For Sacco, it is relatively obvious that the Israelis committed the abuses described in the books even though they deny they did. He notes that even right wing historian Benny Morris agrees that there were killings in the two refugee camps. However, given the state of tensions between the two sides it seems impossible for something even resembling agreement to be reached on what happened.

The notion of agreement and the problematic search for the past, continually surfaces amongst the modern day inhabitants who are only interested in the present and continually tell Sacco why do you bother with the past, it doesn’t help the present. Recovering the past doesn’t feed one, but given the endless tit-for-tat that can consume one’s perspective, a look back at the historical can help. Sacco’s nuanced reflection on one little part of the past is an excellent look at some of the events that had served to lock the conflict in its current stalemate. Unfortunately, his book will probably be taken by many as belonging to one side.

A brief interview with Edith Grossman about her approach to translation. Interesting, if brief.

IDEAS: Do you read much work by other translators?

GROSSMAN: It’s difficult, but that’s part of the trick of translating – to be able to leave your ear neutral enough so you can hear the first language, and know your own language well enough so you can echo it.

The other author of ‘Don Quixote’ – The Boston Globe.

The bookswap came from a few simple facts that you can read about in this post, written by Madan and Evans for The Huffington Post. Essentially, they realized that readers want more than to buy books at a bookstore–they want to meet other readers there and have experiences that have to do with authors, publishers, great books, and literary culture. This is why people will go to bookstores for author events, and it’s also the reason why so many author events can feel flat. It’s nice to see your favorite author read from a new book, but if you’re just an isolated reader who is permitted to squint at your author on a podium for an hour and then walk away, perhaps with a signed book and an anxiety-ridden ten-second conversation with said author, you feel just as isolated and alone as you did before the event started.

An Idea Every Independent Bookstore Should Steal « Conversational Reading.

You an read an English language obit here: Mexican author Carlos Montemayor dies at 62 – Yahoo! News.

Where the series seems to error is, first, in the mystical voice that seems to talk to the Unknown Soldier and give him the ability to be a soldier. It would be nice for a comic not to be tied down to the comic formula which seems to always need something supernatural to explain reality. While it is a convention of the genre, it makes it seem as if all one needs to defeat an army single handedly is a little bit of magic or training, which is pure fantasy. Second, adding the ex-CIA agent to the mix distracts from the story and injects and element of a spy thriller. The ex-CIA agent is used as a historical agent, a way to go back through history and examine how the Uganda had fallen into disarray, some of it the fault of the west. In that sense the agent makes sense, but as an element of action and suspense it takes the suffering and turns it into a back drop for adventure.

The series overall is interesting and the writer, Joshua Dysart, has done quite a bit of research, traveling to Uganda several times. Yet contrasted to an author such as Joe Sacco who refrains from fictional narrative, the Unknown Soldier uses too many of the conventions of the genre which adds layers of interpretation to events that are already complicated. This is not to say only a Ugandan can tell the story and to his credit Dysart brought in a Nigerian artist to guest draw two issues, but the layers of action adventure tend to obfuscate. Sometimes fiction isn’t necessary, but at least the story is out there. I do plan to continue to keep reading it if I can remember to buy them.

Book tours used to be about local media. “You would go to these places to get reviews, interviews, TV and radio,” Miller explains, but with print outlets closing down and cutting coverage and new technologies enabling long-distance video interviews, “it is becoming less important to do that kind of tour.”

Bookstores are also becoming harder to find. When its B. Dalton shut down this year, Laredo, Texas, population 200,000-plus, became the largest bookstore-less city in the United States. In January, when “Eat, Pray, Love” author Elizabeth Gilbert came to Los Angeles to sign her new book, “Committed,” she wound up at Costco in Marina del Rey.

As the book tour takes on new shapes, what will it mean for writers — and for readers? Authors like Boyle don’t just read — they perform and stay until they’ve signed every book. They know the value of connection. But how will their lesser-known counterparts connect?

via Book tour? More like a safari – latimes.com.

Is Amazon.com trying to do an end-run around publishers for Kindle book rights? The Bookseller reports the online retail giant has been pursuing U.K. literary agents and authors, urging them to sell electronic book rights directly to Amazon. That follows a report from Crain’s in November that Amazon flew a dozen top New York literary agents to its Seattle headquarters for meetings.