A compelling performance with great pacing that makes abstruse political theory both intelligible and memorable.
The astounding life of a 20th-century original as told by a skillful cartoonist frolicking in long form.
This creative biography takes considerable liberties in retelling the story of Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), the German political theorist who fled the Nazis to Paris before settling in the United States and becoming the first female professor at Princeton. Krimstein (Communications/DePaul Univ.; Kvetch as Kvetch Can: Jewish Cartoons, 2010), who draws for the New Yorker and the Wall Street Journal, among others, ventriloquizes the writer’s thoughts and conversations, an approach that risks making her into a “Great Philosophers” finger puppet. However, he bases this narrative bricolage on well-regarded Arendt biographies and intellectual histories as well as her own writing. Moreover, the book relates the starkest moments in a tumultuous life without trivializing—e.g., Arendt’s arrest and detainment for researching Nazi propaganda and her time in a French work camp. Krimstein’s wry, expressive faces enliven the debates and lend poignancy to the turmoil that beset Arendt and her circle of intellectual refugee friends, including Walter Benjamin, who vouchsafed his final manuscript with Arendt just before his death. Krimstein shares his wonder at the richness of Arendt's networks in countless name-dropping cameos supported by lengthy but skimmable footnotes. Arendt’s coverage of the Adolf Eichmann trials in Jerusalem alienated her from her community of American Zionist supporters, and her infamous affair with her one-time professor and Nazi sympathizer Martin Heidegger, revealed after her death and illustrated here in moments of overt historical fiction, further damaged the popular reception of her work. This timely reimagining revives her distinctive existential spirit and dwells on her theory of the “abyss,” the rip in the fabric of humanity she attributed to totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. The irony remains that this book celebrates—even as it violates—Arendt’s arguments for keeping public and private lives separate. Perhaps the cartoons’ hasty, unfinished style acknowledges the unbridgeable distance between the author and the personalities he imaginatively inhabits.
A compelling performance with great pacing that makes abstruse political theory both intelligible and memorable.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63557-188-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.
The Book of Genesis as imagined by a veteran voice of underground comics.
R. Crumb’s pass at the opening chapters of the Bible isn’t nearly the act of heresy the comic artist’s reputation might suggest. In fact, the creator of Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural is fastidiously respectful. Crumb took pains to preserve every word of Genesis—drawing from numerous source texts, but mainly Robert Alter’s translation, The Five Books of Moses (2004)—and he clearly did his homework on the clothing, shelter and landscapes that surrounded Noah, Abraham and Isaac. This dedication to faithful representation makes the book, as Crumb writes in his introduction, a “straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes.” But his efforts are in their own way irreverent, and Crumb feels no particular need to deify even the most divine characters. God Himself is not much taller than Adam and Eve, and instead of omnisciently imparting orders and judgment He stands beside them in Eden, speaking to them directly. Jacob wrestles not with an angel, as is so often depicted in paintings, but with a man who looks not much different from himself. The women are uniformly Crumbian, voluptuous Earth goddesses who are both sexualized and strong-willed. (The endnotes offer a close study of the kinds of power women wielded in Genesis.) The downside of fitting all the text in is that many pages are packed tight with small panels, and too rarely—as with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—does Crumb expand his lens and treat signature events dramatically. Even the Flood is fairly restrained, though the exodus of the animals from the Ark is beautifully detailed. The author’s respect for Genesis is admirable, but it may leave readers wishing he had taken a few more chances with his interpretation, as when he draws the serpent in the Garden of Eden as a provocative half-man/half-lizard. On the whole, though, the book is largely a tribute to Crumb’s immense talents as a draftsman and stubborn adherence to the script.
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-393-06102-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.
A new life and book arise from the ashes of a devastating California wildfire.
These days, it seems the fires will never end. They wreaked destruction over central California in the latter months of 2018, dominating headlines for weeks, barely a year after Fies (Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, 2009) lost nearly everything to the fires that raged through Northern California. The result is a vividly journalistic graphic narrative of resilience in the face of tragedy, an account of recent history that seems timely as ever. “A two-story house full of our lives was a two-foot heap of dead smoking ash,” writes the author about his first return to survey the damage. The matter-of-fact tone of the reportage makes some of the flights of creative imagination seem more extraordinary—particularly a nihilistic, two-page centerpiece of a psychological solar system in which “the fire is our black hole,” and “some veer too near and are drawn into despair, depression, divorce, even suicide,” while “others are gravitationally flung entirely out of our solar system to other cities or states, and never seen again.” Yet the stories that dominate the narrative are those of the survivors, who were part of the community and would be part of whatever community would be built to take its place across the charred landscape. Interspersed with the author’s own account are those from others, many retirees, some suffering from physical or mental afflictions. Each is rendered in a couple pages of text except one from a fellow cartoonist, who draws his own. The project began with an online comic when Fies did the only thing he could as his life was reduced to ash and rubble. More than 3 million readers saw it; this expanded version will hopefully extend its reach.
Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3585-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Abrams ComicArts
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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