The latest issue of The New Yorker includes an 11-page comic strip by R. Crumb that depicts the accounts of the Creation and the Fall from the first three chapters of Genesis. (The feature is an excerpt from the forthcoming The Book of Genesis: Illustrated by R. Crumb.) The online version requires a subscription, and that’s too bad.
Crumb stays faithful to the text and a few of his panels are inspired. An image of God resting in the Garden of Eden on the seventh day, with Adam and Eve nearby, is lovely. Another image, which illustrates Adam and Eve as naked and without shame, is playful rather than voyeuristic. Crumb’s depiction of the pre-Fall serpent is witty, and the image of the serpent scowling as God judges him is a comic touch.
A brief introductory text by Françoise Mouly provides insights into Crumb’s childhood and current beliefs:
Crumb was brought up Catholic and was familiar with the basic Bible stories. But when he started to read the Bible closely he found it dense. He labored over every sentence and consulted many translations. …
By the time he came to the story of Noah, though, he was annoyed. He had begun to realize, he says, that “the whole thing is a piece of patriarchal propaganda, engineered to consciously and deliberately suppress matriarchy.” He decided not to fight the words but, instead, to try to reveal in his drawings as much of domestic life as he could. …
Crumb, who says he suspects that God exists, is broadly curious about the spiritual forces in the universe. He occasionally turns to Ecclesiastes and the Gospel of Thomas for spiritual guidance, but he thinks it would be crazy to try to find any spiritual meaning in Genesis: “It’s much too primitive.”
The mind reels at hearing complaints of patriarchy from the subject of Robert Crumb’s Sex Obsessions, and Mouly’s too-brief introduction does not explain how the Gospel of Thomas is any less primitive than Genesis.
Consider Saying 114:
Simon Peter said to them, “Make Mary leave us, for females don’t deserve life.”
Jesus said, “Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven.”
Still, it’s refreshing to see Crumb turning his creativity toward the epic themes of Genesis. I wish The New Yorker had done more with this opportunity online.
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Comments (13) |
June 4, 2009, at 2:12 am
It’s kind of like Hugh Heffner saying that paying women to take their clothes off for the camera somehow empowers them - but only attractive ones need apply and ordinary or plain women can’t get the empowerment Heffner offered.
It boggles the mind how many people got taken in by the “Playboy Philosophy”. But maybe you have to be in your 60s like me to remember those erudite writings of Hugh back when the magazine was new.
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June 4, 2009, at 2:54 am
I can’t say “now I’ve seen everything”, but reading a story about R. Crumb here comes close. But that does underline my age. All I can say is “keep on truckin”.
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June 4, 2009, at 7:33 am
Thanks, Jerry. We aim to please (and to surprise).
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June 4, 2009, at 8:41 am
“Mouly’s too-brief introduction does not explain how the Gospel of Thomas is any less primitive than Genesis.”
But that’s the basic Gnostic argument in a nutshell, right there. There are ‘picture’ tales and fables for the ignorant masses, simple and easy to digest, and then there is the “real” teaching, which only the Elect few both deserve and get to hear.
Genesis, by that account, *is* a primitive fairy tale, with its picture of one unique God creating everything, the progenitors of all humanity violating a taboo, and the resulting Fall. By contrast, the Gnostic gospels let the chosen ones in on the ‘truth’ behind it all, with the levels and layers of the universes, and the archons and emanations and secret master key words you have to know to pass through and the struggle up out of matter and the revelation that the ‘creator’ God is actually blind, deceived, deceiving and evil, so on and so forth.
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June 4, 2009, at 10:33 am
What Julia said.
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June 4, 2009, at 11:43 am
Since it’s Crumb’s opinion that Genesis is “much too primitive,” is it really Mouly’s role to explain how the Gospel of Thomas is less primitive, or even to challenge Crumb on his assertion? I find Crumb’s assertion to be absurd, but I find it to be an authentic portrayal of who Crumb is.
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June 4, 2009, at 12:50 pm
Jerry:
I always loooved that drawing of Crumb’s. Reminds me of being in the Haight during the Summer of Love and hearing Jefferson Airplane in the apartment next door practicing for the Monterey Pop and Country Joe & the Fish: Goin’ Up Country.
Here’s the classic drawing of the truckers:
http://www.gigposters.com/forums/anything-goes/54528-keep-trucking-logo.html
Version #2 along with groovy Vans adorned with Crumb comics
The featured one has a classic Mr. Natural quote: “Who wants to go to heaven anyway.” The link at the site provides a recipe for five Joint Soup.
http://silencedmajority.blogs.com/silenced_majority_portal/2009/05/crumb-comics-on-vans-shoes.html
For completeness and relevance, here’a link to the Wiki entry on Mr Natural, Crumb’s mystic guru [and alter-ego at the time?] Mr Natural was connected to no church or identifiable religion - maybe it was the/a seed of today’s “spirituality” without religion?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Natural
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June 4, 2009, at 1:51 pm
You raise a fair point, Adam: The beliefs are those of R. Crumb. Because GetReligion focuses on media coverage of religion, I was commenting on Mouly’s very brief coverage — in that a follow-up question about the Gospel of Thomas would have been appropriate.
Then again, sometimes the best one can do — especially in very limited space — is allow the subject to say a few provocative things.
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June 4, 2009, at 1:55 pm
Julia@7, how characteristic of the residue of the Sixties that Mr Natural has been licensed to a shoe manufacturer.
Well, keep on truckin’ anyway…
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June 4, 2009, at 3:03 pm
“the whole thing is a piece of patriarchal propaganda, engineered to consciously and deliberately suppress matriarchy.”
Oh, fer cat’s sake… WISE UP!!! (*G*)
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June 4, 2009, at 10:07 pm
To see Crumb’s view of Genesis as primitive, pick up a copy of the current New Yorker and check out his mini-strip.
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June 5, 2009, at 3:12 pm
Btw, whatever happened to Schuman the Human, after his encounter with the Almighty?
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June 5, 2009, at 5:40 pm
I’m really looking forward to this. I really love Chester Brown’s Gospel adaptations. They’re absolutly fantastic, but I don’t think they’ve been published outside of his Yummy Fur and Underwater comics. I hope they’re collected after he finishes the project. Has anyone read Mike Allred’s Book of Mormon adaptation?
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