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the sydney jewish report | May 2022
A UTH O R
INTERVIEW
Laughter and trauma
JOANNE FEDLER Dov and Joanne Fedler have just published a decidedly different book about the Holocaust. Gagman is a graphic novel and a literary work. The Jewish Report spoke with Joanne. Tell me a little about Dov Fedler and Joanne Fedler. Dov was born and bred into the golden age of comics (the 1940s). He picked up a pencil at the age of four and has never stopped drawing. Johannesburg has been his home for 82 years. He was the Star newspaper’s political cartoonist for 50 years. On a trip to the US more than 40 years ago, he met with The Lubavitcher Rebbe who told him to “finish your book”. Dov believes Gagman is the book the Rebbe was referring to though at the time he hadn’t begun to write it. Joanne is a speaker, publisher, writing mentor and internationally bestselling author of 14 books including Secret Mothers’ Business, Things Without a Name and Unbecoming. She is Dov’s writing mentor, editor and middle daughter. Give me a snapshot of the book Gagman. What is it about? Gagman is a comedian in a Nazi concentration camp who survives by making the commandant laugh. He lives on the edge of madness. He escapes to the new world to find the meaning of life, post-hell, with a comic book of Superman in his hands. How did your father and you come to combine your skills to produce it? My dad has been working on Gagman for 35 years. I first heard him speak about it when I was 19. After writing a draft, he then began to draw images of the book burning in Berlin and of Gagman in the camps telling jokes to the commandant. Eventually, a project that has brewed for too long becomes habitually unresolved and can feel unresolvable. Too many drafts can dissipate the energy of an idea, making it impossible to tame. When my mother was diagnosed with cancer at the end of 2020, I knew I had to distract him while she was having chemotherapy and I realised that I had to put my hand up to finish this intergenerational project. Dov had all but given up on this book ever being birthed. He gave me complete control and I took all the drafts, forensically picked them apart and stitched together a coherent narrative. I made hundreds of difficult editorial decisions and came up with a “solution” to the “unfinishable” nature of the story. Why a hybrid tome, namely part graphic novel and part literary fiction? Why not one or the other? Dov is first and foremost a political cartoonist and after writing a first draft,
From left: Dorrine, Dov and Joanne Fedler (photo taken in South Africa in March 2020). Dorrine passed away in October 2021.
his pen began to itch with images to animate the text. The images become a sort of “commentary” on the text, which is also broken into comedian’s notes and literary chapters. It has taken your father 35 years to complete. Why so long? The book is Talmudic, Kabbalistic – it engages myth, comedic spiels, comic book culture, as well as the most difficult period in Jewish history. Some of Dov’s family died in the concentration camps, causing his mother to die of a heart-attack at
the age of 55. His father then married a Holocaust survivor who had lost her son and husband in the gas chambers. Dov had to wade through this intergenerational haunting to get to Gagman. Who do you think the book will appeal to? Anyone who is interested in the Holocaust or the role of humour in overcoming trauma. Its 47 illustrations evoke echoes of Maus by Art Spiegelman, but it is a rich literary text at the same time.
What would you like people who read the work to take away from the experience? Dov wants readers to have a rattling good read and emerge with a deeper understanding of racial discrimination and the horrors to which it can lead. He hopes the book instils a sense of hope about the power of the mind, humour and laughter to help us survive the unimaginable traumas of this world. Would you collaborate with your father again and if so, on what? This is the fourth book I have helped my father write. I coached him through writing his memoir, Out of Line. I wrote the content and published If You Can Write, You Can Draw and I mentored him through the writing of Starlite Memories, about a time when he wrote and directed a movie in Zulu despite not being able to speak the language. I think I have honoured my father sufficiently to say, “he’s on his own from here”. So, what is next up for Joanne Fedler? I am launching a mindful swimming program for women and am hoping to use my skills to help companies and movements that are fighting climate change. Also, my novel Things Without A Name has been optioned for a six part TV mini-series. You can buy Gagman by clicking onto this link: https://www.booktopia.com.au/ gagman-dov-fedler
