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A Contract with God (The Contract With God Trilogy #1)
by
Will Eisner
A revolutionary novel, A Contract with God re-creates the neighborhood of Will Eisner's youth through a quartet of four interwoven stories. Expressing the joy, exuberance, tragedy, and drama of life on the mythical Dropsie Avenue of the Bronx, A Contract with God is a monumental achievement, a must in the library of any graphic novel fan.
Paperback, 182 pages
Published
December 5th 2006
by W. W. Norton & Company
(first published 1978)
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This is intense. The storytelling is strong and is matched with expressive art. Among other things, I appreciated the use of space: the arrangement of panels and the interplay of lettering and drawing. The subject matter, the characters, the setting make this a substantial collection of tales--real stories, human stories. My favorite was the multifaceted drama of "Cookalien." The title story, "Contract with God," was intense, thought-provoking. "The Street Singer" I...more
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I read this for a course I'm taking at the local library in July about Jewish literature, identity and imagination - the course is being taught solely through graphic novels. So far, the course is terrible, but this book was intriguing. Since I'm not Jewish, I didn't have a ton of context behind my reading. I found the main story to be allegorical - man is good, makes a contract with god, which all Jews have from birth. Life takes a bad turn, man loses faith and, in the story, literally toss...more
Josh
rated it
·
review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
fans of the non-violent sides of Stray Bullets and Scorcese
Considered to be the first graphic novel, this tells the story - in 4 parts - of New York circa the Great Depression. The characters are caricatures of lives from Eisner's past, and while it is a primarily Jewish neighborhood, I think anyone with a brain and heart pumping blood, etc can identify with the scenese painted here. It tackles those subjects that stuff like "The Wire" still tries (and fails) to capture today - those sinews that bind each life together, and ultimately keep th...more
Eisner himself admits in his multiple introductions to this volume that "A Contract With God" was in some ways an experiment which led him to develop the skills he'd use in a far more serious way on "Dropsie Avenue." "Dropsie Avenue" is indeed the superior work.
That caveat out of the way, "A Contract With God" is one of the more moving, deep, and visually surprising graphic novels ever, despite it being the first. The writing is sensitive, em...more
That caveat out of the way, "A Contract With God" is one of the more moving, deep, and visually surprising graphic novels ever, despite it being the first. The writing is sensitive, em...more
I'm not very knowledgable when it comes to the graphic novel, but I've been helping our local public library on a program on Jewish literature and the form, and this was our first book, so we met last night for an utterly enjoyable discussion group. My own feelings were that the visuals were well suited to the Jewish quarrel with God theme in the title story. The first three pieces have the same basic structure: an unlikable character goes through a tragic/ugly/seedy experience only to end up on...more
Menarik melihat bagaimana pergulatan hidup manusia sehari-hari digambarkan dengan apik oleh Eisner. Belajar sedikit juga tentang budaya dan kebiasaan Yahudi. Jadi siapa pun yang meremehkan novel grafis dengan alasan tidak intelek, dude you don't know what you're missing!
In the four short stories contained in A Contract With God, Eisner examines life in the 1930’s Bronx tenements that sprung up in New York after WWI. These neighborhoods accommodated the influx of immigrants and bred a close neighborliness ripe for mining stories. Eisner does this brilliantly.
In the title story, a young Russian Jew has come to American to escape the pograms that were sweeping through his country. When tragedy strikes, he becomes bitter, rejects the contract he had mad...more
In the title story, a young Russian Jew has come to American to escape the pograms that were sweeping through his country. When tragedy strikes, he becomes bitter, rejects the contract he had mad...more
A landmark early "graphic novel." And it's Eisner. Four largely independent stories, though all take place in Depression-era New York. (More or less in tenements in the Jewish quarter.) The first was the best, about a very upstanding religious guy whose daughter dies; he gets angry with God, as he thought they had a 'contract.' The second is about a drunken singer, and is interesting; he sort of catches a break by singing/begging outside the window of someone who might actually be...more
Well, that was extraordinarily tense and unexpected. I've tried to The Spirit before, but never took much of a liking to it; due to that, I was hesitant about picking up A Contract With God. A friend recommended it to me, though, so I felt a bit bound to go through with giving it a try. I'm actually rather happy that I did.
While comics like Maus take a view of the Holocaust and bring it home in the graphic form, A Contract With God did wonders with the dirty 30s tenement lifestyle...more
While comics like Maus take a view of the Holocaust and bring it home in the graphic form, A Contract With God did wonders with the dirty 30s tenement lifestyle...more
Buku pertama dari Trilogy Contract with God . Iseng beli karena saya sering mendengar nama Will Eisner terutama buat penghargaan bergengsi Eisner award.
Saya ga nyangka ternyata bukunya sebagus ini. Will Eisner dapat merangkaikan sebuah karya yang baik gambar maupun cerita sama luarbiasanya.
Buku pertama ini mengisahkan kehidupan orang-orang di Jalan Raya Dropsie, terdengar klise tapi kehidupan manusia yang klise itu ternyata tidak sesederhana yang terlihat. Problem mulai dari hilangny...more
Saya ga nyangka ternyata bukunya sebagus ini. Will Eisner dapat merangkaikan sebuah karya yang baik gambar maupun cerita sama luarbiasanya.
Buku pertama ini mengisahkan kehidupan orang-orang di Jalan Raya Dropsie, terdengar klise tapi kehidupan manusia yang klise itu ternyata tidak sesederhana yang terlihat. Problem mulai dari hilangny...more
Will Eisner dispensa apresentações. Lenda do mundo dos comics, notabilizou-se pela criação do personagem The Spirit, que ganhou um lugar na história do medium pela forma como o autor inovou os cânones da BD. Com um virtuosismo gráfico assinalável, adaptou a linguagem cinematográfica recriando, com isso, o modo de contar histórias em comics e tornando-se uma referência para os restantes autores.
No final da sua carreira, começou a publicar obras mais intimistas e pessoais. A Contract Wit...more
No final da sua carreira, começou a publicar obras mais intimistas e pessoais. A Contract Wit...more
I was told that Will Eisner was the father of the graphic novel. I'm not sure if that's true, but he is one of the first to write and draw graphic novels. A Contract With God is his first published graphic novel. This novel is wonderful. The art is beautiful. Unlike the comics of the time it's not crammed full of text and little pictures. It's laid out with text and drawings mingling together. They accented each other. The text became part of the art. I enjoyed Eisner drawing style too....more
I read it in 45 minutes which means I probably missed a lot of the artistic details. I liked his drawing style and his allusions (literally and visually.) The whole concept of a contract with God was particularly interesting to think about regarding orthodoxy and true-believers. I met someone I would call a true believer a few weeks ago at Pike Place market when I sat next to her on a bench to smoke and read The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in America. I wonder if...more
Huh well color me underwhelmed. I mean it's fine, the art is beautiful and the parables are reasonably clever (aside from the one about the Pedophilic Nazi Superintendent and the predatory girl that one plays like the strangest EC Comic ever written).
But well its all a little on the nose.
Not exactly what I was expecting from what is supposed to be one of the greatest comics of all time.
But well its all a little on the nose.
Not exactly what I was expecting from what is supposed to be one of the greatest comics of all time.
Derek Davis
rated it
·
review of another edition
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
anyone who loves comix and graphic novels
"A Contract with God" is often considered the first true "graphic novel," and no one deserves such credit more than Eisner. Think of this as a review of his graphic novels in general, to which I'd give almost every one five stars.
Eisner's art grew with his years, from the simpler but always exquisitely done panels of "The Spirit" to his later work that exploded its physical barriers and overtook whole pages – not in the Marvel fashion of a single huge im...more
Eisner's art grew with his years, from the simpler but always exquisitely done panels of "The Spirit" to his later work that exploded its physical barriers and overtook whole pages – not in the Marvel fashion of a single huge im...more
Though most of it reads like short stories set amidst pictures (closer to the layout of a children's picture book than a graphic novel), I recognize its importance in the history of comics. To get something as literary as this and tie it into the genre that was, just a couple of decades before, decried as the cause of juvenile delinquency is a huge step. It all has to do with the wonderful stories.
And yes, they aren't happy, they're real. But told in a way that we can identify and a...more
And yes, they aren't happy, they're real. But told in a way that we can identify and a...more
It's hard to imagine the impact this book must've had when it was published in 1978, or the amazing foresight of Eisner when he wrote it. Reading it more than 30 years later, when graphic novels have become well-established, can't possibly have the same effect on a reader. And yet I found myself marveling. This is not the tale of a super-hero. The material could've easily been written as short stories. But the marriage of the words with Eisner's drawings makes it much more effective this way.
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Hidup bisa jadi adalah sebuah anugerah yang indah, tapi tanyakanlah pada para warga di Dropsie Avenue dan mereka akan dengan mudah mengaitkannya dengan hilanganya jejak-jejak harapan, perjuangan antiklimaks, penghinaan, keterasingan nilai-nilai moral, ataupun kejatuhan yang selalu ditemani oleh penyesalan. Kejatuhan seperti hujan yang mengguyur kepala Frimme Hersh saat dinginnya tangan Tuhan terasa begitu mengkhianati. Kejatuhan seperti surat dari sebuah gedung berisi sebuah harapan akan peruba...more
As I got older and kept reading comics, I realized that I owed it to myself to check out Will Eisner. One of these days I will get around to his series The Spirit, but the sheer volume of that work is fairly daunting. A Contract With God, on the other hand, is regarded as one of the first and most important graphic novels (an original work published for the first time in book format, as opposed to a trade paperback collecting a sequence of stories originally published as monthly comic books). ...more
Will Eisner is an interesting figure for me. He's one of those names that always turns up whenever people talk about the most influential and important storytellers in the medium of graphic fiction, but at the same time, he's someone who I've never been able to understand the hype about, having read only his Spirit work.
Now I get it. This book was a complete revelation for me - the way Eisner uses the simplest of pen strokes to create emotive environments, the way he can craft scen...more
Now I get it. This book was a complete revelation for me - the way Eisner uses the simplest of pen strokes to create emotive environments, the way he can craft scen...more
For all my experience with comic books, I'd never read Will Eisner. He's the man they named the comic book Academy Awards after. How in all my years of playing within this medium had I never read him? Well, I don't know. I simply know that I have now rectified that situation. Eisner's "A Contract with God" is a marvelous volume for all bibliophiles. While it is a graphic novel/comic book, there is nothing juvenile about the stories told here. The mixture of image and text brings...more
Of course someday you need to go back and read the things that "started it all," and Will Eisner is well-known as (pretty much) the guy who brought "graphic novels" into existence. That said... well, I sort of feel bad that I didn't enjoy it more than I did. The stories didn't particularly resonate very much with me - they were tales of the everyday life of a tenement of Jews in the 1920's, not a particularly captivating subject to yours truly, I suppose. Also I'm not a hu...more
book #11 for Jugs & Capes! And essay #3 for CCLaP! In fact, someone from Will Eisner Studios actually contacted me to say they enjoyed the review. Neat!
***
Ah, Will Eisner. Undoubtedly the father or the modern graphic novel, his influence has been huge and sweeping. I mean, that's what they tell me; I'm sure that 90 percent of the people reading this review know a hell of a lot more about Will Eisner than I do. But I do know that 1978's A Contract With God is an incredibly imp...more
***
Ah, Will Eisner. Undoubtedly the father or the modern graphic novel, his influence has been huge and sweeping. I mean, that's what they tell me; I'm sure that 90 percent of the people reading this review know a hell of a lot more about Will Eisner than I do. But I do know that 1978's A Contract With God is an incredibly imp...more
Es una mirada a la "tenenments" Neoyorkinos de los 30's, edificios que reunen a un monton de gente que viajaron en barco de distintas partes de europa a vivir en edificios que parecen barcos en sus entrañas. Contrato con dios reune cuatro historias, la primera es de un hombre modelo desde su infancia, que ayudaba al projimo y era caritativo, y que firmo un contrato de beneficio mutuo con dios, el cual este ultimo violo al llevarse a su hija. La segunda historia es de un cantante callej...more
Dari buku ini terdapat empat cerita:
1. Kontrak dengan Tuhan: Seseorang yang kecewa terhadap keadaan yang menimpanya. Kecewa terhadap Tuhan yang ia sembah dan yakini. Ketika dikecewakan, maka apakah ia akan tetap bertahan atau melawan?
2. Penyanyi Jalanan: Ketika minuman keras merusak akal, masalah akan datang bertubi-tubi.
3. Sang Pengawas: Bagaimana cara kita memandang sebuah masalah? Menuruti apa kata hati atau emosi yang dikedepankan?
4. Cookalein:...more
1. Kontrak dengan Tuhan: Seseorang yang kecewa terhadap keadaan yang menimpanya. Kecewa terhadap Tuhan yang ia sembah dan yakini. Ketika dikecewakan, maka apakah ia akan tetap bertahan atau melawan?
2. Penyanyi Jalanan: Ketika minuman keras merusak akal, masalah akan datang bertubi-tubi.
3. Sang Pengawas: Bagaimana cara kita memandang sebuah masalah? Menuruti apa kata hati atau emosi yang dikedepankan?
4. Cookalein:...more
Legendary comic book writer and artist Will Eisner coined the term grpahic novel with this book. A CONTRACT WITH GOD is composed of four different stories about Jewish life during the depression era. The stories are great, but the real draw here is the beautiful artwork by Eisner. It's hard to find the words to describe his mastery of the comic artform. Everyone should read this, essential for fans of graphic novel, but even more important for readers that are looking for a reason to start r...more
One of the impressive things about this collection of vignettes is that it has, for the most part, a rising arc. “The Super” and “The Street Singer” are good vignettes about pathetic characters. Though they are isolated, just there to create scene, or stories he knew he had to write. The others, including the rest of “The Contract with God” and all of “A Life Force” and “Dropsie Avenue” have a particular theme that is worked through, a sense of place is attempted to be conceived. Eisner coul...more
Dan
rated it
·
review of another edition
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Graphic Novel Fans, Comic Afficionados, Jews
Recommended to Dan by:
Lee
This is credited with being the first graphic novel. It is a collection of four stories, set during the 30s in the Tenements on the fictional Dropsie Ave in the Bronx. The four stories are:
1) A Contract with God
The story of a Hassidic Jew who's adopted daughter dies, partially autobiographical about Will Eisner's daughter.
2) The Street Singer
The story of a wino who sings in the alleys behind Tenements.
3) The Super
The story of the super inte...more
1) A Contract with God
The story of a Hassidic Jew who's adopted daughter dies, partially autobiographical about Will Eisner's daughter.
2) The Street Singer
The story of a wino who sings in the alleys behind Tenements.
3) The Super
The story of the super inte...more
John Wiswell
rated it
·
review of another edition
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Comics readers, literary readers
The black and white print pulls some of the childishness out of the blocky art style that was very similar to simple cartoons of its time. It alternates between panels and storybook-style pages, and the first story in particular has a very storybookish narrative, even though its subject matter is intensely grave. The eponymous story, "A Contract with God," deals with the worst pain in religious life - not the loss of faith in God's existence, but coming to hate Him. It's written with e...more
A Contract with God affects me the same way The Catcher in the Rye did when I read it at age 14; it depressed the hell out of me, though I couldn't deny the poignant moments that exist within it. Re-reading The Catcher in the Rye at age 18, I loved it, so maybe the case is the same here. Will Eisner is legendary, so maybe I'm missing something else in order to fully enjoy this book. I'll let you know how I feel in a few years.
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WILL EISNER was born William Erwin Eisner on March 6, 1917 in Brooklyn, New York. By the time of his death on January 3, 2005, following complications from open heart surgery, Eisner was recognized internationally as one of the giants in the field of sequential art, a term he coined.
In a career that spanned nearly seventy years and eight decades — from the dawn of the comic book to the...more
More about Will Eisner...
In a career that spanned nearly seventy years and eight decades — from the dawn of the comic book to the...more
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