In episode 110 of the Drafting the Past podcast, Kate interviews historian Richard Jobs and anthropologist and illustrator Steven Van Wolputte. Rick and Steven teamed up to write, illustrate and create In the Land of the Lacandón: A Graphic History of Adventure and Imperialism. Part graphic history, part historical essay, part poetic commentary and more, the book not only tells the history of one moment in 20th century imperial exploration and anthropology but also takes apart the act of historical research and narration and turns it inside out for the reader. Rick and Steven discussed how they conceived of and developed the project and how they collaborated across countries. They also talked about the possibilities of historical narrative, and why the book would be a great teaching tool. And don’t miss the pretty amazing reading list they slipped in at the end.

Links to bookshop.org are affiliate links.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Richard Ivan Jobs and Steven Van Wolputte, with Manuel Bolom Pale, In the Land of the Lacandón: A Graphic History of Adventure and Imperialism
• Richard Ivan Jobs, Backpack Ambassadors: How Youth Travel Integrated Europe
• Richard Ivan Jobs, Riding the New Wave: Youth and the Rejuvenation of France After the Second World War
• Manuel Bolom Pale
• Voyagers Without Trace
• Matthew Barrett and Robert C. Engen, Through Their Eyes: A Graphic History of Hill 70 and Canada’s First World War
• Joe Sacco, Journalism
• Alison Bechdel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama, The Secret to Superhuman Strength
• Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale
• Michael Vann and Liz Clarke, The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empire, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam
• Nick Sousanas, Unflattening
• Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre
• Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller
• Louisa Passerini, Autobiography of a Generation: Italy, 1968
• Bonnie Smith, Confessions of a Concierge: Madame Lucie’s History of Twentieth-Century France
• Craig Thompson, Ginseng Roots: A Memoir

Hey there! This is the Drafting the Past

podcast, a show all about how historians research and write

history. I'm Kate Carpenter, and for this episode, I got to

interview two authors who wrote a book unlike anything I have

featured on the show before. Historian Rick Jobs and

anthropologist and illustrator Steven Van Wolputte teamed up to

write, illustrate, and create *In the Land of the Lacandon: A

Graphic History of Adventure and Imperialism.* Part graphic

history, part historical essay, part poetic commentary, and

more, the book not only tells the history of one moment in

20th-century imperial exploration and anthropology,

but it also takes apart the act of historical research and

narration and turns it inside out for the reader. As you'll

hear in the episode, I think it would be an incredibly useful

book for teaching what historians do and the

limitations to how we do it. I had a great time talking with

Rick and Steven about how they conceived of and developed the

project and how they collaborated across countries

and formats. Our conversation also delved into the

possibilities of historical narrative itself. I think you're

going to get a lot out of my conversation with Rick Jobs and

Steven Van Wolputte. Here's Rick first.

I'm a historian of modern Europe. I did my graduate

work at Rutgers University a while ago, and I've-- most of my

most of my work has been in history of youth and young

people and pop culture, 20th century stuff. My first book was

about post war France. My next monograph was a very big project

dealing with youth travel and backpacking, history of

backpacking, and eurailing and interrailing, and that sort of

stuff. Yeah, and I teach at Pacific University, which is a

small private liberal arts college. You know, no graduate

students. I'm in a history department of three people, so

very much teaching centered. But I've you know maintained an

active academic scholarly sort of agenda profile. Steven?

Steven Van Wolputte: So I'm Steven, and I'm an

anthropologist, social and cultural anthropology at KU

Leuven. We have a slightly bigger department than Rick has,

which probably is not that difficult. And I've, most of my

work is situated in Southern Africa, mainly Namibia, and

nowadays also South Africa. And I worked mainly on the in the

border region between Namibia and Angola with cattle herders.

So it's very far away, quite literally an ocean away, from

the Lacandon. And what I have been publishing on on on a lot

of stuff ranging from popular culture to music to to beer. I

like I like especially my beer book. On futuring, making

futures, that was, and then the latest one is the one that you

have read.

How did you come to illustration?

Steven Van Wolputte: When I was young, until I was 16, I liked

to make comics myself. And then there is a hiatus from about I

don't know 30 years or something, and then I started

to, well, basically I wanted to do something with with something

that one of my colocuters or interlocutors had said, and and

he also made a little, well, draw, sketch in in my notebook,

and years later I found that sketch and I wanted to say I can

I can do something with that. So I decided like okay, but years

and years ago I was making comic books. Let's make a comic book

out of that. And then it got published. Another another one

got published. And then via mutual friend, when Rick had his

idea of doing something on Bernard de Colmont, via mutual

Well, In the Land of the Lacandon is a an

friend, he arrived at at me, and then that was the start of five

years of back and forth across the ocean via Zoom, via Teams,

an occasional meeting somewhere in a in a Starbucks in in Belgium.

unusual book. I almost want to say unique, and I wonder if you

could just start out actually by describing it for listeners who

haven't gotten to read it.

In the Land of the Lacandon is a short book written

for a more general public, perhaps even undergraduate

audience, that tells the story of a French explorer who goes to

Chiapas, southern Mexico, in the 1930s to be the first to film

the Lacandon, a quite famously quote unquote lost tribe, but of

course they're not lost at all. And to tell this story, we have

tried to do it in multiple genres, in multiple medias. So,

so there's there's four main components to the book. So the

first is a graphic history telling the story of Bernard de

Colmont and and his adventures as he described them in. And

then there's a historical essay after that, sort of

historicizing Bernard de Colmont and exploration and the Lacandon

and all that sort of stuff. And then we have a contribution from

Manuel Bolom Pale, an indigenous writer poet from Chiapas who

wrote a poem about this whole episode-a long poem that's

printed both in Tsotsil Maya and in English-and then we have a

dialog among the three authors in which we sort of talk about

process and method and what we were doing and what we were

thinking and why we made choices that we made, so it's it's sort

of as a it takes a historical a little historical story, and

ruminates quite a bit on historical storytelling, and

what that looks like through different medium of writing.

How did you come to this project, and how did you

how did you come to work on it together?

About a decade ago, a little more than a decade ago, I

was brought in to be the historical consultant on a

documentary film that had significant focus on Bernard de

Colmont. And in 1938, the film is about this moment in his life

when he kayaks down the Green and Colorado rivers, and he

films it in color film. And so the filmmaker was a local

Portland filmmaker, and he sort of recreated that trip of kayaks

following that route and what it looks like now and that sort of

stuff. That documentary film is called Voyagers Without Trace.

The filmmaker was Ian McCluskey. So I was introduced to Bernard

de Colmont by being brought into this film project, and then you

know learned about this trip to Mexico that had happened a few

years earlier than the subject of the film. And anyway, Bernard

de Colmont has lots of interesting aspects and

dimensions to his life, and so my initial idea was a book that

would sort of each chapter would be in a different genre, would

would adopt a different sort of genre of sort of telling these

different episodes of Bernard de Colmont's life. For example, the

chapter after this graphic history was was going to be a

history, you know, what does it look like when a historian

writes a history in the style of a historical romance, for

example, which was what I was working on when the the book

project eventually fell apart because of well elder care, I

had elder care duties. So I wanted I wanted to play with

historical methodology and historical storytelling and

genre, and I also wanted to collaborate. So one of the

things I liked about being on this film was sort of seeing,

okay, how's this filmmaker approaching this topic, and and

sort of the behind the scenes. I I love behind the scenes things,

sort of seeing how things are made, how things are done.

Anyway, so I was describing this to, Steven already mentioned

this mutual friend, Paul Silverstein, who's an

anthropologist here in Portland at Reed College, and I was

describing to him, oh, you know, I think I want to do something

really different. Backpack Ambassadors has just come out,

which was this huge, huge project, a big monograph, and I

was like, okay, I feel like I've done that, and I want, I want to

do something creative, possibly artful, and I said, "Gosh, this

episode in Mexico really seems like it ought to be, it ought to

be a comic. It ought to be. It just I was familiar with mid

20th century francophone comics. My very first publication was a

journal article about you know censorship of of comics in the

mid 20th century in France. So quite familiar with the genre,

but I'm not an artist at all. And anyway, Paul said, "Ah, you

should talk to Steven Van Wolputte because he's been

experimenting with graphic ethnography. Like he's been

incorporating graphic and comics into his ethnography as an

anthropologist. And the fact that Steven was an

anthropologist was great also because Bernard de Colmont was

there doing an ethnographic film, right? And so we had a

collaboration then of you know historian and anthropologist,

researcher and graphic illustrator, and yeah. So that's

how that's how it came together,

Steven, what did you think when you heard about

this project?

Steven Van Wolputte: I was intrigued. That's one thing. And

well, Rick was very enthusiastic about the entire project, even

though I must admit, and he knows it, that he was like a

little hungover when we met for the first time. Sorry, Rick. I

had to. I had to mention.

Steven Van Wolputte: Yeah. We are both. We are both beer

aficionados. So that also helps. Anyway, so I was. I was enthused

Yes. Yes. Yes.

by his enthusiasm, and then, but also played a role. So we met, I

think, Rick was it in December 2019 or? So around that time,

and then so we parted ways, and then we started to kind of you

know like think about it and and ruminate on it, and then COVID

struck, and that first year I think I made one or two drawings

just to, you know, like COVID time, spend some time, and then

I sent it to Rick, and then it was like, yeah, okay, let's

let's do this. And then at first, like at first, the very

the very first version was like 15 pages or so. That was

finished one one year or two years after our first meeting,

and then we thought like there is more to it, and then so it

kind of evolved in in subsequent versions, with lots of back and

forth on. And and Rick Rick really knows his comics, so that

also helped. And it was also that we had really fun

discussions online. Really knows his comics, and then that link

was also not that far fetched because you know the the early

comics in the 19 say 20s 30s they were of course also in

black and white and you had many of them if not all of them that

were about adventures in faraway places, Tarzan is just perhaps

the the best known, and of course the Belgian connection,

Tintin who around that time was about to publish, Herge was

about to publish his third or his fourth album by then. So,

and again, Rick mentioned French censorship, which was a a very

What was the process like for producing the

important element also in Belgian comic production.

project? How did you work together?

I did the archival research I did, you know,

archival research in France and the U.S. and Mexico, turned up

quite a few periodical publications after this. After

his, he makes two trips, as you know. After the first trip,

there's a press conference in Hollywood, actually, and sort of

gets covered pretty widely. And then De Colmont himself authored

a few like magazine spread sort of things, and of particular

value in an archive, I found radio transcripts of of a radio

program, of basically you know 10 to 12 page scripts that he

had written as radio lectures, and also did some archival work

in Mexico, and so I would sort of, as I was doing this, I would

feed stuff to Steven, and he would, he he was really in

charge of the graphic, you know, thinking about he he laid out a

storyboard and was doing the drawings, and we would confer

quite a bit, and I would be working on the essay and

fleshing it out, and doing more digging in the secondary source,

you know, research that needed to be done to figure out what

was going on. And we would sort of, we would sort of say, okay,

so I'm going to be able to dedicate time working on this

the the last two weeks of February or whatever. Like we

would just sort of share each other's schedule and when we

thought we could hunker down, and sort of set a loose deadline

for when we would sort of exchange and then comment and

revise, and so we would have yeah meetings on video and share

things via email.

Steven Van Wolputte: Exactly. And then Rick fed me with the

archival materials and stuff. There was also a movie that de

Colmont had made in, help me Rick, 1937. It was it was

published.

It came out, yeah, 37.

Steven Van Wolputte: So we also got hold of we we also got hold

of that, and so and I was feeding him with drawings and

ideas, and he also commented a lot on not just on the drawings

but also on the the storyline, the dialogs, which, as you know,

is the most difficult thing to write. Also in comics, also

because the space that you have is quite limited, so you really

have to kind of boil it down to the very essence, and and so it

went back and forth a couple of times, and then once that we had

something that we thought was presentable, then we shared it

with colleagues. I shared it with my students, and so on and

so on.

Yeah, we would. I think, Steven, I don't know when

you started referring to them as version 1.0, version 2.0,

version three. Like that, that became the version that once we

got we got to a certain point, and we felt like okay, let's

let's share it with people and get some feedback, and so that

would be different people. So you know, I would typically send

it to historians and with expertise in particular areas,

and Steven would send it to anthropologists with expertise

in particular, and some people who were experts or you know had

expertise in graphic stuff and that sort of thing. So that and

that was quite influential and shaped quite a bit. So, for

example, version 1.0, when it was like the graphic was maybe I

don't know 14, 15, pages, and the essay was maybe 6000 words

or so. That's the initial thing we shared with about half a

dozen people, one of whom was Alice Conklin, who's a historian

at Ohio State. And an expert on French imperialism who wrote a

book on the Museum of Man, which features significantly in this,

and and she wrote back very quickly, very enthusiastically.

It was still pretty rough, but she said, "Oh my goodness, oh my

goodness, you know, this I imagine, she, as I said, she

said Ohio State. I imagine being able to teach with this, you

know, that that this would be such a tool for me to talk to my

you know I think she said my Big 10 now it's the Big 16 I don't

know what it is now but to talk to to reach those students. And

at that point we hadn't yet fully decided that we were going

to lean into this as a teaching tool, but that really that

really helped us sort of, we'd already been thinking about it,

but it helped us sort of go, okay. So somewhat in our in my

head, at least, I had, you know, in my head who who the audience

was was students in a a modern European history class at Ohio

State.

Steven Van Wolputte: And that is also what germinated, Rick, was

basically Rick's idea to have, to basically he said like, why

don't you draw me and introduce an avatar, Rick the avatar, and

so that was also the idea behind situating its start and and

ending of the graphic in in a lecture hall.

Yeah, the avatars actually we didn't originally

have Avatar Rick in there. We had a few problems or a few

challenges that we needed to deal with, and Avatar Rick

helped us deal with that. First is, one thing that's quite

unique about this: the graphic history part of this is both the

images and the narration are based on primary sources. Most

graphic histories, the images are invented, as is the dialog.

But we had Bernard de Colmont's words through those radio

lectures and his magazine articles, and we had images. We

had dozens of photographs, and we had a film. So we really

wanted Bernard de Colmont to tell the story, but we needed to

we needed to distinguish Bernard de Colmont's voice from our

voice as authors. We didn't want the reader to confuse those

things, so Avatar Rick helped us distinguish that, and it also

helped us introduce a means of of sort of very subtle citation.

So there's no footnotes in in the in the graphic history, but

anything that any any speech bubble that's you know black

text on a white is all primary sourced, and anything that's

white text on black is Avatar Rick speaking, and that's the

secondary information and source criticism, and so it enabled us

to sort of visually create kind of a citation system of showing

how primary and secondary material works together, but it

also helped us to introduce the topic and move from the graphic

into the essay. We were really concerned that the reader would

read the graphic and then not continue into the the next part,

the essay, and so by having Avatar Rick sort of frame that

story in that classroom lecture hall at the end when we have

those students ask those questions in the graphic, and

Avatar Rick, you know, it's a way of inviting the reader to

sort of recognize, oh, there's still, there's still so much

more to the story, and keep reading. Turn the page and now

read the essay. So it solved like a bunch of different

challenges that we were facing.

Steven Van Wolputte: What you now told in, say, three or four

minutes actually took four years, but just just a little

note.

Steven, were there other challenges that you

encountered of presenting these primary sources visually?

Steven Van Wolputte: Yeah. But what we, I I also did you know

what you can call visual research, such as like the the

vehicles that we use, they're they're supposed to be more or

less more or less historically correct because we don't know

what vessel he took to cross the ocean, but I found a vessel that

was called Mexico and that was dead Mexico and that was

traveling between France and Mexico, for instance. That was

very likely, or not unlikely at least, that he was on on that

one. So that was one thing, and we tried to stay as close as

possible to the the visuals that we had that we did have. So, but

that also meant, for instance, because the film was shot on 60

millimeters in the 1930s, that's very coarse and very coarse

grain, and it was very difficult to kind of include the the video

stills because when you print them, you can hardly see

anything. You see some black and some white spots and and stuff.

But with drawings, you can you can do something with that. That

you can, but these much of these drawings were based on actual

footage and and and photographs. And then one challenge was then

how do you fill in the blanks? And so I haven't I haven't I

don't have the count in my head, Rick, but we once made a count,

like, these were you know, like, images that were derived

directly from primary sources, and these were the images that

we kind of made up. And sometimes you need to intervene,

as I as I said, also to present the interaction between people.

That that of course that you kind of fill in the gaps to make

the story more fluent and to continue to tell the story,

because as a storyteller, I mean, one big challenge for for

everyone, also when you write anthropology or history, but

also when you make drawings, is to kind of bring a narrative,

bring a story that that is not only you know that not only says

something, but that is also captivating, that also drags the

reader into the story, and that is always, okay, being an

academic, being an academic, that is especially a challenge.

Without dumbing it down and wanting to say something,

wanting to say what you want to say, but in a way that people a

understand it, and secondly, that it is good to read, which

is another challenge. Hence, also the importance of dialog,

which of course, in in a written text, you can hide behind

descriptions of the landscape or or whatever. But in a graphic,

actually, apart from the drawings, the the written text

that is there is basically all dialog, and that is one of for

me that is also in my academic stuff. That is also one of the

more, like you mentioned, Kate, challenging aspects of of the

storytelling to keep the the narrative going and at the same

time convey ideas, basically.

Right, but you also but but you're you're conveying

you're conveying information. You, I mean, let me. I mean, I

didn't do any of the drawing, so this is Steven. But you you

convey you convey information visually too, right?

Steven Van Wolputte: Of course.

You're conveying some of that content that in a in a

written narrative would be descriptive through visual

presentation.

Steven Van Wolputte: And visually, when you work with

visuals, you do have a number of advantages. For instance, is

relatively easy to express, take now emotion or emotional states

because you can you can see the face and you can manipulate

eyebrows and mouth and and all that stuff and and of course the

descriptions that you normal, that normally take up quite

quite some space in in anthropology books, for

instance, like this is how the landscape looks like this is how

the the house looks like that is what you convey quite directly,

or more directly via via an image, on the condition, of

course, that your readership is able to read images, because

that's another thing, and that is also what you, what we were

hoping for at least. So that also means what level of detail

do you include? For instance, do you work with color? We decided

against that to remain in the spirit of 1930s comic culture.

So, yeah, these are all decisions that were taken in the

course of those five years.

We would occasionally disagree about things, and one

of us would sort of convince the other one. So, I'll give an

example. This is one that, this is one that Steven, Steven won

this one. So you might recall in the graphic, there's a page

where where Bernard de Colmont is sort of in the superhero

pose, you know, and he's all big, muscly, and that sort of

stuff. We need, we knew we needed to do more commentary

with about gender and masculinity, and we had we had

the textual, the narrative stuff that we could sort of use to

talk about that, but we didn't have anything visually that

necessarily that would work, and so Steven presented this

superhero pose, you know, of a of a big burly, you know, like

Paul Bunyan sort of Bernard de Colmont, and I was like, this

isn't really, you know, for if we're sticking to primary

sources, this isn't really a primary. He says, yeah, but this

is, you know, this is doing multiple things, right? It's

calling attention to the emergence of the superhero

comic, which was exactly at this moment. It's suggesting that,

but also this is this is a way, this is a visual interpretation

of what these words are describing here. That we have

this journalist sort of describing de Colmont, and this

is this is an interpretation of a primary source, but it's

visual, you know. And I was like, okay, you're right, you're

right. Ex

Steven Van Wolputte: You explain it better than I could, but

okay.

You know, I loved all the different

components of this book. It's so interesting. I too thought about

how great it would be to teach with this because you really,

you sort of like have a narrative, but then you

deconstruct how that narrative comes together. Did you always

have all of those components in mind, or did some emerge as you

were working on the project?

We knew components would be part of it. We didn't

necessarily know what it would be or what they would look like.

I tend, as a as a researcher and and particularly as a writer, I

figure things out as I go. So, Kate, I've listened to your you

know podcast quite a bit, and of course, so many of your your

authors are are producing you know trade press books, and I

hear these descriptions of these proposals, right? These detailed

proposals in which they have. Like I could, I can't do that.

Like I don't know, I don't know until I'm in it and figuring it

out as I go. So, you know, we knew the graphic would be a part

of it. We knew there'd be an essay about it, and of course,

we have the dilemma of the Lacandon. Like Bernard de

Colmont never lets them speak, right? They never, they never

articulate anything in in his tellings, various tellings of

this episode, but we knew we didn't want to speak for them.

We knew we didn't want to invent anything. I mean, in part

because we wanted to call attention to it. We wanted to

call attention to this, you know, in the graphic and in the

essay. And so, we just started to think about well, what could

we do? We thought we need someone, you know, we need

someone indigenous to do something, and so I went to the

library, you know, and started doing some more reading, and

came across Manuel's work, and just thought, ooh, this, this

fellow's, I like I like what he's doing, I like his work, and

it it took a while to get in contact with him, and then we

just sort of said, Listen, do you want to? You know, he he

he's a he does poetry, he does photographic essays, he does you

know short stories. He he's sort of does lots of different

things. We just sort of said, "Do you want to participate?

Here here's what we're doing. Here's our materials as far as

we've gotten, which would probably be version 3.0 or 4.0,

the the amount of book came in. I think the published versions

maybe version 6.0, I would guess. And he saw what we were

doing, and then he says, "Yeah, all right." And not long after,

a couple of months later, it's pretty fast, really. We got this

poem, you know, that was like this extended version from the

point of view of the Lacandon, and it just opened up. It just

opened up so much more, right? Sort of. One thing about this

project that sort of evolved as we did it is, you know, how

does, what does a historian do? How do they think about these

questions? What's their method? Same thing with anthropologists,

and then we have a poet, and what a contrast that poem is to

the comic and to the essay. And at the same time, each of those

pieces are sort of commenting on each other. One thing I really

love about it is, and one thing we played up is how each

approach has its advantages and its disadvantages. That is, they

each have limitations to what within the realm of of methods

and process of what they can do, and therefore what they can each

contribute. So, for example, the poem. So, as historians, right,

one thing we we struggle with a lot is interiority, right?

Motives and stuff. Because unless you have, which is rare,

you actually have a source that really articulates your

historical subject's interiority, what they're

thinking and why they're doing things and that sort of stuff.

And so, we sort of we write around those things as best we

can because it's difficult to comment on that stuff, and we

draw attention to that. I mean, we wanted to draw attention in

the comic and in the essay to the limitations of what was

knowable, right? We very much point out what we, what

questions we weren't able to answer through research that we

couldn't find those answers, and then the poem comes in, and it's

all about interiority, right? It's all about subjectivity, and

Manuel writes, and in the voice of these different Lacandon,

describing sort of very situated in place and in nature and in

the jungle, and and so I just I love that, right?

And then the dialog at the end, which is another traditional

form of of writing, gives us a chance as the authors to

likewise dig into what we were thinking and why we were

thinking that and what the challenges were. So, I mean, all

of that sort of gets figured out as we went, to answer your

original question about the components, I very much this is

true. My monographs too. I figure it out as I go. Once I

have a piece figured out, then I figure out okay, what's the

piece that needs to come before that, and then what would

logically follow, and and things sort of build out like that.

Steven Van Wolputte: Same here. I also like to figure it out as

I go along, and also I'm a I'm an amateur, so I can do that.

Amateur draw-- I'm not a professional artist, on the

contrary. So, but I also liked, you know, like to figure out how

to make that particular drawing, and there were many many failed

attempts, by the way, for each and every drawing.

I think it's really interesting, this book,

this book has two additional components too. There is a

discussion guide at the end, and then there's also a really

interesting note section where you were not only sort of citing

your sources, but also they're kind of discursive, talking

about how those sources became images and what went into them.

How did you think about those sections too?

Go ahead, Steven. You wrote the notes, so.

Steven Van Wolputte: I thought it was important that I mean,

okay, in a in a graphic you don't include footnotes. That

would be awkward to say the least. And footnotes in general

are or can be quite awkward. But I thought it was also important

for not just for the mentioning of the sources. That's one

thing. So that was where it started. And then I thought it

was also important to kind of comment on these drawings in a

way that helped people to situate not just where they came

from, but also how to place them within the narratives. It's kind

of a meta commentary. Also, to I mean, drawing is much, drawing

is much like writing, of course, and with visuals, you do have,

like I said, it's not always you can't always assume that your

audience has the necessary visual literacy, if that is a

term, in order to to to see where these images come from or

what they mean or why they are look why they they they are

framed like that, for instance, or for instance, how to read the

space between the so-called gutter in in comic book theory,

and that is main. And I thought it was also fun to to do and to

also have some some some some of my own ideas that I smuggled in.

Not that that was an issue, because we had a lot of

discussions, and it was all always, if I recall well, always

very friendly and amicable.

And we put in some Easter eggs. There's some Easter

eggs in there too that are explained in the notes.

Steven Van Wolputte: That was also a fun part.

Did you ever consider making it longer?

I mean, it kept getting longer. I mean,

certainly initially. So initially, like when I first

approached him, it was just going to be you know a chapter

in a bigger thing, and you know we were imagining 12 to 15

pages, and it ended up like I don't know 50 plus maybe. But I

feel like I mean I yeah I mean Steven, I mean, I feel like

it's, I feel like it's complete. However, oh this is kind of

juicy. So about a month before, about a month before the book

came out, you might recall that de Colmont made two trips, and

the second trip, which is incorporated into the graphic,

we didn't find a lot of material about. It's it's not, he he

returns to record their language after having made the first trip

where he filmed them. Just like a month or maybe before the book

came out, we were contacted by the grandson of his assistant on

that second trip. He he he had I don't know he he'd found out

that we were doing some research in Bernard de Colmont. He didn't

know the book was about to come out, but anyway, he has he and

he shared with us his grandfather was an artist, and

so he had all these sketches of the Lacandon that his

grandfather had made, and lots of additional photographs. His

grandfather was also a musician and played the flute. And

there's there's images of his grandfather with the Lacandon

playing musical instruments. And he told also a tale that that

supposedly, according to family lore, Bernard de Colmont

abandoned him in Guatemala at the end of the trip, something

we'd never heard before. So anyway, so there were, as it

turns out, and there probably still are out there, materials

that could have helped us make the graphic longer if we had

found them or known about them. But of course, this also feeds

back into our whole point that we make in the book to the

reader about sources and what available source material allows

you to say and questions that allows you to answer. And if you

don't have the source material as a historian, it's really

difficult to do those things. But then you know there are

there's stuff out there and you don't know if you can find it.

But I think what we did it as it is the stories feels complete,

right? Like the arc feels nicely accomplished narratively.

Steven Van Wolputte: I think when we finished the book, that

was also the material that we had. It was only after it was

already in in print but not yet published that this email came

along, which of course sparked ideas of like maybe we can make

a sequel, maybe we can make a part two, but the jury is still

out on that.

I'd like to know a little bit more about the

publishing process. Was it challenging to find a publisher

who shared your vision, who was willing to put all of this

together?

Yes, our initial thought was to publish with with

a a comics publisher, but someone that did nonfiction and

that sort of stuff, and and Steven even approached a small

press in in Belgium, and they were sort of, and then we

approached a press in the United States that we were sort of keen

on. They publish a lot in like medical anthropology, and you

know, lots of nonfiction, semi-scholarly stuff, but have a

lot of experience doing that. And there was some initial

interest from them, but then the editor was sort of not very

responsive, and that's just that's a red flag, you know, for

me. I've been very fortunate, I've always, all my books have

been with university presses, but I've been very fortunate to

have really responsive editors. But I've had friends who

haven't, and so you know that that was just like hmm, I don't

know. And so then we started approaching other presses. I'll

say, for example, Cornell was really interested, loved it,

understood it, into it, but they they hadn't published anything,

you know, graphic yet. And as, Bethany Wasik there was the

editor, as she said, you know, I want this, I want this, I want

to see this as a book, but I I don't feel like I'm not sure we

can do it justice. I'm not sure, I don't want you to be the

guinea pig. And then Emily Andrew at McGill Queens

University Press. I knew she had moved there, and I had been a

reader. I had, I'd worked for her as a as a reader of

manuscripts before, and knew she was just really efficient and on

it and direct, and I liked that. And that she was now at McGill

Queens, and they had published a book, a really good graphic

history of Canadian soldiers in the First World War at Vimy

Ridge and that sort of stuff a few years earlier. Like really

nice, really well done, well produced color, and and she and

her colleagues at McGill Queens immediately jumped on it. They

got it. They understood it. Stephen and I were sort of like,

we really want to get this done. We want to get this out. And

they they like did, they worked double time to make this happen,

and so yeah, very happy with the work that so, lots of people at

McGill Queens UP put into that.

Steven Van Wolputte: Indeed, and and this was the, once that we

had them on board, it was the smoothest process I've ever

experienced. I think within a few weeks we had three reviews.

A couple of weeks later there was a contract, and these are

processes that, in the academic world at least, can take two

years or longer. So this was like, oh, this is going really

fast, and then yeah, a couple of months later, the book was was

was in the bookstores. But Rick, I also remember that one review

that that came out that started with the question like, how the

hell did they ever were able to convince a publisher to to get

this out because it was so different from all all the

normal things that come out just not yeah it's not -yeah exactly.

There's no you know you can't you can't point to oh

it's it's this this book is like these books it's not quite like

any other books that I know of.

Steven Van Wolputte: So we took that as a compliment by the way

but.

Oh yeah, he was happy he was happy it was published

but the reviewer was like how did they ever convince a

publisher to do this?

You know, Rick, in your email to me, you you

described this book as an experiment in in form of

historical storytelling, which I really liked. What do you think

the results of the experiment were?

Good. I think they're good results. I'm sort of, I

guess I'm interested. So to go back a little bit, I enjoy

reading and teaching graphic nonfiction, and I enjoy reading

and teaching micro histories, and so this sort of was a way to

sort of do both in terms of graphic nonfiction, which I I'm

not really into the com like the superhero stuff, like that. But

I love graphic nonfiction, like Joe Sacco's Journalism, Alison

Bechdel's graphic memoirs, and I teach them, of course. Well,

I've taught Maus so many times, and it works so well. And

Michael Vann and Liz Clarke's Great Hanoi Rat Hunt, also

really excellent. And then there's other nonfiction like

like Nick Sousanis's Unflattening, which is this just

incredible intellectual projects. That's a, it was his

dissertation. It's and it was it's in philosophy, and it's

it's just epic and and incredible sort of a

dissertation in the form of a of a graphic, and then of course,

microhistory is Natalie Davis's Return of Martin Guerre, which

I've taught many times. Carlo Ginzburg, but also some that,

some that that mess with form, like Luisa Passerini's

Autobiography of a Generation, which is a microhistory I love,

in which she she tells sort of the late '60s, that '68 moment,

you know, in Italy in universities, she alternates

between telling sort of what's going on with conversations with

her therapist. That's fascinating. Or Bonnie Smith's

Confessions of a Concierge, which is a microhistory that

plays with in three parts that plays with different voice and

genre, fiction, nonfiction, and I've sort of always been

interested in that that line of when something's history and

when something's fiction, and I sort of wanted to dance along

that line and let people let people you know say, oh well,

you know that goes too far, or that's, or some going, oh, you

know, fine either way, whatever way, whatever way you think. But

as we got into it, and and as as we said earlier, we like to

figure it out as we go. It became an opportunity to

emphasize and highlight methodology and what historians

do and how they work with sources and what they do, and

they don't have sources that answer questions. You know,

usually we just don't even we just sort of don't include it.

Instead, this time we wanted to include that those gaps. And

then you know, how does a how does a poet approach this story,

and what what sort of themes does a is a poet going to lean

into and be interested in, and an anthropologist as well. One

of the one of the great things when we're doing the graphic and

figuring it out, along with the essay, those things are those

things were both produced in tandem. Steven was like, "We've

got to do more with religion. This is the peak of his story

when he gets to film them in the in the hut doing prayers,

Steven's intuition as a as an ethnographer and anthropologist

sort of recognized that very quickly. It's like we need we

we've got to build this up more, and we need to talk about it

more in the essay. And so, having those brains situated

within their genre and their disciplines, I think throws all

that into relief in a really effective way, and so I think we

say in there somewhere, not only do we want the reader to sort of

think about this subject and this topic, but who's telling

these stories-that is, a historian, an anthropologist,

and a poet, and how they do so-that then becomes a sort of a

commentary on, I guess, on possibilities, like what's

possible. You know, when I came across this story, I thought,

"Gosh, this should be a graphic. Like it just, it just that

immediately sort of came out to me that like this should be a

comic, given the way you know the jungle and all that sort of

stuff. I think part of it was, you know, listening to your

sources. What do your sources enable you to say and do? What

can you do with them, and still be adhering to professional

standards? I guess, and how those professional standards

differ between the different disciplines.

Steven Van Wolputte: One one thing that as as and I know it

also interests you, Rick, is also that what when we talk

about that interbellum period, when we talk about the 1930 s,

we also talk about today's popular culture, where you still

have the idea of going somewhere and finding a treasure, being on

a quest, that kind of the very similar themes that you find not

just in Hollywood movies, but in in many novels, for instance,

and the kind of exoticization that you find that you see

throughout, not just in superhero movies, but basically

in well, it almost not almost all, but in many of the

so-called adventure genre that we still kind of well that you

find also in in computer games, for instance, and--

yeah,

Steven Van Wolputte: --the kernel, the the origin of that

idea of explore, exploration, discovery that you find in the

end of the second half of the 19th and and and the first half

of the 20 mainly that period that century, second half of the

19th and first half of the 20th century, is still is around us.

But the kernel is is is actually originates there, and actually

most of the say the more mainstream comic books are about

repetition of the same little big theme. So in that sense, we

also wanted to kind of not point fingers, but just to kind of

very subtly remind people, like, well, Indiana Jones is not that

original, so and and he still is this kind of you know like

looking for the Inca treasure, whatever it is that he's looking

for, and and running away from boulders. That is basically what

de Colmont was also doing. Not boulders in this case, but.

It's a short book, but there's there's a lot in it.

Like it's doing a lot of things, I think. And part of it is a

history of popular culture in this interwar period and how

ideas for white populations in Europe and North America, how

the indigenous other was sort of constructed in this sort of

hierarchy of civilizations, hierarchy of race through

popular culture, because that's what Bernard de Colmont is doing

himself. Right, he makes a film, he does radio lectures, magazine

articles, and so that so so part of this is a is a history is a

little bit of history of popular culture of this era and how

those ideas circulated, you know, about the other with the

capital O, you know, in addition to sort of a little bit of a

history of exploration, who were, you know, celebrity

exploration, I should say, like this was a whole this was a

whole thing, and of course relationships of you know

histories of imperialism and France. His interest in Mexico

and like it just touches on touches on a lot of different

things.

Steven Van Wolputte: And just to add just one more layer, it's

also the role of visual culture in our popular culture. That the

big moments of of exploration and quote unquote exploration,

discovery, colonialism, they go hand in hand with the arrival of

first photography in, say, second half of the 19th century,

and then later on film that became like a camera, film

camera became affordable for say middle class families in the

course of the 1920s, 1930s. I would really love to do

something with family movies, but that's not my my expertise,

but that would be great because that is also where people start

to film their out their trip to the seashore or children having

their birthday and and and so on and so on and so on. So that

visuality, which is you know like a difficult word to talk

about visual culture, the visuality that has permeated our

our imagination of us of the other capital of other and of

ourselves that that has has had and is having such an important

impact on who we think we are.

Can you imagine? Can you imagine Bernardo Cuomo in

the era of Instagram? He would have been an influencer.

Steven Van Wolputte: Oh my God!

Well, Rick and in in his answer gave me quite a

good reading list. Steven, are there people who you read for

inspiration?

Steven Van Wolputte: If you want to know, like, what book would I

recommend? Because Rick already mentioned a few titles, but one

that I was really impressed by was Ginger Roots by Craig

Thompson, which is a story about ginger. I mean, the root, and

it's also a family chronicle of the American Midwest and how he

grew up in a very conservative religious family and tried to

literally draw his way out. It's also at the same time a story

about about ginger cultivation over there and the difference,

and then he also goes to China and stuff. Anyway, and it's

first of all, it's fantastically, from a graphic

point of view, from a visual point of view, it's fantastic.

But also, it's such a good story where you also that is something

that we all like, I guess, where you have different layers that

you can, you know, like discover as you are reading and as you

are rereading, and every time that you read, you come across

something that you haven't seen before or thought of before, and

then you go like, "Whoa! And that is one of those books that

is-it's not that it's quite recent. It's from 24, I guess,

but it's one of those books that I that I cherish. Yeah, much of

his work, of if not all of his work, by the way, is really

great. But this one really stands out as one of the best

graphic novels that I've ever come across.

Having worked on this book together, do you think

that this experience will affect the way you write and the way

you work going forward?

Absolutely. Like I, I like collaborating. There was a

there's a way in which having a good collaborator. I I've never

been one to participate a whole lot, and a lot of people do, and

it works for them. You know, writing groups and and that sort

of stuff. That sort of keeps you accountable. But having a having

a collaborator also keeps you accountable. So, like for

example, Steven mentioned COVID hit, and so all of a sudden

everything shut down. And that moment, that moment in the

spring and in early summer of 2020, you know, you don't know

what's going to happen. You don't know what's going on or

what's going to happen. This sort of stuff. And all of a

sudden, Steven sends me some images. I've been working on

this. He'd been working on it. I had stopped because I'm like,

well, you know, because I I actually had a research trip

planned to Mexico that summer, and that had to be canceled, and

so I was just sort of stagnated and and had stopped and just

thought, ah, well, I guess this isn't going to happen. But then

Steven comes through and is like, oh look, I've been doing

this. Here's what I've been working on, and it's like, oh,

okay, all right, get back to my get back to my desk, right? So I

I like that. I also like I'd like to do something creative.

Whatever it is is next is going to be something that stimulates

me both intellectually, but also creatively. What that what that

is, I don't know because it's going to have to emerge from an

engagement with the material, whatever it is. What does that

material make possible? Enable. What's feasible? What could I

do? Who who might want to join me in this and contribute

whatever they might contribute? Yeah, I think part of it, and

this is also true for both of us. We we've commented on this.

Steve and I are similar points in our careers. We can't be

promoted anymore. No, nobody's going to come. Nobody's going to

come, you know, recruiting us to move to their program and that

sort of stuff. So there's a way in which you know when we

started this project, we sort of you know we're like, well, you

know, we can do what we want. It doesn't, doesn't, you know, we

don't have to get approval from any sort of promotion committee

or departmental, and there, that's liberating, right? So

like, what's what do I want to do, and how would I go about

doing it?

Steven Van Wolputte: I agree. I mean, the kind of the freedom

that you have at our at our the stage of our life or career or

whatever you want to call it, is is is well, is is a present, and

and like Rick said, I really appreciate. I, we are both

individualists, and most academics are basically,

especially when you're sitting behind your desk writing away or

drawing away or whatever. But then it is fine that you find

that you come across kindred spirits or something, and that

you kind of together work on a project, but without having 25

people looking over your shoulder, and and it was also, I

mean, it was also really nice collaboration, and it resulted

in something which also kind of helps, but yeah, and and it's

it's good sometimes to break away from or to break out of

your academic silos. And and the fact I've been working on

historical stuff as well, doing some archival work. I'm not an

historian, but I did some archival work, and it was always

had this interest in in history. And then finding someone with

similar ideas or similar approach to to our materials are

very different, right? And in my my my current future, how do you

call this? One of my current future projects is I have like

30 years of ethnographic material, and I want to do

something with that. Hopefully, not hopefully, also something

creative with some graphic stuff included, but at the same time,

also something hybrid academic. But we will figure it out as we

go along.

Before I let you go, I'd like to ask you both

what what's the most influential writing advice or perhaps

creative advice you've ever gotten?

The one thing that sticks out to me is is back

doing dissertation work. My dissertation director, Bonnie

Smith, I was, well, two things. She she gave me two pieces of

advice that were really helpful. One was about so I was you know

I work in European history and so I work in foreign languages.

I was having trouble figuring out how to translate something,

you know how to quote something, and she made some comments. She

said, "Well, that's probably not a problem with your French.

That's a problem with your English." And her point was, her

point was, you understand what the French says. How would you

say it in English? How would a person listening to English

understand this point? And it was sort of, it really it you

know was a point about being you know much more fluid and nimble,

not very directly word by word by word translate, and then the

other thing, another I don't remember what what it was, but

there was something I was just couldn't figure out, and was

like maybe I'll just take you know I won't I won't deal with

this I'll take this out, and Bonnie also said no no no, the

obstacle is the opportunity, figure it out figuring it out,

and you will have something much better, much smarter. That's

where that's where the opportunity is to do something,

to think something, is figuring out the obstacle.

Steven Van Wolputte: Same here. Best advice people gave me was

just do some writing, do do write, and it's first draft or

zero draft writing, and afterwards you will, you know,

like work it and edit it, and and and probably delete half of

it at least. And another one was that was basically also what

Rick just said. Like, look at the frictions, look at where

where you see resistance, and where you find yourself feeling

resistance to to write about stuff. And that is where you

know, like you will, in the best of cases, you will find that

diamond that you're looking for.

Now, my writing advice would be, always be

revising. You know, like you think Glengarry, Glenn Ross,

always be closing, always be revising. Whenever I, whenever I

return to whatever I'm working on, I always reread. You know,

so I get my head wherever my head was when I left it, but

also I'm constantly editing and wordsmithing and doing like

that's my favorite part of writing, is the once you have it

the rough stuff out there, the crafting of it and that sort of

stuff. Yeah, always be revising is sort of something I practice

myself.

Steven Van Wolputte: It also takes up most of the time.

Well, Rick and Steven, thank you so much for

joining me on Drafting the Past, giving me the chance to read

this book and to talk about it. I'm I'm excited to see it out in

the world.

Thank you, thank you. We're excited too. People have

been teaching it, and and that's awesome.

Steven Van Wolputte: Also, from here, thank you, Kate. This was

a fun talk.

Thanks again to Rick Jobs and Steven Van

Wolputte for joining me for this conversation. You can find links

to "In the Land of the Lacandon" and many other great books

mentioned in this episode in the show notes. In case you haven't

heard the news, Drafting the Past is expanding in October,

and I am thrilled for all that is to come. Head to

draftingthepast.com to learn more and subscribe so you don't

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other perks. Thanks for listening, and for remembering

that friends don't let friends write boring history.