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Always Goodbye: One Lonely American's Journey Across the Globe

Published Sun, 02 Feb 2020 09:00:58 -0600

Novelist Ray Hecht writes,

After I published my first novel a couple of years ago — the Asia-based South China Morning Blues — I wasn't sure what to do next.

I'm an American who has been living abroad for ten years now, and I try to make the most of my global perspective if I can. I tried few attempts at taking my writing in different directions, a short story here and an article there, but ultimately I decided the best path I could take was to get back to my roots.

I've had a deep love of the comics medium since I was a kid, and I'd always wanted to follow that indie tradition of the autobiographical graphic novel. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, Blankets by Craig Thompson, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and even American Splendor by Harvey Pekar stood out as powerful inspirations for me.

I hope I'm not being presumptuous in comparing my humble life story to these legendary works, but I truly think it was worth a try. So, I named this memoir Always Goodbye because it seemed to be the only constant in my life. I was always running away to reinvent myself somewhere new, and that means always having to say goodbye…

For whatever reason, my life has taken me all over the world. I was born in Israel but raised in America. My mother is a Russian-Ukrainian immigrant. I bounced around the Midwest to the West Coast for a while until a chance encounter at the Burning Man art festival sent me all the way to a job in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China. Now I'm in Taiwan. It was quite the journey.

(Funny how these places have been in the news so much lately. Can I pick 'em, or what?)

As I undertook this project, I did a lot of research into the state of my family and the state of the world from the years 1982 (when I was born) to the present. Luckily, my mom saves old photos! I interviewed her and recalled memories of her stories from my childhood, how she escaped the Soviet Union and sought a better life. In a way, I'm kind of mirroring that now.

I structured the comic so that it covers every year of my life, chapter by chapter. There's my love affair with superheroes at a young age, the college filmmaker years, and finally my travels across the continents. I thought at least one panel showcasing whatever was big that year would be appropriate. This covered the major events that defined those times, such as pop culture like movies, the latest technology of the era, or political upheavals.

I may not be the most classically trained of artists, but hopefully my cartoony stylings reflect a deeper honesty about the subjectivity of one's personal experience. Sometimes, there's no better way to express the turmoil of heartache or a psychedelic bad trip than with a sketchy black and white drawing. Perhaps you'll agree.

Please do enjoy these windows into a life of family strife, depression, romance, and wanderlust. You might just relate.

Life can take a man many places. Born in disputed Israel, fostered in Middle America, and then finally driven into Rising China—Ray Hecht takes journey after journey as he tries to figure it all out. He goes down many paths from the years 1982 to 2019, attempting and failing at new identities with each passing decade: artist, filmmaker, journalist, and author.

Told in simple lines and crude forms, Ray's graphic memoir Always Goodbye rushes through the milestones of a person's life with harsh sincerity. Follow along these memories of a man's travels across the globe as he tries to find himself, always saying goodbye but then reconnecting all over again, as many times as it takes…

Always Goodbye is available on Amazon.com in digital and hard copy editions.

Please also check out my blog at RayHecht.com.

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