Joe Sacco, author of the amazing Palestine (out in a new special edition) and Safe Area Gorazde, is giving a talk at The Walker Art Center tomorrow night. The event is co-hosted by Rain Taxi and starts at 7:00 PM. I'll be going & the event is also being webcast live.
I'll give a report here after the event. In the meantime, there's a good interview with Sacco at the Walker website:
There is a moment in Safe Area Gorazde where Riki continues to sing after he eats breakfast with you and Edin; he’s leaving to join the battle lines. You wrote, “at that moment I came as close as I ever had to bursting into tears in Bosnia”. What was it about that moment that got to you, when you have heard so many brutal stories about the war?
I think the answer to that question should lie in the pages you mentioned and not in any exposition I can make now. Like many other writers or artists, I've fallen into the bad habit of explaining myself in interviews and at talks. I am beginning to understand that the work needs to speak for itself, and that the reader's imagination has to be allowed to put things together. I realize that will be an unsatisfactory answer for people who are unfamiliar with the work, but...