When I started this blog every day project I planned to make Monday, Maniacal Monday.
A time for rants, a time to be more negative.
Maybe in the Lewis Black or Dennis Miller before he got boring and right wing. But I have found it one of the harder days to write.
Frankly, I don’t find much to rant about.
I could say cancer, and yes that is a big rant, and something that affects us all, my family definitely included. My aunt, my father, my father in law ….
I don’t know if it’s the year of spirit I made my theme for 2012. Or just realizing although I have a lot of pessimism I do like to focus on good things.
So decided I will talk about the book I just finished Will Eisner’s “The Contract With God Trilogy”. This took a while to read. The first and third books I read quite quickly. The middle book “A Life Force” took much, much longer.
“A Contract With God” when it came out in 1978 was literally the first graphic novel. The whole form is not even 35 years old. A tale of a man who wanted to do everything good, and had “a contract with God”, and lost his child. A book almost no publisher wanted. And very good and groundbreaking. ***1/2 (4 GR)
“A Life Force” is perhaps too ambitious for me, too many interlocking threads, too complex. Found it quite wordy, and very slow reading. I see why some like R Crumb say it as a work of genius, but was dissapointed. **1/2 (3 GR)
“Life on Dropsie Avenue” was a fast read. It’s about the rise, decline and fall, and rise and fall again of the Bronx. Tales of racism, and ethnic clashes. Of payoffs, and bribes. Of New York, wonderful and corrupt city that it is. The Bronx literally was burning in the 70s. ***1/2 (4 GR)
Would definitely recommend this trilogy, although to me there are many better graphic novels to start with from the amazing “Persepolis” to Guy Delisle’s amazing “Pyongyang” to genre classics like “Watchmen” and “V for Vendetta”. But, if you want to know where it started I would recommend “A Contract With God.” If you want to know about the ethnic clashes that are an all true and sad part of the history of NYC and the Bronx I recommend “Life on Dropsie Avenue.”
Love that I was able to get this through Minerva. And support your local library.
Edmund