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Journalism of Courage
R. Crumb,the underground cartoonist,has illustrated Genesis,the first book of the Bible. The words come from both the King James Version and a recent translation by Robert Alter. The pictures come from Crumbs pen,the same sort of art pen that hes done all of his lifes work withall of it,no pastels,watercolours,pencil,just this pen scritching away for half a century in a fury of crosshatching and black-and-white starkness. Hes that geeky kid in the class who drew all the time with the funny-looking pen,a Rapidograph probably,and the boys wanted him to draw porn,which Robert Crumb did,publishing a lot of it in 60s underground comics such as Zap or Despair. Crumb drew fetishy comic extravaganzas featuring geeky little males in erotic combat with big-bottomed women with massive legs. In all of it,everything was rounded,Disney-style,but with hair on the legs,nipple pops and people skulking down city sidewalks under telephone-pole skies.
God said R. Crumb should illustrate Genesis? Here they are,together on the first page of this book,Crumb drawing God as if he were a madman inventor,beard and hair down to his ankles,and the whites of his eyes showing over the tops of his irises and his hairy,thick-fingered hands grasping what looks like a combination of a circle saw and a black hole,without form,and void.
Actually,God appeared 40 years ago in a Crumb comic-book story called Dirty Dog. Back then,he was a malevolently gleeful bunny operating a television camera and saying,Hi! Im God! Lets get going! Beneath him,Dirty Dog hunches down a city street accompanied by blues lyricsRather drink muddy water,Lord,sleep in a hollow log,than to be up here in New York treated like a dirty dog. Poor DD ends up slavering over magazines in a porn store,and the bunny is long gone.
Religion has never been far from Crumbs mind,thanks in part to a troubled Catholic boyhood. In fact,hes perfect for illustrating the Genesis,in which theres a lot of Dirty Dog and a stupendous amount of squalid human failing of the sort Crumb has always mined. The difference between this book and Crumbs other work is that theres no comedy,except on the dustjacket,with an ironic: Adult Supervision Recommended for Minors and The first book of the Bible graphically depicted! NOTHING LEFT OUT! But Crumb tells the story the way its always been told.
This is tough stuff,too. The Lord saw that the wickedness of the human creature was great on the earth,and that every scheme of his hearts devising was only perpetually evil. You see a lot of white over Gods irises now,and he decides to kill everybody and everything. Except for Noah,for some unexplained reason. Noah builds the ark,and after Gods flood exterminates the sinners,Noahs alive with his sons and his animals to repopulate Earth.
Art critic Robert Hughes talks about Crumbs mean,grubby vision of human beings trapped in their meshes of hysterical frustration and lust. Crumbs wife,Aline,says,Well,he is a sexist,racist,anti-Semitic misogynist. Crumb himself has written: I am constantly disgusted by reality,horrified and afraid. I cling desperately to the few things that give me some solace,that make me feel good. For me to be human is,for the most part,to hate what I am. When I suddenly realise I am one of them,I want to scream in horror. Not unlike the God of Genesis beholding the depravity of his children,even his greatest servants. Abraham pimps his wife,Sarah,Jacob cheats his brother,Esau. Genesis doesnt need an R. Crumb to provide perversity and failure. Its got enough all by itself. This is one reason that Crumb could play it straight with his art,no comedy,no gratuitous sex. Just one pen-and-ink panel after another until Josephhe of the coat of many coloursdies and the book ends. How strange it all is,how ordinary. How biblical,how Crumb.
