All PostsCrumb, Robert. The Book of Genesis Illustrated. New York: W.W. Norton, 2009. 224 p. ISBN 9780393061024. $24.95.
I’m not a fan of Crumb or the Bible. I thought I’d put that out there first. So it’s not surprising that I didn’t enjoy The Book of Genesis Illustrated. I didn’t enjoy it and found it a bit of a slog to get through, yet from a formal point of view, it is interesting in its own way.
That the book is called “The Book of Genesis Illustrated” and not “The Book of Genesis Comics” (“The Comic Book of Genesis”?) speaks to a terminological divide in the world of comics. This work uses the complete text of Genesis (with apparently a very few minor alterations by Crumb) in conjunction with images in panels. In his introduction, Crumb writes that he approached it as a “straight illustration job.” I must erect a straw man, but it is often argued that illustrated texts are not comics (for a great argument for illustrated texts as part of a larger comics related field see Harry Morgan’s Principes des littératures dessinées). Taking an existing, self-contained literary text and adding pictures is considered somehow outside of the field of “comics,” mere illustration. The pictures are a supplement, an unnecessary addition.
Take, for example, one of N.C. Wyeth’s illustrated works: very few would consider it “comics.” He has added a few images to an existing novel. Yet, this is what Crumb has done. Using the Bible’s text as a ceaseless stream of narrative captions and narration filled (pseudo)panels, he has added some pictures. Of course, Crumb has added a large number of pictures (more than I care to count), while Wyeth adds a rather few number, not even one a chapter.
I can’t help but consider R.C. Harvey’s visual-verbal blending (see The Art of the Comic Book). Here we have a book that can be read as text without the pictures, that is its original form after all. From Harvey’s point of view is Crumb’s Genesis all that different from Foster’s Prince Valiant, which he refers to as an “illustrated novel.” Though I guess, with the right amount of “closure,” one could read a lot of comics without the text or without the pictures (depending on the work).
In both cases, by adding images to a text, the artist is creating an interpretation of the text, adding their own views (in a literal sense) to the words. These works are readings of the text, oddly, readings that are pictures. In Wyeth’s case these views are primarily (I suspect, I haven’t made a study of them) visualizations, his idea of what characters, settings, or events look like. Crumb does this, but also adds more thematically interpretative content as well. In the commentary section at the back of the book, he discusses some of these interpretations.
Some of Crumb’s interpretations are less his own than just old cliches. God is portrayed as an old white guy with a long white beard. Adam and Eve are rather Teutonic looking white folks. The garden of Eden is a deciduous forest and the fruit of knowledge looks like an apple. I’m not a Biblical scholar, so I have no idea where his visual interpretations stray from convention or history, but the above examples seem fairly wrong to me.
Crumb’s use of the full text of the book does not do him any favors in terms of readability, particularly in the way he slavishly sticks to the text as narration. He even maintains the use of “he said” or “she said” in the text, leading to stupidly awkward panels with a “he said” narrative caption accompanying a word balloon. This type of text usage puts me in a mindset as I read that the images aren’t really that important. Perhaps it is just Crumb falling into the all to common trap of taking the Bible too literally.
The narration is non-stop, without pause. I’m not sure there are any panels that are not accompanied by a narration caption or at least a word balloon quotation. There are no silent images, he does not take his interpretation so far as to create movement or scenes from narration that is often just summary. In this way it is much like an old comic book from the fifties. In fact, the more I think about it, the more this book reads like a comic book from what is probably the time of Crumb’s childhood. The dust jacket hearkens back to some former age of comic books, another case of comics nostalgia by one of its most praised practitioners (see Clowes, Seth, Ware). The page layouts, the heavy and often redundant captions, the breakdowns that are more summary than scene: all of this feels and looks so retro. Crumb’s style does not fit in this regards, it is just his usual style of cross hatching which is quite different from popular comics of the fifties. The style does work for this book to a certain extent, giving a sense of earthiness to the times. Though Crumb’s figures are all rather similar looking: his large physiqued women and the smaller, frazzled men that are only a few centuries away from a self-portrait.
In reading the book, I felt a distinct lack of affect. Perhaps it is due to the literary style of the original, but I don’t feel anything for the characters. Everyone is playing out their singular interest and there is little that shows characters relating to each other. It did not help that Crumb tends to make everyone look a bit crazy in the eyes and mouth. Eyes stare wide, mouths hang open with upper teeth showing. I’d like to see more emotion there.
Yes, I’m pretty harsh on the work, but I’m sure there are enough glowing reviews out there already. The book did have one positive effect: it caused me to take another look at Genesis. I hadn’t reread it since my freshman year at college (for a class), and this reading so many years later only reinforced my complete bafflement at people who claim to believe the Bible literally. You can start with the way there are two versions of the creation story. Did they both happen? Or take a look at the way Cain, son of the first man and woman, leaves his family (after he kills his brother) and then finds himself a wife. If Adam and Eve were the first people and he was their only (living) son, where did his wife come from?
I can look at it in a different light: the creation story is not the creation of everything, but the creation of a specific group of people. It’s their solipsistic creation. They are the only ones that matter, so their beginning is the beginning of everything. Almost all the stories here are about families fighting over land and inheritance and succession. And it turns out this was part of Crumb’s purpose in making the book. A recent report from Crumb’s interview at this year’s Angouleme festival by Mattias Wivel noted:
“Fortunately, there were a few interesting questions from the audience, one of which prompted Crumb reticently to admit that his intention was partly to dissuade people from what he sees as the tribalist worldview of the Old Testament, even if tribalism in a small community, or in music, is a natural and important impulse in us.” (http://www.metabunker.dk/?p=2290)
He was at least successful in that respect. Though, I’m not sure this is specific to his interpretation. And even if it was, with his reputation, it’s not like the people who really need to think about such issues are going to be reading this version of Genesis.
I can accept Crumb’s historical importance to comics, even without liking his work, but this book seems less a successful masterwork of a distinguished elder than a strange curio.
Great review, Derik.
Part of the problem I had with this adaptation is the overly literal interpretation and the complete lack of insight about the actual ideas underlying Genesis. Virtually all scholars, rabbis, clergy etc. in the modern day, even those with more fundamentalist leanings, use the bible as a starting point to interpret the metaphors and stories and apply them to the modern day. Understanding and applying these morals is, at least in part, the goal of organized monotheistic religions. Yet I would suspect that very few, if any, clergy believe in the stories as literal, historical facts.
Thus, the depictions of God as an old man, the creation story, etc. that you commented on represent a very childish understanding of Genesis. That would be fine if this were a children’s book, but the problem is that, by presenting the entirety of the dense text (even the “he said, she saids”), no child will be able to penetrate this book either. Thus, its an interpretation doomed to disappoint any potential audience other than fans of Crumb’s art.
There’s no doubt that Crumb is a talented illustrator (I like his style more than you do), but that was never in debate. Rather, I just don’t think he really had anything important or insightful to say with this adaptation and that’s why I think it was a bizarre and misguided project to begin with.
Some of your questions about the 2 creation tales and Cain’s wife (one of his sisters or second degree relatives) should be “answered” in any good single book commentary on Genesis. The one by Kenneth Matthews is a pretty reasonable one and quite readable for those interested in such things. (Proviso: while it addresses various viewpoints it is written from the perspective of a Christian.)
Genesis is really far too complex a book to be encompassed by a single comics adaptation. Crumb’s book is really for comics enthusiasts and the young atheist/agnostic with a passing interest in the subject matter. Those with a deeper knowledge of Genesis will find it wanting in a number of areas.
Oh, I’m not interested in the answers to those questions, only the idea that the book can be believed literally. Sure commentary can provide answers to those questions, but from a literal reading, Cain is only like the fourth (third? I forget if he’s the old of the two brothers) person ever.
The funny thing is, I am a comics enthusiast and a (kind of, sort of, but getting older all the time) young (but perhaps you mean like teen) atheist with a passing interest in the subject matter.
Yes, I meant teen (-ish).
I’m assuming that it would mainly be the young and those with a minimal interest in the text of Genesis who would gain the most from the adaptation.
You wrote in your review that “…this reading so many years later only reinforced my complete bafflement at people who claim to believe the Bible literally.” Crumb’s adaptation hardly opens up the inner complexities (interpretive, linguistic, historical etc.) of Genesis. It merely reinforces beliefs already held by the reader concerning the artist and book being adapted. Perhaps Crumb’s book would be of greatest use to those readers whose minds are in a more formative state.
“Perhaps Crumb’s book would be of greatest use to those readers whose minds are in a more formative state.”
Well, regarding teenagers, I work part-time as a Confirmation class teacher for Jewish teenagers at my Temple and I can tell you with 100% certainty that they would have no interest in this book. Teenagers are much more interested in exploring identity issues, spirituality, history, ethical issues and religious culture than they are in text studies, and even if there were a few willing to do some in-depth text study, Crumb’s book would be the last place they would start. There are literally hundreds of better books, websites and other resources that would offer more insight than Crumb’s Genesis.
I think the book’s only real value is as an art book. In my mind it has no religious merit whatsoever.
Very little disagreement with your final point, Marc. Which is why I thought it might be of some use(?) to atheists and agnostics who in general have much less interest in Genesis as a complex text.
Quite apart from its value as an art book for Crumb fanciers, don’t you think that at least some of them might enjoy a bit of moderately well researched but light-hearted fun at the expense of a much vaunted religious book (Derik being one of the exceptions in this case of course)?
And most of them wouldn’t be too bothered with the details which irk you (and me).
I should say though that my problems with the book have less to do with its literal reading of Genesis since my impression is that there is quite a bit to be mined down that path as well.
As far as adaptations of more complex works go, I sort of like what Martin Rowson did with Tristram Shandy.
Hmm, I haven’t seen Rowson’s Tristram Shandy.
Hmmm. I would think an atheist would be really interested in reading a really straightforward depiction of Genesis as a way of showcasing the “absurdities” of it all. What could someone add, after all, to a work of paranoid fiction?
— Or could the book have an interest beyond challenging the minority of Christians and Jews who take the book literally?
That’s the thing, Like. “What could someone add?” I don’t think Crumb adds much at all. The absurdities are there without the pictures.
Ah, Rowson’s Tristram Shandy is just great. I reviewed it so long ago for the Journal that I can’t find the .doc file.
I don’t think it’s ever been released in the US. I got an import to review, and it’s an import still on US Amazon. It great for how it riffs on Shandy, skewering it with its own inventions. The Crumb book sounds like it dies on its own refusal to get anywhere near invention and adaptation.
I like that last sentence. I’ll have to see if I can track down the Rowson.
>> Perhaps Crumb’s book would be of greatest use to those readers whose minds are in a more formative state. <<
Sorry, Suat, but this is patronizing.
There is another interpretive possibility that has not been broached here, namely, that Crumb took to the project with a determination neither to rationalize nor to ridicule its seeming contradictions, inconsistencies, and atavistic power. That he did not "believe" in the text in any literal sense but did not intend to satirize or expose it in any sense; rather, he sought to give the work the same poker-faced air of detachment, yet subtle emotional investment, that he has brought to a number of other adaptation projects. I would call this imaginative entry into a certain interpretation of the source text (one can see the same in, e.g., Crumb's "Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick").
I don't see this as condescending or childish. And to take Crumb at his word that this is merely "straight illustration," Derik, is to ignore the fact that it is manifestly a comic book being offered to a non-comics audience. That doesn't mean that Crumb is applying no ingenuity to the breakdown of pages and the parsing out of the action. That also doesn't mean that there is no investment of emotion in the images (check out Abraham leading Isaac to potential sacrifice, for example).
Derik, I think you and I have a rather sharp disagreement about the nature, influence, and overall artistic vitality of underground comix; I get the impression from this and previous posts that you have a particular antipathy to Crumb and his fellow travelers. I'm no great lover of Crumb's latter-day confessional persona, and in fact I "hated" (i.e., felt confused and simultaneously repulsed and attracted by) his work when I first saw it, but I think he has done some very great comics. What's your take on the deification of Crumb?
Charles: I can’t deny the influence that Crumb has had and thus his historical importance. I just don’t like his work… really any any level. I feel the same way about almost all the underground “comix” I’ve read. I’ve tried to read them, given their historical importance to comics, kind of like how I tried to read… I don’t know… Proust or Lawrence or Mann when I was reading Modernist novels.
It’s partially the emphasis on the “no restraints I can’t draw anything so why not” attitude, though with Crumb its also the nostalgia and the ugly drawing style and the women issue and…
I’m probably not a big fan of most comics that would be seen as heavily influenced by him either.
“And to take Crumb at his word that this is merely “straight illustration,” Derik, is to ignore the fact that it is manifestly a comic book being offered to a non-comics audience. That doesn’t mean that Crumb is applying no ingenuity to the breakdown of pages and the parsing out of the action. That also doesn’t mean that there is no investment of emotion in the images (check out Abraham leading Isaac to potential sacrifice, for example).”
Well, I don’t see it that way. I don’t get the emotion or the ingenuity. And I haven’t seen anyone make a good case for either.
>> I just don’t like his work… really any any level. <<
OK. Is this a determination based on Crumbian "style," which has remained recognizable if not stable over decades? (You can see more brushwork and more heft in later Crumb than in his breakout late-60s comix, but we'd all recognize that it's still the same artist, yes? He has grown but he continues to be Crumb.)
Is it a question of ethos, triggered by the recognizability of the style but also carrying ethical/ideological implications, e.g., Crumb's often vicious indulgence of racist and sexist stereotypes?
Does dislike of his style (is it really consistently ugly?) extend to masterful work he has done for others, e.g., Pekar's "Hypothetical Quandary"?
Or is your determination based more on Crumb's subject matter? If so, that would strike me as quite a generalization, since "Meatball," "Patton," "Nausea," "It's Really Too Bad," "White Man Meets Bigfoot," Crumb's Kafka, and Genesis don't have a lot of subject matter in common.
I don't consider myself a professional defender of Crumb, but I'm really curious about the sources of our attraction/antipathy toward particular artists.
Is it partly that the typically dense Crumb style creates a clotted or cluttered look? That would seem at odds with the poetic minimalism of some of your own comics.
Me, I like some Crumb, I like a lot of Deitch, I like Justin's Green work a lot ("Binky" is the best single UG comic book IMO), and I like, sometimes, the salutary ugliness and self-recrimination in Aline Kominsky-Crumb's stuff. I don't generally like the macho posturing of some of the others, though I'm wowed by some of their formalist experiments.
Regarding ingenuity and emotion, I think there are several moments in Genesis that are quite scary.
I think it’s the combination of all of them, Charles. In the cases where the subject matter might be of interest the other elements tend to override my interest.
The one Crumb piece I’ve seen that I really like is that single pager that shows the same location across a period of time (forest, road, gas station, highway, city, etc).
I’ve not read Binky Brown, and I’m not sure I will. I don’t much expect it to be to my tastes. Not when there’s so much else I am excited to buy and read and reread.
Hey, to each reader his own, Derik!
But, seriously, give “Binky Brown” a chance, at least a read. It’s one of the most weirdly fascinating things the comic book form has ever produced: poignant, obsessive, beautifully worked-over, graphically exciting, varied, unpredictable, wrenching, embarrassing, and, from my POV, touching.
Have you read the recent edition of Binky? I’m not sure how I feel about the reproduction of the original art. It worked for Jerry Moriarty’s Jack Survives because he is so painterly, but I wonder how it works for the Binky book and whether I should read the less fancy edition.