Review: How to Love

How to Love is the latest collection of stories by the Israeli collective Actus Tragicus. The five artists (Rutu Modan, Yirmi Pinkus, Mira Friedmann, Batia Kolton, & Itzik Rennert) have produced a half-dozen collections since the late 90s, some of them thematically arranged (you can find all of those on the Top Shelf site–I recommend all of them). This time, they propose stories around the theme of love in its varied forms. Out of the six stories (there’s also one by David Polonsky, an illustrator I didn’t know), two are gay themed or gay inclusive.

The first one is Itzik Rennert’s Love Love Love, a very funny absurdist tale recounting the life of a man and his numerous loves with both sexes. Done in page pairs of illustration/text, this story takes a view of life and love that’s neither romantic not cynical, merely describing with dry humor a man who could be called the poster child of Freud’s polymorphous perverse theory (”[...] he simply had to see Matthias undress, now, right now. [...] Shit, he tought. His Latent Period had ended“) and the myriad ways his relationships develop, often following rather unexpected paths (“Thomas looked like a Modigliani and didn’t love him back. So he made a pass at his sister“). The art is made of collages of various media, the drawings being also done in a dozen styles. It all makes for a very entertaining and surprisingly moving story.

The second one is 8:00 to 10:00 by Yirmi Pinkus. I’d already noticed that in some of his previous stories, there were little things that made me think Pinkus might be gay, but I wasn’t sure.

In his story for Dead Herring, the 2004 Actus Tragicus anthology, a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown is advised by a possible hack doctor to pay a young guy to come live in his flat, and do nothing but sit there, silently observing the patient. Absolutely nothing happens between them, or more exactly, nothing ordinary. The story seems to be a kind of metaphor for the complexity of relationships, with the recovered man deciding to take his life into his own hands by throwing out the young guy. And it’s not even the end…That was seriously weird (in a good way), I thought when I read it.
In 2005, he was included among a group of Israeli artists invited to Germany, with German artists doing the reverse trip. All these artists drew a story about their trip for an anthology titled Cargo (you can find it here or here, as well as at Amazon), published by Avant Verlag in both German and English. Some panels showed him taking an interest in German men he passed in the streets.

From Dead Herring

From Cargo

And then, all my questions were answered by this new story, a very sweet portrait of a man waking up, taking the time to enjoy the early morning and observe life around him before going to wake up his boyfriend. Because Pinkus is portraying himself. I wouldn’t be as happy if I hadn’t enjoyed the story as much, of course. But I did. 8:00 to 10:00 stands out in this very good collection, because it’s the only story showing the everydayness (is that a real word?) of love between two adults, the priceless quality of a quiet life enriched by the presence of the one we love. Pinkus’ art is also wonderful. The colors are warm, the depiction of reality, through objects in the flat, plants, human bodies far from the cold, sterile beauty of too realistic art, strikes me as full of wonder for the little nothings that aren’t often present in fiction. The fact that it’s about a gay couple (or maybe it isn’t) enhances my pleasure, to be honest.

You can find this book at Amazon. There are a few examples of Yirmi Pinkus’ illustration work on this site (check out the Greek Olympic games illustration), and there’s a short strip of his here. As far as I know, Pinkus hasn’t published a whole graphic novel, but I hope that he someday will, as his colleague Rutu Modan recently did with her excellent Exit Wounds. I’ll undoubtedly tell you about it if he does.