View source for The Book of Genesis (comic)

{{Short description|R. Crumb's 2009 comic adaptation of the Book of Genesis}}
{{Infobox graphic novel 
|title        = The Book of Genesis
|image        = CrumbGenesisCover.jpeg
|alt          =
|caption      = Cover to the first edition of ''The Book of Genesis Illustrated by [[Robert Crumb]]'' from [[W. W. Norton & Company]]
|publisher    = [[W. W. Norton & Company]]
|date         = October 19, 2009
|origlanguage = English
|creator      = [[Robert Crumb]]
|pages        = 224
|US           = y
}}

'''''The Book of Genesis''''' (2009) is a [[comic book]] illustrated by [[United States|American]] [[cartoonist]] [[Robert Crumb]] that purports to be a faithful, literal illustration of the [[Book of Genesis]]. It reached #1 the ''[[New York Times]]'' [[graphic novel]] bestseller list and on the [[Christianity|Christian]] books list at [[Amazon.com]].<ref name="Time"/>

Given Crumb's past body of work, and his professed rejection of religion, many assumed when the book was announced that it would be a satire or otherwise profane or subversive send-up, and were surprised or disappointed<ref name="HeyImStillHere"/> to find it "straight-faced".<ref name="npr"/>  Crumb "resist[ed] the temptation to go all-out Crumb on us and exaggerate the sordidness, the primitivism and the outright strangeness"<ref name="npr"/> found in the Bible{{emdash}}the depictions of sex are explicit, but not gratuitous. In his introduction to the book, Crumb writes he has "faithfully reproduced every word of the original text," each word hand-lettered. The book's cover contains the warning, "Adult Supervision Recommended for Minors".
 
The book has been controversial, particularly for the explicit illustrations of [[sexual intercourse]] described in the text itself. In critical circles, it has drawn fire over whether and how literal the illustration job is, or should be.<ref name="LimitedLiteralism"/>

==Publication history==
The book was published by [[W. W. Norton & Company]] on October 19, 2009, in book form{{emdash}}the book was never serialized prior to being published.

The publisher wanted to title the book ''The Book of Genesis According to Robert Crumb'', but Crumb insisted on changing "According to" to "Illustrated by".<ref name="ParisReview"/>

The book took over four years for Crumb to finish. Holed up in a shepherd's hut in the south of [[France]] (where he and his family live), his wife [[Aline Kominsky-Crumb|Aline]] would bring him baskets of food.<ref name="NewYorkerMouly"/>

==Style==

===Drawing===
Drawn in his signature scratchy, obsessively [[hatching|crosshatched]] drawing style, Crumb avoided doing a satirical or psychedelic take on the work, as would have been expected. Reviewers have called the style "humanizing",<ref name="npr"/> with a "human-looking deity" with "enormous, hairy, veiny hands";<ref name="nyt"/> unlike much later Christian art, which Europeanized the characters from the [[Old Testament|Old]] and [[New Testament]]s, the characters in Crumb's book are "plac[ed...] squarely in the Middle East — and populat[ed...] with distinctly Semitic-looking people".<ref name="npr"/>

The clothing and sets in the book were based on stills from classic [[Cinema of the United States|Hollywood]] movies,<ref name="LATimes" group="note"/> as "there's not a lot of documentation about how people dressed and lived in ancient Mesopotamia."<ref name="SFGate"/>

{{quote box|quote="I didn’t want to show [[sex organ]]s, cause then the thing becomes [[X rating|X-rated]] and it limits the sales. I’ve done my share of explicit sexual drawings, as anybody who knows my work can certainly attest. I just decided it wasn’t really necessary."
|source=Crumb, 2009<ref name="VanityFair"/>|width=300px}}

===Tone===
Crumb originally intended to do a [[Parody|sendup]] of the [[Book of Genesis]], but "I fooled around in the sketchbooks with those ideas and I just, I didn't like how it was working out so I just decided to do a straight illustration job of it. It seemed to me that the original text was so strange in its own way that there was no need to do any sendup or satire of it. My trial efforts to do that seemed lame, it wasn't working out."<ref name="HeyImStillHere"/>

Many reviewers found it surprising that Crumb kept the depictions of sex "tame",<ref name="VanityFair"/> given that he is so well known for his explicit depictions of sex.

==Crumb's beliefs==
Crumb was brought up [[Catholicism|Catholic]], and thus is familiar with the more common Bible stories,<ref name="NewYorkerMouly"/> but gave up the Catholic faith when he was 16. He went through a phase when he was 15 where he went "to church a lot, receiving [[Eucharist|communion]], saying the [[Rosary]], [[Prayer in Christianity|praying]]", but when he started to scrutinize it, "it just fell apart so quickly."<ref name="VanityFair"/>

Crumb says he is spiritual, [[Gnosticism|gnostic]], and not an [[Atheism|atheist]]; he is "interested in pursuing and understanding the spiritual nature of things."<ref name="VanityFair"/> He believes there is a [[God]], but "I don't believe [the Book of Genesis is] the Word of God. I believe it's the words of men".<ref name="USAToday"/> He occasionally refers to [[Ecclesiastes]] for spiritual guidance, but finds the Book of Genesis to be "much too primitive" to find any spiritual meaning in it.<ref name="NewYorkerMouly"/>

==Sources==
Crumb's main source was [[Robert Alter]]'s [[The Hebrew Bible (Alter)|translation]] of the [[Book of Genesis]] from 1996, although he referred to other sources, including the [[Authorized King James Version|King James Version]] of the [[Bible]]. In one passage, Crumb used the "term '[[Handmaiden|handmaid]]', derived from the King James, to describe the young woman whom [[Sarah|Sarai]] offers up to sleep with her husband, [[Abram]], after Sarai is unable to conceive, rather than Alter’s term, 'slave girl', which evokes the woman’s subservient status."<ref name="nyt2"/>

==Reception and influence==
[[Chester Brown]] wrote "Robert Crumb is probably the world's greatest living cartoonist, and his ''The Book of Genesis'' (2009) might be his masterpiece. It's certainly the best comics adaptation of biblical material that I know of." Brown cited ''The Book of Genesis'' as an influence on his own biblical graphic novel, ''[[Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus]]''.<ref>{{cite book|title=[[Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus]]| author-first=Chester|author-last=Brown|year=2016|edition=1st|publisher=[[Drawn & Quarterly]]|location=Montreal|isbn=978-1-77046-234-2|page=190}}</ref>

In 2013 ''The Book of Genesis'' was exhibited at the 55th International Venice Art Biennale. Each page of the graphic novel was individually exhibited in uniformed black frames. The audience was invited to follow the sequential images through the large exhibition space; blurring the lines between subversive low-brow comic arts and fine art. <ref>55th International Venice Art Biennale, 2013, https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2013/introduction-massimiliano-gioni</ref>

===Awards===
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Year
! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Organization
! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Award
! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Result
|-
|rowspan="5"|2010
|rowspan="2"|[[Harvey Award]]s<ref name="2010Harveys"/>
|'''Best Artist'''
|{{won}}
|-
|'''Best Original Graphic Album'''
|{{nom}}
|-
|rowspan="3"|[[Eisner Award]]s<ref name="2010Eisners"/>
|'''[[Eisner Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium|Best Adaptation from Another Work]]'''
|{{nom}}
|-
|'''Best Graphic Album{{emdash}}New'''
|{{nom}}
|-
|'''Best Writer/Artist'''
|{{nom}}
|}

==See also==
*[[Chester Brown's Gospel adaptations]]
{{Portalbar|Bible|Christianity|Comics|Judaism}}

==Notes==
{{Reflist
|group = "note"
|refs  =

<ref name="LATimes" group="note">{{cite web|title=The creation of R. Crumb's 'Genesis'|url=http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-crumb29-2009oct29,0,5963919.story|work=[[Los Angeles Times]]|first=Reed|last=Johnson|date=29 October 2009|access-date=21 April 2011|quote=Crumb also was given a huge stock of visual source material by a friend, who made freeze-fame [''sic''] images from Hollywood biblical epics.}}</ref>
}}

==References==
*{{cite web|title=God Gets Graphic|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/books/review/Hajdu-t.html|access-date=21 April 2011|date=22 October 2009|last     =Hajdu|first=David|work=[[New York Times]]}}

{{Reflist
|refs=
<ref name="NewYorkerMouly">{{cite magazine|title=Comic Strip by R. Crumb: The Book of Genesis|url=http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_6gBy1kGztSM/SiP3EicvFUI/AAAAAAAAAok/AtEM--31ki8/s1600-h/robert+crumb+genesis+1.png|last=Mouly|first=Francoise|magazine=[[The New Yorker]]|access-date=21 April 2010|date=June 2009}}</ref>

<ref name="nyt">Hajdu, [https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/books/review/Hajdu-t.html p. 1]</ref>

<ref name="nyt2">Hajdu, [https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/books/review/Hajdu-t.html?pagewanted=2 p. 2]</ref>

<ref name="Time">
{{cite web|title=Genesis: The Word According to R. Crumb|url=http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1933784,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091103153502/http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1933784,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=November 3, 2009|publisher=[[Time (magazine)|Time]]|first=Belinda|last=Luscombe|date=1 November 2009|access-date=21 April 2011}}</ref>

<ref name="npr">{{cite web|title=R. Crumb's Awesome, Affecting Take On 'Genesis'|url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113802982|access-date=21 April 2011|date=19 October 2009|last=Gilman|first=Susan Jane|publisher=[[National Public Radio]]}}</ref>

<ref name="HeyImStillHere">{{cite web|title=Hey, I'm Still Here|url=http://www.rcrumb.com/aboutcrumb_hey.html|last=Wood|first=Alex|date=July 2010|access-date=21 April 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100727035807/http://www.rcrumb.com/aboutcrumb_hey.html|archive-date=27 July 2010}}</ref>

<ref name="2010Harveys">{{cite web|title=2010 Harvey Award Winners|url=http://www.harveyawards.org/awards_current.html|access-date=21 April 2011|publisher=The [[Harvey Awards]]|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100117223253/http://www.harveyawards.org/awards_current.html|archive-date=17 January 2010}}</ref>

<ref name="2010Eisners">{{cite web|title=2010 Eisner Nominations Encompass Wide Range of Works|url=http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci_eisners_10nom.php|access-date=21 April 2011|publisher=[[Comic-Con International]]|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110301060002/http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci_eisners_10nom.php|archive-date=1 March 2011}}</ref>

<ref name="USAToday">{{cite web|title=Illustrator R. Crumb is drawn to God with his latest project|url=https://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2009-10-18-r-crumb-old-testament_N.htm|publisher=[[USA Today]]|first=David|last=Colton|date=19 October 2009|access-date=21 April 2011}}</ref>

<ref name="ParisReview">{{cite web|title=The Art of Comics No. 1|url=http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6017/the-art-of-comics-no-1-r-crumb|publisher =[[The Paris Review]]|first=Ted|last=Widmer|date=Summer 2010|access-date=21 April 2011}}</ref>

<ref name="LimitedLiteralism">{{cite web|title=Crumb's Limited Literalism: Seeing and Not Seeing in Genesis|url=http://hoodedutilitarian.com/2010/08/crumbs-limited-literalism/|publisher =The Hooded Utilitarian|first=Peter|last=Sattler|date=20 August 2010|access-date=21 April 2011}}</ref>

<ref name="VanityFair">{{cite web|title=Robert Crumb Thinks God Might Actually Be Crazy|url=http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2009/10/robert-crumb-thinks-god-might-actually-be-crazy.html|publisher=[[Vanity Fair (magazine)|Vanity Fair]]|first=Eric|last=Spitznagel|date=22 October 2009|access-date=21 April 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110528161032/http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2009/10/robert-crumb-thinks-god-might-actually-be-crazy.html|archive-date=28 May 2011}}<br>Vanity Fair interview with Crumb</ref>

<ref name="SFGate">{{cite web|title=Comics star R. Crumb gets serious with Genesis|url=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/30/DD1G1A2NP9.DTL|publisher=[[San Francisco Chronicle]]|first=Kenneth|last=Baker|date=30 October 2009|access-date=21 April 2011}}</ref>
|2}}

==Further reading==

{{Refbegin}}

* {{cite journal
|last    = Seesengood
|first   = Robert Paul
|title   = The Bible as a Graphic Novel: When the Word Becomes (Affecting) Image
|journal = Bible and Critical Theory
|date    = 2018
|url     = http://novaojs.newcastle.edu.au/ojsbct/index.php/bct/article/download/718/652
|volume  = 14
|issue   = 1
|format  = PDF}}

{{Refend}}

==External links==
*[http://books.wwnorton.com/books/The-Book-of-Genesis-Illustrated-by-R-Crumb/ Product page] at [[W. W. Norton & Company]]
*{{cite web|title=R. Crumb in Conversation with Francoise Mouly (video)|url=http://fora.tv/2009/10/23/R_Crumb_in_Conversation_with_Francoise_Mouly|publisher=Fora.TV|first=Francoise|last=Mouly|date=23 October 2009|access-date=21 April 2011|archive-date=12 August 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110812223714/http://fora.tv/2009/10/23/R_Crumb_in_Conversation_with_Francoise_Mouly|url-status=usurped}}

{{Robert Crumb}}
{{Adam and Eve}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Book of Genesis}}
[[Category:2009 graphic novels]]
[[Category:2009 comics debuts]]
[[Category:American graphic novels]]
[[Category:Comics by Robert Crumb]]
[[Category:Biblical comics]]
[[Category:Comics set in ancient Israel]]
[[Category:Comics set in ancient Mesopotamia]]
[[Category:Comics set in ancient Egypt]]
[[Category:Cultural depictions of Adam and Eve]]
[[Category:Non-fiction graphic novels]]
[[Category:W. W. Norton & Company books]]
[[Category:Works based on the Book of Genesis]]