Tuesday, November 10, 2009

"a Crumbulated Genesis"

I share Naomi Seidman's enthusiasm for R. Crumb's new illustrations of Genesis.  It may be the most delightful and, in its own way, profound release of the year.  Seidman writes:
For those of us who were reasonably familiar with both the Bible and underground comix, the experience was not of being introduced either to a new artist or to an ancient literary work but rather of their unexpected juxtaposition: Where Genesis and Crumb had until now occupied distinct areas of the brain or psyche (the academy versus the comic book store? The cerebrum versus the reptilian cortex? The superego versus the id?), they now coexisted on the cramped quarters of a single page. There are some peculiar pleasures in the union of these realms, in a biblicized Crumb, a Crumbulated Genesis.

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