Musea Art Review: R. Crumb's Kafka
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Title: R. Crumb's Kafka
What is it? : Franz Kafka's biography with text by David Mairowitz, and
illustrations by celebrated underground comic artist Robert Crumb.
Technical Quality: High. Book is a well made, 175 page,
trade paperback. Note the somewhat chilling cover with an orange
Prague cityscape drawing , with a green insert of Kafka writing.
Innovative Quality: High. The book uses the graphic novel
approach to tell the life story of the troubled but brilliant
Franz Kafka. Crumb illustrates the main biographical events and
portions from some of Kafka's most celebrated works.
Review: Three parts come together to make this a memorable
and notable read: Franz Kafka's life and works,
Robert Crumb's illustrations on every page, and an informative
biographical text by David Zane Mairowitz.
Mairowitz writes:
"Before ever becoming the ADJECTIVE (Kafkaesque) Franz Kafka
(1883-1924) was a Jew from Prague, born into its inescapable tradition
of story-tellers and fantasists, ghetto-dwellers and eternal refugees.
His Prague, "a little mother' with 'claws' was a place that suffocated
him, but where he nonetheless chose to live all but the last eight
months of his life."
That well sums up a lot of the main threads of Kafka's life too. He was
a Jew in
a country that more and more hated and persecuted the Jews. He had
an oppressive and abusive father that, like Prague, he could never
escape.
He had troubled relationships with all the women he was attracted to,
and he never got the respect for his writing in his life time that he
deserved.
The book goes into detail on all these issues and let's us see his
world -
a depressing world where it seems his only escape was his writing.
And what writing he did. Throughout the book are illustrated excerpts
of major Kafka works including: an early story 'The Judgement',
the famous "Metamorphosis' where Gregor Samsa turns into an
enormous bug; "The Burrow" an animal fable; "In the Penal Colony"
with the new killing machine invention; his best known work, the
novel,
"The Trial" where 'K' is arrested - but for what?; "The Castle" the 2nd
of 3 novels; "A Hunger Artist" who is a sideshow freak for his ability
to starve himself, and "Amerika" his last unfinished novel.
At the age of 39 he retired from his insurance job (one that by
improving
safety standards actually saved many lives) due to tuberculosis.
Kafka instructed his friend Max Brod, to destroy almost all his works
upon his death. Fortunately for us, Brod did not carry that wish out.
The bio is fascinating, and the excerpts cover some of the best of
Kafka's work. Now add to that the superb black and white illustrations
of Crumb and we get a very great book indeed.
Crumb, known for his underground comics, has taken that style
of art to high art here. His drawing style is the
technical equal of any illustrator. Yet beyond that
he has a gift for characterization , an eye for detail, and the ability
to
illustrate any scene. Had the bio and excerpts been any less
compelling,
the illustrations would have still been notable. Each page was filled
with drawings and many of them are minor masterpieces on their own.
An example are the illustrations on page 64 and 65. Kafka wrote
many letters to Felice Bauer one of 4 women that he had important
relationships with. On the left side we see the couple up to their
chests in pages of letters. On the right side of the page, we
see Kafka writing at his desk in the bottom right corner with
letter after letter stacked through the air, all the way
up to the upper left corner.
Wisely Mairowitz, who wrote the text, does not try to embellish
his work, instead his comments are sparse and to the point , thus
better
allowing Kafka the classic writer, and Crumb a world class
gifted illustrator, to shine.
High marks all around in this new classic .
Contact Info:
www.ibooks.net
Overall Grade: 7.0
Grading system: 9-10 Highest grade - Life's work of
a master (ex. Collected plays of Shakespeare, collected
symphonies of Beethoven) 8-9 Single best work of a
celebrated master's career. 7-8. Best work of an era or
genre or decade. 6-7 Best work of the year. 5-6 Very
good. 4-5 More good than bad. 3-4 Average amount
of good = amount of bad. 2-3 Mostly bad with some
redeeming parts. 1-2 Nothing redeemable. 0-1 So bad
it is offensively bad and outrages the reviewere for
taking up that time in his life - just awful.
Musea guarantees a review for all art work in any
conceivable field IF you follow the rules posted on
alt.zines or see our website or e-mail me.
Tom Hendricks tomhend...@cs.com
http://musea.us