While I was on vacation, I had the opportunity to visit the
San Jose Museum of Art where the exhibit "
The Bible Illuminated: R. Crumb's Book of Genesis" was on display. It contained the original drawn pages from which the graphic novel was created. Each page of the comprehensive fifty chapter work was exhibited. I'm not a fan of Crumb's work and I am certainly no fan of the Book of Genesis, but the show was impressive.
As regards Crumb, I've long admired his amazing skills of composition and rendering. Throughout his long career, his ability to structure a panel, within the multi-panel context of a comic book page, is awe-inspiring. However, I have a hard time reading his work because his figures are so egregiously ugly and crass. I definitely respect the skill that he uses in drawing these characters, but I find their odious appearances to be distracting and tiresome. I can only enjoy Crumb in very small doses.
However, within the Book of Genesis, these gnarly homunculi seem appropriate to the subject matter. The world of the biblical Patriarchs is crude and rough-hewn. It is a world where the "Crumb people" seem to belong. Moreover, his attention to detail creates for an immersive experience. Even the infamously tedious "Generations of So-And-So" wherein "Whats-His-Name begat Whos-That, and lived another couple hundred years" is made into an interesting read by creating veristic portraits of people living in the Bronze Age, eating, fighting, farming, dancing, or just looking tired.
That's the key to Crumb's success. The attention to the details of character and setting creates a convincing world in which the reader can easily follow the events being portrayed. The famous stories, like Noah's Flood or the Sacrifice of Isaac, are given superb treatment, but it is the obscure stories, such as Sarah joining Pharaoh's harem or the Massacre of the Shechemites, that really benefit from Crumb's meticulous attention. These are obscure stories that get lost within the rambling biblical narrative, but Crumb's ability to impart drama and significance through his illustrations make them stand out.
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| Book of Genesis by R. Crumb |
As regard the Genesis text, it's still a horrible thing. I've had to read Genesis numerous times while pursuing my theology studies and I really detest it. However, Crumb's rendering of the text smoothed out the incoherency of the text. The images impart an empathic humanity to the characters, as detestable or immoral though they may be. Even the weird things like Lot's daughters conspiring to seduce their father or Esau selling his birthright for a bowl of "red red stuff" feels less absurd or disturbing when portrayed by Crumb's drawings.
My biggest complaint is that Crumb missed the opportunity to express the ideas of the
Documentary Hypothesis in this work.
