of course i’ve read “ed the happy clown” a few times over already but not for a couple of decades now and not in this re-edited, slightly expanded and annotated (and nice hardback) form – and happy to find a new guy delisle “graphic memoir” – previous culture shock excursions to korea, china and burma have been great – this time he’s invading joe sacco territory with jerusalem – (a new joe sacco book out later this month too!) – (and still awaiting jason’s “athos in america” from amazon)
I like the graphic / comic travelogue idea. I hope to get hold of Delisle’s Pyongyang book, as it’s such a weird place.
His Jerusalem looks promising too. According to one reviewer, while teaching an art class there Delisle comes across the culture shock of teaching drawing to Muslims. His students call out in the middle of class “I can’t draw pictures of human figures. It’s against my religion.” and Delisle is left hanging, uttering “uhm…” and not knowing how he can teach the class any further.
As for Sacco, he should go to Israel and listen to Israelis. There’s always two sides to every story. And there at least one can freely draw the human figure : )