All PostsCravan. Written by Michael Richardson. Drawn by Rick Geary. Dark Horse, 2005. 72p. black and white hardcover, $14.95.
I was quite excited about this book when I heard about it. I’ve read a lot about Surrealism and Dadaism, and Arthur Cravan–boxer, poet, artist, mystery-man–was influential in many ways. He’s not the kind of person you’d expect to see a comic about.
Richardson and Geary’s book tells the story of Cravan’s life from his youth in European boarding schools to his disappearance off the coast of Mexico, as well as one possibility of what happened to him afterwards. Cravan (a pseudonym) was an elusive figure who utilized numerous identities and passports. He forged paintings and sold fake work by Oscar Wilde (Cravan’s uncle). He boxed, gave rowdy artist’s lectures, and published a dadaist magazine. Fleeing the war, he came to the US and married poet Mina Loy. After living in Mexico for a time, she left, supposedly to be followed by him, but when he left Mexico in a small boat he was never seen again.
Richardson speculates that Cravan was the author B Traven (another elusive figure whose identity has never been clearly settled; best known for writing The Treasure of the Sierra Madre). There seems to be only slight anecdotal evidence for this assertion.
Compressing a biography into 66 pages ensures that much will be left out. Richardson adds a framing tale with a reporter looking through the left-behind belongings of a man who died in a New York apartment. The man has no relatives to claim his goods, and the story strongly hints that the man is Cravan. This framing tale adds little to the biography, instead making a coy little wink of speculation about Cravan somehow living out his life in New York (which would also contradict the B Traven theory).
The rest of the book often feels rushed and elided. The bulk of the story focuses on Cravan’s movements from country to country and place to place, and his multiple identities and subterfuges. Very little time is spent on his artistic endeavors (other than a dramatization of his famous talk at the Armoury show where Duchamp’s “The Fountain” was rejected). Little effort is made to get into Cravan’s psychology, so he never really becomes more than a joker, a trickster.
Geary’s art is adequate but I’m not particularly attracted to it stylistically. It tells the story well enough, but I found myself not wanting to linger on the art at all.
Curiously Richardson provides no references or bibliography for the book. I’d like to see where his information came from. How much is fictionalized? Does it matter in the case of Cravan? And if not, why not dramatize more of his life, rather than narrating so much of it?
For more on Cravan, I’d suggest Atlas Press’s Four Dada Suicides.
Derik,
Thanks for looking at Cravan. Your criticisms are not off target, but I thought I’d reply to them.
First of all, you are correct that the the number of pages had a big inpact on the manner in which we told the story. Not only were we forced to drop incidents from his life, we really didn’t have the room to discuss the philosophy behind Cravan’s many pseudonyms or his interest in the dada movement. Nor were we able to elaborate on his adventures moving from front to front during WWI, his career as a forger and thief, or so many other bits of his life. With our space limitations in mind, we tried to put enough info into the book to make the man intriguing enough that readers might take it upon themselves to look for additional material on their own.
With regard to our speculation regarding Cravan as B. Traven, I’m not the first to make this connection. While it may be a stretch, it is a facinating conjecture when considering a number of odd connections between the two. It is also, as I mentioned in the book, exactly the type of speculation that Cravan himself would have encouraged. The fact is, Cravan spent so much effort obscuring the facts surrounding his own life that much of what is generally accepted about him is anecdotal.
You are incorrect in your statement that placing him in New York somehow precludes the possibility of Cravan and B. Traven being the same man. I discovered a magazine article as far back as the seventies (while I was in college) suggesting that a man had died in New York City in ’60 by the name of B. Traven and that some had claimed he was also Arthur Cravan. If you base your remark on the “confession” of Traven’s “widow” years later, I would point out that she changed her story regarding Traven’s identity and birthplace several times,
The only fictionalized elements in the book were the story bookends with the reporter. It was suggested to me by the magazine article I mentioned and seemed a good way to get in and out of the story.
In defense of Rick’s art, he is an award winning artist who is best known for a series of critically acclaimed Victorian Murder Mysteries. I have access to the finest comic artists in the world. I have carried Cravan’s story with me for years. When Rick came to mind as the potential artist of the book, there was no other artist I was willing to consider.
The final questions you pose are related to style and the number of pages we had to work with. Sorry we didn’t have more to work with.
In the end, any mention of the book is welcome. Thanks so much for taking the time to read it.
Best,
Mike Richardson
Arthur Cravan was born Fabian Avenarius Lloyd in Lausanne on the 22d of may 1887. He died in Mexico in 1918. His life is now well documented and Mike Richardson is quite wrong when he writes that “much of what is generally accepted about him is anecdotal.” Maria Lluisa Borras, for example, wrote an excellent biography, “Cravan, une stratégie du scandale” in 1996. Unfortunatrly it has not been translated in english. You can also learn more about Cravan by reading “You gotta live”, by Bob Brown (1932), and “Becoming modern, the life of Mina Loy” by Carolyn Burke (1996). There is also a very nice comic book by french artist Philip Squarzoni, “Portrait inédit de Arthur Cravan” in 2002.
Cravan never was Bernard Traven. It has been established that B. Traven was in fact the german anarchist Hermann Albert Otto Max Feige, born in 1882, a.k.a. Ret Marut. Traven died in 1969 and did not look at all like Cravan, who has been often photographed.
Sincerely yours.
Emmanuel Pollaud-Dulian.
http://www.excentriques.com/cravan/index.html
Hi Derik,
Great review. I have to disagree with you regarding Geary’s art – I found it hard to stop looking.
Keep in mind that compressing a biography into 66 pages opens it up to a much wider audience. Although, you’re right – the curious are left dissatisfied.
All the best,
John