Singled Out

One Book

by M.J. Fine

Since 2003, when One Book, One Philadelphia began, we've read collectively about revolution and war in Vietnam (The Things They Carried), Cuba (Waiting for Snow in Havana) and Sudan (What Is the What). Marjane Satrapi's two-volume memoir Persepolis, set in Tehran and Vienna during the Islamic revolution and the Iran-Iraq war, upholds the tradition even as it breaks the mold. Persepolis is the program's first graphic memoir and only its second selection by a female author. On the phone from her home in Paris, Satrapi is charming, thoughtful and even funnier than you'd expect from her writings and Persepolis' animated film adaptation, which she co-directed.

City Paper: I know you've done other cities' One Book programs. Are you looking forward to coming to Philadelphia?

Marjane Satrapi: Oh, absolutely! First of all, Philadelphia is [a] city that I like a lot, especially for the Philly cheesesteak, because I am a fan of cheesesteak. ... I'm always happy to go to the events when my book is chosen, but when you like the city, then it makes it even better because you embrace the whole atmosphere of the city and the people.

CP: There's a scene in your movie involving "Eye of the Tiger." Watching that with a Philadelphia audience that just adores Rocky, well, everybody just loved it.

MS: Rocky I, I watched it I don't know how many — many, many, many, many — times while I was still living in Iran. I loved it a lot, because at the end he doesn't win. Even though he doesn't win, this is not at all the purpose of the movie, and I like that. It makes it more real.

CP: I like how in Persepolis, the narrator doesn't always know everything, because children don't know everything.

MS: At the time I started writing it, I was like 29. And [my goal] was not to try to play the kid that I was and still be 29. I tried to exactly remember the way I was as a child or as an adolescent. ... I tried to transmit the feelings that I had at the time when I lived them. And thank God I have a good memory, so that helped a lot to remember exactly the way I felt. ... If it's a war or not, when you are 13 years old you want the latest sneakers.

CP: Another universal theme is how crushing young love is and how it seems bigger than world problems.

MS: You can go through revolution and war, you know — but when your heart is broken, your heart is broken. ... That is the only thing in the world that we are all equal. Heartbroken, we are all the same. Because even in front of death we are not equal. If you are poor, your death might be with more suffering. If you are rich, you can die in a smoother way. But when your heart is broken, you can be poor, rich, any age, any race, whatever. That doesn't change.

CP: You say your good memory helps you to convey the feelings of childhood so vividly. Do you still find that you have a sharp memory?

MS: Oh, yeah. I don't have so many good qualities, but I have a very, very good memory. ... It's good, but in a way it's very bad also — because the brain has to make a selection so you don't remember everything. Normally you make a selection, and all the bad things, you forget them in order to be able to survive. In a case like mine, I don't forget anything. And sometimes it's painful. Then there are so many other qualities that I don't have. Like, it's impossible for me to eat without just dropping the food all over myself. Every time I eat, I have to watch my clothes. So I am unable in this way. [Give me] a cheesesteak, and I will have cheese all over my hair.

(m_fine@citypaper.net)