Tom Spurgeon started his yearly round of “holiday interviews” yesterday. He kicks off with a chat with Joe Sacco about the recent rerelease of Palestine:
SPURGEON: One of the things I find intriguing in the back material of the new Palestine book was that balance you found between inserting yourself in the narrative and keeping yourself at a remove. I don’t know if that was calculated or if it was something that you just felt your way through. I was also wondering how that element has changed for you since then.
SACCO: I think I felt my way through that. If someone really wanted to look at where that all comes from, I think it comes from the tone I achieve in Yahoo #5. No one’s ever asked me that question, so I’ve never really answered it. Yahoo #5 is called “How I Loved the War” and takes place in Berlin. There’s a tone I had, sort of a cynical, skeptical tone that I had that carried over. The next project I did as far as going somewhere was Palestine. I went to Palestine and then came back and did Yahoo #6. But really the tone of Yahoo #5 carried over into how I did Palestine. It wasn’t something where I’m sitting back and thinking, “Oh, I’ll do it in this way.” It was a very organic process of writing. That’s how I felt. That’s how I wrote it. If I can say anything about Palestine, it’s that it’s really organic.
By the way, I hope you’ll join me in saying a belated “Happy Birthday” to Mr. Spurgeon, who turned 40 yesterday.
