{"id":42122,"date":"2024-05-07T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-07T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=42122"},"modified":"2024-04-29T10:16:36","modified_gmt":"2024-04-29T17:16:36","slug":"a-contract-with-god-how-to-survive-in-the-north","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/a-contract-with-god-how-to-survive-in-the-north\/","title":{"rendered":"A Contract with God \/ How to Survive in the North"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Books That Belong On Paper<\/strong>\u00a0first appeared on the web as Wink Books and was edited by Carla Sinclair.<\/em>\u00a0Sign up here<\/a>\u00a0to get the issues a week early in your inbox.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

A CONTRACT WITH GOD \u2014 THE REVOLUTIONARY WORK OF GRAPHIC STORYTELLING THAT INSPIRED A NEW ART FORM<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A Contract with God: And Other Tenement Stories<\/em>
by Will Eisner, Scott McCloud
W.W. Norton & Company
2017, 224 pages, 7.3 x 0.9 x 10.3 inches, Hardcover<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buy on Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Originally published in 1978, Will Eisner\u2019s A Contract With God<\/em> \u201cexisted in its own continuum, patiently waiting for the rest of its kind to quietly arrive\u2026\u201d says Scott McCloud in his introduction to the hardcover edition, released in celebration of what would have been Eisner\u2019s centennial year. McCloud\u2019s intro, the publisher\u2019s following \u201cBrief History,\u201d and Eisner\u2019s own preface firmly contextualize the work and its creator within its time and the larger comics scene to which Eisner was so integral. With or without the history, it is nearly impossible to imagine a reader not being blown away by this collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Contract With God<\/em> explores the everyday extremes of human experience through the tenement building at 55 Dropsie Avenue. Residents strive, struggle, and schlep through the graphic short stories. Eisner explores the themes therein on multiple levels, with text and illustration that are cuttingly resonant. His characters fall in and out of faith in God, man, and love. Some are blindly optimistic and others rawly matter-of-fact in their realism. Some are both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stories are a fictional fleshing-out of Eisner\u2019s life. The title story stems from his own experience of losing a child, The Street Singer<\/em> and The Super<\/em> from imagined realities of the characters in and around his own tenement, and my favorite, Cookalein, in some ways the most complex story in its interconnected and contrasting experiences of class, romance, and sex across its cast of characters, is what Eisner calls \u201ca combination of invention and recall.\u201d All the stories, in all the ways they are told, are violent, sad, intense, and beautiful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Mk Smith Despres<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

HOW TO SURVIVE IN THE NORTH \u2014 AN UNFORGETTABLE JOURNEY OF LOVE AND LOSS<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

How to Survive in the North<\/em>
by Luke Healy
Nobrow Press
2016, 192 pages, 6.6 x 1.1 x 9.0 inches, Hardcover<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buy on Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ever read one of those books that has you running to Google immediately after finishing it, to find out as much as possible about the subject matter? This is one of those books. The two real-life stories it tells are so compelling that I had to learn more about these people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese people\u201d are Robert Bartlett, who captained an Arctic expedition in 1913; and Ada Blackjack, an Inuit seamstress who joined an ill-equipped journey to Siberia in 1921. These journeys were dramatic, with deception, danger, isolation, and illness. The survival stories Healy retells are astonishing. Readers will witness the slow encroachment of scurvy, the desolation of Arctic landscapes, and the different forms that heroism can take.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By comparison, the third storyline \u2014 a fictional account of a disgraced professor in the modern day, who becomes fixated with Bartlett\u2019s and Blackjack\u2019s stories \u2014 just can\u2019t hold as much interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The artwork is deceptively simple, with unfussy lines and a restricted, distinctive color palette of pale yellows, pinks, and greens. These colors create, with surprising subtlety, a mood of mounting desperation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fascinating history, check. Unusual characters, check. Natural settings and a color scheme ripe for cinematography, check and check. Someone turn this book into a movie already!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Christine Ro<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Books That Belong On Paper Issue No. 13<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13684,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[31],"tags":[2398],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42122"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13684"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42142,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42122\/revisions\/42142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}