James Joyce, the Comic Book
I was a low-grade comic book nerd as a child and well into my teen years. Not a dedicated collector, but an impassioned consumer of the stories and appreciator of the art form. I was equally happy in the Marvel and DC Universes, with an occasional foray into the world of Archie.* It didn't take much of a leap for me to become an adult fan of graphic novels and their non-fiction cousins.**
James Joyce, Portrait of a Dubliner, by Spanish graphic novelist Alfonso Zapico, is a charming addition to the growing body of graphic biographies that explore the lives of cultural icons such as Charles Darwin, the Carter Family and Steve Jobs. Joyce's peripatetic life is particularly well suited to the episodic nature of the form.
Zapico makes no attempt to provide a Classic Comics interpretation of Joyce's famously impenetrable writing. Instead he gives a clear-eyed depiction of the life that created the work. The work is surprisingly comic given Joyce's struggles with poverty, censorship, literary rejection, serious health problems, near blindness and his beloved daughter's mental illness. Zapico treats Joyce with both humor and respect, but does not sugar coat the writer's drunkenness, infidelities, financial irresponsibility, and cheerful willingness to bite any helping hand that came his way. Some of the most powerful portions of the work deal with Joyce's relationships with those closest to him, including his literary frenemy Ezra Pound, his brother Stanislaus, and his lifelong love and muse, Nora Barnacle, who is the most fully realized character in the work outside Joyce himself.
The visual language of the work is sophisticated. The grey-wash backgrounds are drawn with meticulously realized historical detail. Joyce and his contemporaries are rendered with a jaunty, comic book-style line. Taken together, the contrasting styles allow Zapico to move smoothly between the comic and the tragic, ending with a bittersweet homage to Joyce's influence on Dublin in the years since his death.
If you haven't found your way into graphic literature, this is a good place to start.
*What? You didn't like Josie and the Pussycats?
**Not to mention the current run of comic book superheroes on screens large and small. And well, comic books. My current favorites are Ms. Marvel, the Goddess Thor, and Velvet Templeton.
This review, minus the thoughts about comic books and my misspent youth, previously appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers.
We Have Winners!
Thanks so much to those of you who threw your name into the middle-sized mixing bowl for the book drawing, and to those of you who read, commented, shared posts, pointed out typos,* and otherwise engaged with History in the Margins over the last five years. If it weren't for you, I'd feel like I was talking to myself in the library stacks.**
Here's the list of lucky winners:
Laurie Blum
Liz Davidson (Just a book. No kittens. Sorry, Liz.)
Bart Ingraldi
Jeannette P
Connie Ruzich
Emily Stahl
Julia Travers
Karin Wetmore
Send me your mailing address.*** I will get the books in the mail next week.
Here's to twelve more months of telling stories, reading Big Fat History Books together, taking road trips and other history nerd high jinks!
*Much appreciated, even though I don't always remember to say thank you.
**Which I sometimes do, now that I think of it. But I don't stand in the stacks and tell stories. Because that would be weird. Unlike, say, threatening the invasive plants in the front yard with bodily harm. There was no need for that dog-walker to look so alarmed this morning.
***By email, people. Do not post your address on the blog. Nothing good will come of that.
The Not-Just-Irish Potato Famine
In a recent blog post, I made a reference to the Irish Potato famine, started to link to the prior post I was sure I had written on the subject, and was stunned to realize that blog post existed only in my imagination.* Allow me to rectify that error.
When the Spanish imported potatoes from Peru in the sixteenth century, Europe's peasants embraced the new crop as a miracle food. They could be planted in fallow fields, produced more food per acre than existing grain crops, and could be left in the ground until you needed them, making them less of a target for plundering soldiers in times of war. For much of Europe, the new crop meant a better diet for the poor and a reduced chance of famine.
In Ireland, however, potatoes were soon linked with political and economic oppression. After Cromwell invaded in 1649, the English relocated the native Irish to the western provinces, where it was too wet to grow grain. Unable to grow grain themselves and unable to afford imported grain, Ireland's peasants built a subsistence economy based on the potato. Like all one-crop economies, it was a disaster waiting to happen. Enter the "hungry '40s".
Widespread failure of grain crops between 1845 and 1847 created food shortages across Europe, made worse by the potato blight of 1845. European grain prices increased between 100 and 150 percent over the course of two years, drastically affecting the standard of living for both peasants and urban workers, the later of whom typically spent seventy percent of their income on food. Food riots were common, escalating into violence directed at local landlords, tax collectors and factory owners. The crisis in agriculture was accompanied by industrial and financial collapse, which in turn led to widespread unemployment and greater unrest. In 1848, armed rebellions occurred in France, Austria, Prussia and most of the smaller German and Italian states , caused in part by the food shortages.
Ireland was the hardest hit by the potato blight. Potatoes had never displaced grain and mixed farming on the Continent or in England. Only Ireland depended on potatoes for survival, its population reduced to abject poverty by English laws that limited the right of the Irish to own land in their own country. When the blight struck, most Irish had no food reserves. Much of Europe was hungry; Irish peasants suffered from a largely artificial famine.
By October, 1846, ninety percent of the Irish potato crop had been lost. By December, potato prices had doubled. Absentee landlords allowed their agents to evict farmers who could not pay their rent, exacerbating the effects of the blight by further reducing harvests. An epidemic of typhus killed 350,000 from a population that was already weakened by starvation.
Throughout the five years of the famine, Ireland remained a net exporter of food. The potato crop failed, but other crops thrived. Irish grain and cattle were exported to England as if nothing were wrong. Prime Minister Robert Peel pushed through the repeal of the Corn Laws, which taxed grain imports at a high rate, in an effort to help the starving Irish. He was forced to resign and replaced by Lord John Russell, a proponent of laissez-faire economics, who declared, "we cannot feed the people" and demanded that Irish relief be paid for by the starving Irish themselves.
Committees of volunteers set up relief projects and soup kitchens. Donations came in from places as unlikely as Calcutta, Jamaica, and the Choctaw Indian tribe. By the summer of 1847, over three million people were being fed in soup kitchens. It wasn't enough to combat the "Great Hunger". Ireland lost one quarter of its population to the shortage of food and the unwillingness of the British government to provide public relief. About one million Irish died of starvation and disease between 1845 and 1851. Another million, the youngest and strongest, emigrated to America, Britain and Australia where, like new immigrant populations before and after them, they faced discrimination in jobs and housing.**
*Hmmm. Imaginary Blog Posts--it has a certain ring doesn't it?
**Interestingly, the middle class German radicals who fled to the United States after the revolutions of 1848 enjoyed a warmer welcome.