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The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb
R. Crumb
W. W. Norton & Company
October 2009
On Sale: October 19, 2009
224 pages
ISBN: 0393061027
EAN: 9780393061024
Hardcover
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Graphic Novel
From Creation to the death of Joseph, here are all 50
chapters of the Book of Genesis, revealingly illustrated as
never before. Envisioning the first book of the bible like
no one before him, R. Crumb, the legendary illustrator,
reveals here the story of Genesis in a profoundly honest
and deeply moving way. Originally thinking that we would do
a take off of Adam and Eve, Crumb became so fascinated by
the Bible’s language, “a text so great and so strange that
it lends itself readily to graphic depictions,” that he
decided instead to do a literal interpretation using the
text word for word in a version primarily assembled from
the translations of Robert Alter and the King James bible. Now, readers of every persuasion—Crumb fans, comic book
lovers, and believers—can gain astonishing new insights
from these harrowing, tragic, and even juicy stories.
Crumb’s Book of Genesis reintroduces us to the bountiful
tree lined garden of Adam and Eve, the massive ark of Noah
with beasts of every kind, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah
destroyed by brimstone and fire that rained from the
heavens, and the Egypt of the Pharaoh, where Joseph’s
embalmed body is carried in a coffin, in a scene as elegiac
as any in Genesis. Using clues from the text and peeling
away the theological and scholarly interpretation that have
often obscured the Bible’s most dramatic stories, Crumb
fleshes out a parade of Biblical originals: from the
serpent in Eden, the humanoid reptile appearing like an
alien out of a science fiction movie, to Jacob, a “kind’ve
depressed guy who doesn’t strike you as physically
courageous,” and his bother, Esau, “a rough and kick ass
guy,” to Abraham’s wife Sarah, more fetching than most
woman at 90, to God himself, “a standard Charlton Heston-
like figure with long white hair and a flowing beard.” As Crumb writes in his introduction, “the stories of these
people, the Hebrews, were something more than just stories.
They were the foundation, the source, in writing of
religious and political power, handed down by God himself.”
Crumb’s Book of Genesis, the culmination of 5 years of
painstaking work, is a tapestry of masterly detail and
storytelling which celebrates the astonishing diversity of
the one of our greatest artistic geniuses.
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