The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb

First Edition, 1st printing. Bright, clean & tight copy, unread, in AS NEW condition. "From the creation to the death of Joseph, here are all fifty chapters of the Book of Genesis, revealingly illustrated as never before. [] Envisioning the first book of the bible like no one before him, R. Crumb, the legendary illustrator, reveals here the story of Genesis in a profoundly honest and deeply moving way. Originally thinking that he would do a takeoff of Adam and Eve, Crumb became so fascinated by the Bible's language, 'a text so great and so strange that it lends itself readily to graphic depictions,' that he decided instead to do a literal interpretation assembled primarily from the translations of Robert Alter and the King James Version. [] Now readers of every persuasion--Crumb fans, comic book lovers, and believers--can gain astonishing new insights from these harrowing, tragic, and even juicy stories. Crumb's BOOK OF GENESIS reintroduces us to the bountiful tree-lined garden of Adam and Eve, the massive ark of Noah with beasts of every kind, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed by brimstone and fire that rained from the heavens, and the Egypt of the Pharaoh, where Joseph's embalmed body is carried in a coffin, in a scene as elegiac as any in Genesis. Using clues from the text and peeling away the theological and scholarly interpretations that have often obscured the Bible's most dramatic stories, Crumb fleshes out a parade of biblical originals. Nothing is left to the imagination--from the serpent in Eden, a humanoid reptile who appears like an alien out of a science fiction movie, to Jacob, a 'kind of depressed guy who doesn't strike you as physically courageous,' and his brother, Esau, 'a rough and kick-ass guy,' to Abraham's wife, Sarah, far more fetching than most woman at ninety, to God himself, 'a standard Charlton Heston-like figure with long white hair and a flowing beard.' [] As Crumb writes in his introduction, 'the stories of this people, the Hebrews, were then something more than just stories, they were the foundation, the source, in writing of religious and political power, handed down by God Himself.' Crumb's BOOK OF GENESIS, the culmination of five years of painstaking work, is a tapestry of masterly detail and storytelling that celebrates the astonishing diversity of the one of our greatest artistic geniuses." [jacket copy] "Far removed from the satirical reimagining some might expect from the father of underground comix, Crumb's long-awaited take on the first book of the Bible presents the artist's own sensitive, visually intense reflections. Where most visual adaptations edit down their prose sources, Crumb has, strikingly, included every word of the Book of Genesis within his first major book-length work. His humanistic visual response to this religious text imbues even briefly mentioned biblical characters with unique faces and attitudes, and his renderings of the book's more storied personalities draw out momentous emotions inspired by the book's inherent drama. Throughout, Genesis is a virtual portfolio of Crumb's career-long effort to instill fluid cartoon drawing with carefully rendered lifelike detail. Some might miss Crumb's full stylistic and tonal range, but the source's narrative sweep includes moments of sex and scandal that recall the artist's more notorious comics. Indeed, this monumental visual adaptation's basic strategy may subvert simply by demanding a reconsideration of its source, one that continues to motivate the complex cultural struggles that have, for decades, preoccupied this master cartoonist's landmark work."--Publishers Weekly. "To say this book is a remarkable volume or even a landmark in comic art is somewhat of an understatement. Crumb has produced what could be the ultimate graphic novel."--The Jewish Daily Forward. Pristine hardcover w/brilliant corners & crisp edges, a square & tight binding, wrapped in a bright jacket covered in archival mylar. Quite presentable.