R. Crumb Takes on the Book of Genesis

Image via The Telegraph

When The Da Vinci Code was published, the Roman Catholic church did its best to dispute the stories presented by author Dan Brown. The church said the content of the fictitious book was full of lies about the church and they feared people would believe what they read and take it as fact. This did nothing to slow the sales of the book and I doubt it caused even a moment of hesitation among those who read the book. If you were God fearing enough, you weren’t about to accept a new take on religion from a book published by this guy.

I am not saying that R. Crumb is taking a cue from Dan Brown in publishing his new book, The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb–Crumb follows the beat of his own drum–but he stands a decent chance of attracting some good publicity from the rejection of the title by leading groups connected to the Christian church. To those who know Crumb’s work, it should not surprise that an illustrated edition of Genesis would be chock full of large-hipped, beefy-legged women and men with coarse, dark hair. And of course, there is sex, because the bible is full of sex. But seeing the sex and the characters of the book drawn out in a crude, cross-hatched and, frankly, narrative-honest style, makes the Christian church uneasy.

The Christian Institute said of the work that it turns the Bible into titillation. “It seems wholly inappropriate for what is essentially God’s rescue plan for mankind,” said Mike Judge of the religious think tank. He goes on to say in The Telegraph newspaper that “If you are going to publish your own version of the Bible it must be done with a great deal of sensitivity. The Bible is a very important text to many many people and should be treated with the respect it deserves. Representing it in your own way is all very well and good but it must be remembered that it is a matter of people’s faith, their religion. Faith is such an important part of people’s lives that one must remember to tread very carefully.” A spokesperson from the Church of England said, “I haven’t seen the book but I think trying to sell something by emphasizing the sexual nature of some of the scenes doesn’t seem to be a good way to pass on the message of the bible.”

The comments from Mike Judge and The Church of England are surprising considering the amount of respect that Crumb seems to have for the first book of the Bible. He does not believe the Book of Genesis to be a work of God but a work of men, but in his new title Crumb has painstakingly transferred every word of the book into his illustrations. Each scene in the Book of Genesis is represented in his new work and it stands as the longest comic work Crumb has produced to date–224 pages. Crumb’s new book is a result of his fascination with the Book of Genesis, not an attempt at derision. It is not anti-religious or meant to polarize. It is simply what it claims to be: an illustrated edition of the Book of Genesis. That Crumb’s artistic style tends be sexual in nature and far from honorific classical religious painting capturing similar scenes should not preclude him from tackling religious books. Crumb himself has said of the Book of Genesis that it is “a text so great and so strange that it lends itself readily to graphic depictions…. The stories of these people, the Hebrews, were something more than just stories…”

The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb will be published on October 19 by W. W. Norton & Co.

via Biblical sex row over explicit illustrated Book of Genesis – Telegraph.