June 26, 2010

The Artful Eye of Will Eisner

A fellow Art Institute of CA-SF instructor, filmmaker Richard Walsh, recommended I checkout a Will Eisner graphic novel. So literally I did by exploring what was on the shelves of my Oakland Library Piedmont Avenue branch. Even our little tiny branch has his novels, not surprising for hipster Oakland.

The one I am reading is The Contract with God Trilogy set in NYC during the 1920s and 30s. It is very much about the life of the Jewish Immigrant. His writing and drawing are helping me understand the life my grandparents lived and from where I evolved. Gritty and honest, I can track their paths from city to country and how I am quite a different Jew having grown up in Connecticut rather than one of the five borough.

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