So my graphic novel CAIRO came out this week. The day it was released, artist MK Perker and I spent an hour on the phone, alternately basking in our glory and worrying about how the book would be received. There have been some good reviews and some postmodern ones, but overall the response has been positive. Bill Willingham, creator of the hit comics series FABLES and the only Neocon at my chest-heavingly leftie publisher, actually gave the thing a glowing cover-quote. In other words, it's been a good week, and I should be pleased.
And I am, but it's a pleasure complicated by politics.
On the afternoon of the day the book came out, I did a signing at Zanadu Comics. One of the guys who stopped by--trench coat, glasses, archetypal--picked up the book and flipped through it, then looked up at me with the air of a connoisseur of useless miscellany.
"Clearly she hasn't learned that a ninja never hands over her weapon," he said, pointing to a character swathed in a black face-veil and robe, who was giving her gun to a skeptical-looking man in a burnoose.
The character's name was Tova. She was an Israeli soldier, not a ninja. I held my peace. The guy went on to tell me he hoped I was ready for the big-leagues of fiction after something so trivial as journalism. (Journalism is like falling out of bed, he drawled, It's like, woah, did I just write something? Fiction takes actual work.) Guys like this are an occupational hazard of comic-writing, and if they're buying what I write, far be it for me to mock. I let him talk, nodding at appropriate intervals.
But I had been thinking about Tova too, and about the other people who would look at her and see something she is not.
I knew I was walking a fine line when I wrote an Israeli soldier into the novel. I knew that no matter how complex or conflicted or human I made her, bringing her into a story about Arab Muslims as a protagonist would burn up much, if not all, of the literary street cred I built up in Cairo among Cairenes. Now when I get an interview request from an Egyptian publication (we really like your work; so few westerners take the time to understand these things; what else are you writing?) I cringe. I know my days on the good side of the City Victorious are numbered. After he read CAIRO, my husband sat me down and asked me gently if I realized it was possible I'd put myself in danger if I marketed the book in the Middle East. I knew, but I went into the bathroom and cried for awhile anyway. I want so much for tenderness to be universally understood, and it isn't. I want not to have to separate the people I love to keep them from hurting each other. At the very least, I want the space to pretend, in fiction, that this is possible. But I may not even have that.
My husband wanted to know why I needed an Israeli character. Without her, the book is a shrine--a sometimes paradoxically irreverent shrine--to Islamic, Arab and Egyptian mythology, fit for all but the most hardline bookshelves. As one reviewer observed, the only unequivocal image in the entire book, the only symbol that is not polluted by shades of grey, is the Qur'an. Without the Jew, the book is kosher. I told him I didn't need an Israeli character. But I did need the Israeli who was one of my most steadfast friends through my conversion; and the Israeli who held my hand while I was getting a large, pretty but idiotic Arabic tattoo in the days leading up to it, who joked that speaking Arabic would help me learn Hebrew; and the Israeli refusenik who was one of the first people to read a draft of the book, who was robbed of his Nobel peace prize by the tree woman from Africa. I needed those Israelis, and Tova was--is--for them.
I have not yet been asked to choose between the people I love in any lasting way. I have managed to keep an exhausting but worthwhile balance. There are friends I will never be able to introduce to my Palestinian in-laws, and in-laws I will never be able to introduce to my friends. I've made peace with that. But when I write a more perfect, bizarre, serendipitous, forgiving world, I sometimes forget not to hope I will someday be able to live in it.
If your book is controversial for its audience, perhaps that may provide you with the extra attention which will make it a success...?
If you really feel you need to worry about your life being put in danger by some nutjobs, maybe consider doing an interview where you state that you included the Israeli character because you thought it would make the story more interesting and unique; present it as a business decision...? Practice your response to their question before they ask you. Say it with a proud smirk, that you are attempting to hide, that can be read as something you feel will help make you rich. That part of the world should be able to understand that...?
Though controversy would boost book sales, it's not the kind of publicity I want; there's something craven about it. My hope is that the only people in the ME who will read the book are people who will understand it. :) I'll cling to that hope until I'm forced to cling to something else.
It's the challenging bits of fiction that keep it an art, not a science. By writing something that maybe not everyone would "get" right away, you've done the rest of us writers a service by reminding us that only genuine works are really worthwhile.
I thank you for that! You will inspire others.
It's an occupational hazard of many businesses and activities, including all kinds and types of writing. It's one reason I write under pen-names, and have various cover identities.
I have no interest in the vast majority of "fans," or "trench coat experts" who gain all of their expertise and personal experience from things they read on the internet by people who write only on the internet. Unfortunately you'll also meet a lot of writers who are that way, everything they ever learned they learned from television, the movies, comic books, and at a college campus rally-fest. But, you'll just have to get used to it I'm afraid. Goes with the territory.
As for your post-modern post-modern review and the genius of the insight that the world is ever doomed, I also hate that kinda thing myself, and how everything has to be categorized according to the latest and most sophisticated post-modern categorizations. Modern people nowadays can't say anything about anything without categorizing it for what it is, or ain't, according to the most navel gapingly popular category of currently self-absorbed social malaise they can devise. When you gotta quote sociologists for effect, and to add weight to your observations, that makes me laugh.
Sometimes I think there is a direct inverse relationship between rarely good for anything modern hyper-sophistication, and actually beneficial at all times wisdom and common sense. Then again who in the modern world often talks about wisdom or common sense? So I reckon it's a wash.
So if you did write in a happy ending Willow, guess what sister, good for you and piss on those who want the world to end with a wheeze and a whimper. They can post-modern choke on their own post modern angst.
However...as a practical matter:
It has been my personal experience that a little prevention can go even farther than a lot of psychosis in security matters. And never underestimate how many nut jobs there are among us, who, just to be blunt, will kill for things that are senseless to you. Their motivations are not your motivations. They are truly post modern, in the most modern sense, and because of that some people are dangerous in ways not common to the common man. Or woman.
So if your gut ever tingles with that, "something is just all wrong with this..." feeling, then trust your gut. It knows more than you do. Because the more recognized by others you become, then the more recognized you are by others even when you have no idea that you're being recognized by others. It's part of your occupation now. That's just reality.
Always be prepared, just in case, and the odds say nothing bad will ever occur in a case like yours, but if it does, and you're ready, well, that beats the alternative.
You know a happy ending trumps a bad one most every time, regardless of what you read in the reviews.
So, Godspeed in every sense.
And I'll be looking for it.
By the by, I meant to say, "navel-gazingly" but this is one time I actually agree with a Microsoft spelling screw-up.
Navel-gapingly makes me laugh.
I was planning to avoid the comic store for a couple of weeks. My car has been making a nasty rumbling sound, and I feared a $1,000+ repair. No, that's not my two-week comic budget; but it would be hard to justify comics while scraping by for car repairs.
Turns out the tire shop guy who replaced my tires a couple of weeks ago didn't tighten a wheel down properly. Total bill: $80 to replace one wheel post. (Worth it just because I get to crow to the tire guy, who has been in the business for 30 years and should know better, and who also happens to be my big brother...)
So now I'm off to the local comic shop to look for CAIRO!
Just so you know, Willow, I passed up Mr. Willingham's latest Jack of Fables book for this; and though I was weak and picked up one more book -- Jeff Smith's Shazam! Monster Society of Evil -- yours was the one I read first. I read it while enjoying a big meal at my favorite local Middle Eastern restaurant. It seemed appropriate.
The meal was excellent, as always. The book was better.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.