59th out of 1,516 books
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3,105 voters
A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories (The Contract With God Trilogy #1)
by
Will Eisner
Go back to where graphic novels all started, on the Bronx street of Dropsie Avenue and A Life Force, in Will Eisner's groundbreaking 1978 creation. The human drama, the psychological insight -- Eisner captures the soul of the city and its troubled inhabitants with pen and ink. The comics medium was altered forever with the publication of this seminal work.
Paperback, 196 pages
Published
September 19th 1985
by Kitchen Sink Press
(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 didn't like as much but for t...more
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 tosses i...more
Mar 03, 2008
Josh
rated it
4 of 5 stars
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 them bound if...more
Jul 27, 2007
Alex Cunningham
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
searchers
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, empathetic, and poetically simple. The images are master...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, empathetic, and poetically simple. The images are master...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
Jul 19, 2011
miaaa
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
graphics-comics-illustrated
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 made with God,...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 made with God,...more
A Contract with God is a 3 part series, in which, Eisner tells the stories of his once neighborhood. Changing here and there, tweaking this and that, to create a creative nonfiction narrative. A Contract with God and Other Tenement stories is book 1 of 3.
I picked this book up yesterday at the library around 7 and began reading at around 8 and I just finished it. I thought it was wonderful for a few reasons.
I am a sucker for tenement/neighborhood stories. Having lived in and out of apartments fo...more
I picked this book up yesterday at the library around 7 and began reading at around 8 and I just finished it. I thought it was wonderful for a few reasons.
I am a sucker for tenement/neighborhood stories. Having lived in and out of apartments fo...more
A powerfully written, powerfully drawn collections of stories set on the mythic "Dropsie Avenue," a Bronx street of Jewish tenements in the 1930s. It has all the sentimental cliches about Jewish immigrants in the Bronx. But this novel, which makes the reasonable claim to be the first graphic novel, is anything but sentimental. It depicts a pious man stealing from a synagogue; a brutal, wife-beating alcoholic street singer who catches a lucky break and then loses it; a sex-obsessed superintendent...more
Will Eisner (1917-2005) was probably the most-influential comics creator from which most casual fans had never read anything. Unlike publicity hounds like Stan Lee, trendsetters like Jack Kirby or unsung heroes like Julius Schwartz and Carl Barks, Eisner has flown beneath the popular radar.
But his influence was so great that the comics industry’s equivalent of the Oscars — awarded each year at Comic-Con — is known as the “Eisners.”
Eisner’s most-famous creation was the noir-ish hero The Spirit, w...more
But his influence was so great that the comics industry’s equivalent of the Oscars — awarded each year at Comic-Con — is known as the “Eisners.”
Eisner’s most-famous creation was the noir-ish hero The Spirit, w...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 able to help n...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. The art was f...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. The art was f...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 hilangnya kepercay...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 hilangnya kepercay...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 With God é a...more
No final da sua carreira, começou a publicar obras mais intimistas e pessoais. A Contract With God é a...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. It felt...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 she...more
Raccolta di quattro storie ambientate nella New York degli anni '30, ai tempi della grande depressione.
Tutte le storie hanno come protagonisti i personaggi di un quartiere, e abbiamo così il Super, il responsabile del palazzo, i cantanti dei vicoli e il tempo delle vacanza per sfuggire alla città e cercare di migliorare la propria condizione sociale.
Mentre le ultime tre storie sono più svagate la prima, quella che dà il nome alla raccolta, è più impegnativa. Un immigrato ebreo generoso e disponi...more
Tutte le storie hanno come protagonisti i personaggi di un quartiere, e abbiamo così il Super, il responsabile del palazzo, i cantanti dei vicoli e il tempo delle vacanza per sfuggire alla città e cercare di migliorare la propria condizione sociale.
Mentre le ultime tre storie sono più svagate la prima, quella che dà il nome alla raccolta, è più impegnativa. Un immigrato ebreo generoso e disponi...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.
Sep 12, 2010
Derek Davis
rated it
5 of 5 stars
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 image, but by the flames of a fire, say, cur...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 image, but by the flames of a fire, say, cur...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 appreciate all...more
And yes, they aren't happy, they're real. But told in a way that we can identify and appreciate all...more
Without the illustration this would have been nothing really, with the illustration you see these sequence of graphic novels come to life with people and neighbourhoods and history all interwoven and intermingled.
The first book is Contract with God which compromises four stories, Contract with God, The Street Singer, The Super and Cookalein, these were written as a sequence and form an interwoven story of the time they're set in.
The second book, A Life Force is the story of one man's life path...more
The first book is Contract with God which compromises four stories, Contract with God, The Street Singer, The Super and Cookalein, these were written as a sequence and form an interwoven story of the time they're set in.
The second book, A Life Force is the story of one man's life path...more
I LOVE this whole book! It's four short stories, all in graphic novel format, black and white.
I had to pick this up for my "Graphic Novel" class, before which I'd never heard of the book.
The stories here are really amazing. I really connected to it because of the Jewish backgrounds of many of the characters, which is something I'm not used to in comics. The characters were all very unique, mentally and physically (you could tell them all apart very easily, even ignoring their clothing). I loved...more
I had to pick this up for my "Graphic Novel" class, before which I'd never heard of the book.
The stories here are really amazing. I really connected to it because of the Jewish backgrounds of many of the characters, which is something I'm not used to in comics. The characters were all very unique, mentally and physically (you could tell them all apart very easily, even ignoring their clothing). I loved...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.
Eis...more
Eis...more
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 perubah...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). I...more
I really liked this book, or rather, stories? They were short and sweet. Simple and very to-the-point. I sat down to read this and couldn't stop. The short stories at the end of the book were a little repulsive but I wanted to know how they would end. I usually finish my books by reading the preface, provided there is one, and when I did that I found out that (spoiler?) quote "Some of them are true. Some of them could be true." Reading on, the ones that were true per se was a little bit scary......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 scenes that are bo...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 scenes that are bo...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 this sharply obs...more
If you came upon this book simply out of curiosity to read one of the masters / pioneers of graphic novels / comics / sequential art- you won't be disappointed.
So well written are these stories that they entertain you.
By the end of the book - I was left slightly sad - I was there with the characters in their lives - living their misery with them - that's how powerful these stories were.
Each of them about life of people who are struggling with their own problems in one tenement. Each beautifully...more
So well written are these stories that they entertain you.
By the end of the book - I was left slightly sad - I was there with the characters in their lives - living their misery with them - that's how powerful these stories were.
Each of them about life of people who are struggling with their own problems in one tenement. Each beautifully...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 huge fan of Eisner's draw...more
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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 advent of d...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 advent of d...more
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