Factory Summers

 Factory Summers

I’ve been really enjoying non-fiction graphic novels at the moment. I was planning on covering Joe Sacco’s Palestine… but then the world happened and now I really don’t want to… 

What am I Reading?

Factory Summers, written and illustrated by Guy Delisle. (2021)

What’s it about?

This autobiographical work follows Guy's teenage summer job in the local paper mill, where his estranged father has worked for decades. 

What’s good about it?

Delisle’s angular cartoon style is endlessly charming. It's so digestible, with each page being a delicious mix of simplistic subjects with complex compositions, or entirely the reverse. The lack of fat is extremely refreshing. Each line is necessary, no word is excessive. 

I’m going to jump ahead to the recommendation now: I know a few of my readers are from my previous work places (Big shout out to my readers from Apollo and SMR), and this is the perfect book for you. I’ve worked in factories for most of my career, and the skills and tricks and knowledge and patience the average factory operator has about their job is miraculous. That’s fully captured in this book. The little things people in factories do to improve their work and improve their lives should be taught in schools. It should be bottled up and sold to people who think they are worthless because there is absolutely no such thing as unskilled work. I’ve seen it nearly every day of the last decade or so. Of course there is the occasional oversight, but that's why companies employ engineers like me, but the solution nearly always comes from the bottom up. 

I’m not joking either: Delisle’s observation that the astounding ingenuity, resistance and muscle memory whilst performing this style of job is exactly what I feel when walking the factory floor. You see little things that people do and think “Well that’s fucking smart, lets teach that, lets make that standard practice.”. What also is preserved in this book is that strange them and us feeling between the white and blue collar workers in the same building. Engineers wander through this book like ghosts, whilst the operators fill the pages with life. I sure hope I’m not one of these aloof clean shirt engineers.

What did I struggle with?

I chose this because I didn’t want anything too depressing, and although there is nothing overtly sad about it, I found it very bittersweet. It made me very introspective about my career and my relationship with my father. There were too many unexpected parallels between Delisle’s experience and my own. I’ve often wished I had a dream: something that I actively strived towards and shaped my life around, like Delisle’s (and Healy’s in Americana) feeling towards animation and comics. I’ve just sort of fallen into my engineering career. Of course this is nothing against the comic. The fact it elicited this kind of emotion speaks to how much impact the comic had.

Would I recommend it?

Absolutely, it's a tasty little snack of a book, especially if you’ve worked in a factory environment.