Your Humble Blogger has read and enjoyed some of Will Eisner’s stuff, but this was the first time I read his most famous (I think) work, A Contract with God and other tenement stories. I was disappointed. Not with the storytelling, which is usually what I’m complaining about; Mr. Eisner is very good at that. No, I was disappointed in the experience of reading the piece primarily because it meant being dipped in the vile slime of Mr. Eisner’s view of humanity.
OK, got a little out of control there. But seriously, Mr. Eisner appears to revel in portraying humanity’s inhumanity. Sadism, self-deception and greed are the primary motivators in this book, along with revenge and, of course, lust. And not the happy kind of lust, either. I mean, I’m all in favor of lust, in general; a lascivious enjoyment of, and anticipation of, various sex acts is, you know, a lot of fun to read about, not to mention experience. But in this book, lust primarily happens against the will of the person experiencing it, and is the occasion for fear, deception and violence. And nobody enjoys it. The lust, I mean; Mr. Eisner depicts a few sex acts where the participants enjoy the act itself, or at least one of them does. But they don’t enjoy the lust.
I suppose part of that is an indictment of the cultural attitudes toward sex, the fear, deception and violence that gets associated with lust as a person gets socialized (in the society he portrays, Depression-era urban America). And, I know, he was writing this in the seventies, when (for reasons good and bad) a negative view of humanity was common, particularly in writers. And he was writing in a genre that was, not counting all the stuff that nobody counted at the time, used to dealing with sex only in sublimation. Bringing that sort of nasty, small crime to the comic-book format was shocking, at least to all the people who hadn’t been reading all the stuff that nobody counted, and so the point is not just the foulness, but the combination of foulness with the format. But, you know, it’s 2005, and it’s not just good for the soil, it is the soil.
Of course, it’s not just sex that people want, but hate wanting in this book. It’s money, too. And comfort. And love. You know, its view of people is just ugly. And for all its other achievements, the achievement that struck me the strongest was the powerful portrayal of that ugliness. And I didn’t enjoy it.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
“A lot of fun to read … powerful portrayal” –Vardibidian
Ah. So that’s how back cover copy works.
i haven’t read it. i’ve read dropsie ave, written a decade and a half later. very moving. though provoking. an exceptional work of art from a master storyteller. full of humor, human drama, and implied sex with a dog.
Am so very pleased to see you think so too. ::grin:: It almost hit me more from the other direction, that all of Eisner’s characters (I’ve read Tenement and, er, To The Heart Of The Storm) are really ugly in how they’re drawn. I suppose it’s an artistic accomplishment, looked at that way, that his character design doesn’t just tell you something about the character, it induces you to react the way you’re supposed to to the vice or flaw in question. And I hadn’t really realized before how much the appeal of certain comics *is* based on the atttractiveness of the characters, like how much more a cute face can get away with, so go Eisner for highlighting that. But the actual comics I did not enjoy either.
That’s an excellent point, Amy. Although, I should admit, some of the Bad Young Men in this kinda hubba-hubba in a Julian Sands sort of way, and not all of the women are awful-looking. Still, on the whole, most of the people are unpleasant to look at, and unpleasant to think about. And, yes, it’s an accomplishment, as is the whole book, but it’s not one I happen to like.
Thanks,
-V.