10/19/09

TNR: Robert Alter Reviews Robert Crumb's Illustrated Book of Genesis

In a rather long and rambling review, Robert Alter heaps mainly praise on R. Crumbs new graphic version of Genesis.

We should have our copy by tomorrow from Amazon where the book has climbed to #5 on the bestseller list, prerelease.

Example from Alter:
The destruction of Sodom--especially the third of Crumb’s four panels, which shows faceless and mummy-like writhing figures, backs enveloped in flame as more fire and brimstone rain down from above--is a tour de force, combining biblical apocalypse with a comic-book science-fiction vision of worlds destroyed. The bizarreness of Pharaoh’s two dreams, prophetic of the years of plenty and of famine, is brilliantly caught by Crumb in his depiction, for the first of the dreams, of the seven "meagerfleshed" cows as savage-looking creatures cannibalistically chomping down on the flanks of the seven fat cows.
Hat tip to Henry.

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