… I don’t think there’s a book called The Irish Catholic Graphic Novel, do you?
I drew an essay for this book, which came out last month from Rutgers University Press (on amazon here). (I also did the painting for the cover but I did not do the overall design or add the balloons.)
The essay is a much-abbreviated history of American autobio comics and their Jewish influences (Freud is clearly an influence on all of the early stuff, and I argue that creators in the early ’70s, like R. Crumb, Harvey Pekar, & Justin Green, were influenced by Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint), what defines the genre, a theoretical exploration of how confessional comics are an expression of American-Jewish thought, and a bit of “how I got started in comics” as well.
If those sorts of things interest you, and if scholarship about Jewish-themed comic books (which is the rest of the book) interests you, you should check it out. If my essay sounds interesting but not scholarship about Jewish-themed comic books, I’ll be printing just the essay as a zine in the next couple of months. I’ll post when I have them. meanwhile, here is the first page (click to enlarge):
(Disclaimer which I kind of can’t believe I’d ever need to make: No, I don’t believe i’m superior to anybody because i’m Jewish. And I’m not really interested in discussing whether the Jews control all the world’s money or whatever.)
That looks fascinating; kudos on your participation.
I, personally, control all the world’s money. That is why next year this blog will RULE THE WORLD!!!
I think using Catholic iconography as an example of some kind of binary/limited conception of good/evil in man in Christianity writ-large is pretty lazy, to be honest.
It’s not presented as such in Catholic traditions; read The Confessions of St. Augustine, for instance. Read up on a number of Saints. Many engaged in all kinds of sin.
The Catholic tradition of confession is there for a reason, after all, and it’s not to simply sanctify or condemn for all eternity; it’s in fact a method for understanding the messy nature of being human.
It’s impossible, in my opinion, to mention Crumb without understanding that dynamic.
It’s one that informed- or can be seen as informing – many works of literature that can be counted as first-person “confessionals”, from Dostoyevsky’s Note From Underground onward.
And you can’t discount so many works in the modernist cannon, from Hesse, to Miller to Hemingway, etc.,etc., in informing these kinds of narratives.
In fact, I’d suggest that a more accurate entry point into all of these works would be from something like Colin Wilsons’ concept of THE OUTSIDER.
That said, I think the modern conception of autobiographical comics, including Crumb, may very well have been influenced by Roths’ novel. And, obviously I’ve only read one page of your work, so I apologize if I’m getting ahead of myself here.
I do think that certain works of autobiography could be understood in terms of a Jewish tradition, but to “source” it all to Jewish tradition seems a little shortsighted to me.
uland, it's just a twenty-page comics essay on the jewy angle of autobio comix. it's not supposed be the last word on anything, certainly not on the whole concept of the confessional in literature.
in fact, the whole first page is just to get your attention, & immediately after i explicitly narrow down my scope by a *lot.* but i know you couldn't know that.
& i touch on catholic confession, briefly, when discussing justin green's storytelling.
You edited the original post?
no. why?