Neil Fein's Blog

A Contract With God
by Will Eisner

Having heard so much about Mr. Eisner's work, this volume seemed a good place to start exploring it. When a copy turned up in Bruce's bookshelf, I asked him what he thought of it. "You haven't read it?" I affirmed that I hadn't, and he insisted I borrow it and read it.

The story is simple. It's really the tale of a building on the fictional Dropsie Avenue in New York, and its tenants, mostly Jewish Immigrants. The book is divided up into four stories, so I don't know if it's really a "graphic novel" per se. But it's certainly the progenitor of the form.

The book is printed in a black-and-white, but the ink is almost dark brown color, as it it had been in the sun too long. The book feels old, and the copy I read was well-read.

Dialogue is inseparable from these sepia pictures. When a pious Jew, mourning his wife, forsakes God, it is in the midst of a wonderful stew of language and linework. And never has a resort in the Catskills looked so erotic.

The greater theme is that of the Jewish-American-immigrant experience. Escaping poverty, persecution, and war, there was an implied contract with this new land of hope. Perhaps it has been kept, perhaps not. There are laws and rights and wrongs, precedents and recourses in America that didn't exist in central Europe. But the cost of this has been village life, life as a Jewish People. The Jewish Community of today is both more sophisticated and more superficial than that of old.

While all these themes are hinted at, A Contract With God is never polemic, and never places message above story. And the characters...! The super taking advantage of his tenants, the musician conning a rich lady, the Jewish teen looking for a rich "catch". These are the themes of Mr. Eisner's work.

Highly recommended.

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