HERE by Richard McGuire

Richard McGuire’s book, aptly titled HERE, is classed as a comic, but it isn’t. No, it’s far more than a comic, this is a piece of artwork we’re talking about. It’s the kind of artwork that should be displayed in a museum, because it’s a great work of modern art. The first few pages are small panels of a family in a living room, floating on the backdrop of the ancient forest that was once their neighborhood. As the book progresses, the living room remembers every family that lived there, from the beginning of our nation to 2040.

The entire book takes place in the living room. Every 25 years a new family moves in, and the drawings show the good times, bad times, disappointments, hopes, and shattered dreams. In a way it reminds me of the Loretta Lynn song “If This Old House Could Talk.” Perhaps it’s a testament to the way Americans change addresses so often? Every time a new family moves into a home, they redecorate according to their needs and liking, and it will clearly reflect their personalities. As a construction worker I could always tell what kind of people lived in the home by the period décor, the elephants painted on the wall (a child’s bedroom, obviously) and the lines marked on the wall, month by month, every time the child grows another inch. In one apartment the last mark was at 2 feet, one year before they moved out. I later learned that the child had died.

I call Richard McGuire’s work modern art because I’m sensing a concept here. The same way Paul Delvaux’s work was all about Jules Verne, and DiChrico’s work was about a stagnant Italy, McGuire’s work follows a conceptual dynamic. The artwork always takes pace around a central theme, and every ten pictures should be grouped together because they follow non-linear time. While the family is showing home movies on a projector, another family is watching them on a flat screen TV 40 years later.

I’ve known McGuire’s work for years, and some of his work (included in this book) was included in the Graphic Fiction anthology. His work appeared 30 years ago in RAW magazine, and I expect to see more of his work in the New Yorker, and other magazines hopefully. Maybe he’ll be asked to direct the third installment of If These Walls Could Talk?

Unstoppable Learning by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey

Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey remind the readers that learning has to be goal oriented. Too often, the teacher’s curriculum doesn’t have a clear destination in mind, and that will obviously demoralize the students. When you teach children (or adults) there has to be a place where you want them to end up. What are the conclusions going to be? What will they come away with? Unstoppable Learning, another great book from Solution Tree Press, is a multi-chapter guide to teaching students with their abilities (or lack of them) in mind at all times.

Let’s start with the chapters called “managing Learning.” This one focuses on the teacher-student dynamic, and I stress the importance, because classroom management is the kiss of life or death. The chapter opens up with the famous “don’t smile until December” advice, which the authors make clear is not the best thing. They stress getting to know the students, finding out what’s going on in their lives, making time to speak to them one-on-one. That builds a sense of trust, and it prepares the students for the workplace.

Behavior in the classroom is discussed in the chapter as well. The authors break down the diagnosis into four categories; harmful, distracting, contagious, and testing the system. Dealing with the behavior does not need to be immediate, because the teacher can’t be expected to figure out the cure immediately. Afterward is where the teacher deals with it using the four categories. If the behavior is distracting, then who is distracted, the teacher or the students? Is the misbehaving student looking for attention? The authors give strict (and humorous) criteria for dealing with the behavior. One thing that is stressed throughout is that the teacher should not call out the student in front of others. It can make them defensive.

The book ends with sets of questions for the teachers and students. They include whether or not the students are ready to learn, whether the teacher is ready to teach, and if the students are using academic language. The best thing about this book, from beginning to end, is that it puts the accountability on the educator as a facilitator and manager, more than just a “boss.” Discipline is defined here as providing a safe classroom, not “getting the kids to follow instructions.” It’s certainly not classed as “making little children behave.”

After all, is the teacher’s job to punish, or to teach?

The Arab of the Future by Riad Sattouf

 Little boys are defecating in the street, throwing rocks at donkeys, and pitchforking stray dogs. Women sit by passively as their sons beat up their cousins. Psychotic children follow a family through the streets with sticks. Then another little boy sees men hanged in the street, their bodies swinging in the rain while shoppers nonchalantly walk by. As for the boy’s refined French mother, she puts up with it. It’s no wonder that the kids in Syria are all evil.

Riad Sattouf, a French-Syrian cartoonist, has drawn more than a graphic autobiography. It’s a crazy adventure through a bizarre land, leaving the travelers awed and bewildered. Throughout the story, his family treks through a land where education is neglected, animals are abused, and the people are accustomed to being abused by dictators. His French-educated parents are clearly a cut above the rest, in terms of the (rather saintly) way they treat others, but they’re powerless to make anything good happen. They each, according to their upbringing, have reasons for not criticizing it. Perhaps that’s part of the problem.

Before I go further, let me say that Riad Sattouf’s The Arab of the Future is the opposite of a voyage of discovery. His life in Libya and Syria is all about the “new world” exploring the “old world,” and finding nothing. For starters, his Arab father and French mother, both educated at the Sorbonne, are opposites in their ideals. His father, Syrian-born, is a Pan-Arabist with a liking for the Ba’ath philosophy. He thinks that by aligning the nation with the Soviets and casting aside religion, the nation can become powerful. Riad’s French mother goes along, and she’s disgusted, but she doesn’t really protest much. I get the feeling that she’s been taught not to judge or criticize foreign ways. Racist? Maybe it is.

As for Riad, he’s a cute blonde kid who, like a typical French child, talks politely and behaves himself. That makes him a sitting duck for the nasty kids that he encounters in Syria. He clearly illustrates the contrast between two nations; French children are allowed to actually be children, while the Syrian kids are taught to be violent. Even the toys are violent; they have action figures of Israeli soldiers hiding knives behind their backs.

After reading The Arab of the Future, I realized why democracy, human rights, gender equality, and universal suffrage can never work in the Middle East. The ideals of democracy and human rights are based on Judeo-Christian ethics, where disputes are settled in court, and the husband can’t own the wife. In a place like Syria or Libya, that would clash with Sharia, or even the habits that predate Islam. Let’s face it, the Middle East is hopeless. If a country is collectively hostile to animals, and forces its anger on the children, why would they care about anyone’s rights?

Photograhers' Sketchbooks, Edited by Stephen McLaren and Bryan Formhals

The difference between the average photographer and fine art painter is that less space is needed to take photos. On the other hand, the photographer doesn’t “create” the way the painter and sculptor do, as he or she has to gain the trust of the subject before pointing the camera. Photographers’ Sketchbooks, another great book from Thames & Hudson, displays the works, and more importantly, the philosophies, or the photographer as an artist. The artist’s words are treated as the studio.

Let’s start with Kiana Hayeri of Iran. She documents women in her country, focusing on how the veil dominates (or benefits) their lives. Her series titled “Your Veil is a Battleground” follows the lives of young women at home, in the car, at parties, all with the subjects’ consent. One of her four-photo pieces shows a woman with and without her head covering, with different makeup and hairstyle, while another set (from the same series) shows the woman in recreation, like parties, movies, dates, museums. It’s interesting to see how Iran’s young people are accustomed to wearing black, perhaps as a result of colors attracting the religious police’s attention?

John Chervinsky, on the other hand, works around props and still life setups, particularly dull black backdrops. He admits he has a fascination with the old black chalkboards of Harvard’s lecture halls, and photographs black-painted apples and pears with white chalk patterns. While he doesn’t require the massive mess-and-clean setup of the average painter, his exploding fluorescent tubes required a bit more setup time!

Most of the photographers in this book, especially the ones who document people, discuss the issue of trust. Most photojournalists are more interested in the “other half” who are rarely seen, rather than the wealthy classes, but this requires greater effort. While the upper classes will probably be concerned with flattering imagery, the impoverished areas are wary of any outsider. However, as with Susan Meiselas, the subjects aren’t finicky about looking attractive. She gained the trust of locals in a poor neighborhood of Lisbon, where the people and buildings resemble the West Indies, and took photos of them going about their lives. They resemble Black Americans, only the clothing is not as colorful and the people are much slimmer. It reminded me of Ash Thayer’s book Kill City, where she photographs NYC squatters, or the book A Period of Juvenile Prosperity, about young hobos. The subjects clearly weren’t concerned about being “dolled up.”

Girls, Tets, and Cultures

Dawn Currie ponders the second-wave feminists’ ambivalence to “femininity.” On one hand, teen magazines only feature photos of attractive young girls, never “real” girls who have acne, bad hair, crooked teeth, and the slightly overweight figures typical of girls who are going through puberty. Kerry Mallon uses the book “Secrets” as an example of girls’ survival, dealing with an abusive stepfather. 

Other contributors to this text discuss 19^th century books for girls, designed to teach them manners and etiquette. The discussion here is not about the effectiveness of the books, but for whose benefit they were. Did girls read them to prepare themselves to please their husbands? Was it to prepare them for a male-dominated economy?

Whatever the girls are reading will reflect the norms and more of the time when they were written. There were times when there weren’t many careers for women, other than teacher, nurse, and secretary. The average “girl” book of the 1970’s probably didn’t encourage them to have serious careers. Others, like Go Ask Alice, considered independent girls to be “bad” and treated the protagonist’s drug use as bad behavior, not a health problem. It was anti-divorce as well.

Track Two Diplomacy to an Israeli-Palestinian Solution

The author cites the Camp David accords as a foundation for peace in the Middle East, but later effects would create problems. The Oslo accords, between Rabin and Arafat, centered heavily around left wing ideals of Rabin’s labor government, to the ire of Conservatives in Israel. When Likud won in 1996, Netanyahu didn’t like the deal, and deliberately stalled the process. But even without Netanyahu stalling the process, it was unravelling on its own.

The author recounts his personal dealings with Netanyahu, Abbas, and the European advisors, none of whom really had any understanding of Israeli attitudes. Perhaps the Oslo accords didn’t jive with the existing attitudes of the Israelis? While this book is one big firsthand account, the author leaves his opinion to himself, never really making his views clear. I have to wonder, therefore, if there was ever any real hope for peace in the Middle East. Could democracy work in Palestine? Can Judeo-Christian ideals work in a Muslim country? What did Arafat expect to gain by governing a state that had no farmland to produce food, and had no authority to negotiate deals with foreign countries? Even if other nations recognized Palestine, the Israelis controlled the airspace, and could refuse to allow planes to land in Palestine’s airports.

Perhaps the two-state solution was doomed from the start?

Summer Blonde by Adrian Tomine

Summer Blonde collects four of Tomine’s comics, all centered around the theme of 20-something people with dysfunctional relationships. The Summer Blonde story is kind of a love triangle between a hot blonde, her lame boyfriend, a self-obsessed cad, and an obsessive stalker who probably has Asperger’s Syndrome (not commonly diagnosed at the time.) The blonde girl cheats on her boyfriend with a guy who thinks he’s an aspiring rock musician, though his only entry to fame is a monthly appearance at open mic night. Regardless, women are drawn to him like bees to honey (after all, who doesn’t want to sleep with a rock musician?) and the next character, a depressed uncool loner, listens through the wall with murderous envy.

What I love about Tomine’s characters is that it’s hard to feel sympathy for them thanks to their comical flaws. The “blonde” of the story seems to be cheating on her boyfriend because she feels like her looks entitle her to it. There’s another story, Hawaiian Getaway, where a lonely overweight Chinese American woman acts like a high schooler. Her life is stuck on pause, she and her mother hate each other, and she spends her time acting like a clingy child. Guys avoid her because she is, for lack of a better description, not much fun to have around.

The stories in this book were all written and drawn in the late 90’s, a time when computers were big and bulky, and email, though widely used, hadn’t become dominant. People went to Tower Records to buy CD’s, recordings were made on tapes, books were made of paper, and everyone talked on the telephone. Texting on your phone was rare at the time, and without cell phones, most of us made appointments over the phone and showed up on time. I suspect we were better at communicating in those days. The story Bomb Scare, about a bullied high schooler, involves nasty characters, but there’s no cyber bullying. That would come later.