fantastic

Having recently returned from a few days in Prague, I was impressed with both the artwork and the serious history of this book. I highly recommend it for those reasons, as well as its clever summaries of several Kafka tales.

A fine collaboration with Robert Crumb and David Z. Mairowitz. This opus reveals two things about Crumb: Crumb's attempt to vent his childhood Hell with his own father and a depth of related emotions uncharacteristic of his personality.

A literary artefact that is intriguing as it reveals a writer at the beginning of his career, concerned with topics and issues that Kerouac would explore for the rest of his life. Although not in the familiar `spontaneous prose' style and endless stream of consciousness, often taken as difficult to follow and understand by some readers, this novella is written in the third person and well structured. As it is a short piece, the characters are not fleshed-out as they could be, which is really only possible in a full-length novel. That said, however, the two lead characters, Michael and Paul, are developed enough to sustain the plot. Overall, Orpheus is an absorbing tale about the nature of the artist or poet in their search for truth and purity of artistic vision.

Kerouac's Orpheus is the merging of two types of individuals, archetypes if you will: Michael is the tortured genius, with an imagination conducive to writing poetry, however, he is so serious and self absorbed, single minded, that he is incapable of being happy. A young man with a fine-tuned conscience, when he transgresses, he feels tremendous guilt and wallows in self-pity. Michael's relationships with the older woman, Maureen, lacks spark, and his affaire with Maria, falls flat because Michael cannot feel true love for himself or anybody else.

Paul is Michael's opposite, a roving poet-vagabond, in love with knowledge and life. Kerouac characterizes him as a genius of love and life. Paul's actions are spontaneous, humorous and driven by a devil-may-care attitude to just about everything. One day, after an altercation with Michael, he disappears for a week, and tells his friend's that he has been "Lying on the wet grass eating only fruit", which personifies the carefree, romantic wandering poet.

Written during that early time at Columbia University, when the young Kerouac first meets Alan Ginsberg and William Burroughs, we can perceive these men in some of the characters in Orpheus: enthusiastic bohemian types, learning philosophy, writing poetry and prose, listening to Brahms and drinking copious amounts of wine.

The novel ultimately is about the artist/man in search of a genuine aesthetic vision a `new vision' and the attainment of wholeness as the artist/man - there is a merging of types, and the success of this goal is the attainment of `wholeness plus vision' the `ideal' of the true artist.

This novella was by no means a disappointment, because, although a young work, Kerouac and his life long concerns are all included here.

Recommended to all Kerouac readers and students.

Reviewed by: Tom Hendricks, Musea Review Service. Posted courtesy of the Underground Literary Alliance Book Review Blog.

Tom Hendricks is a ULA member. He has probably never met Robert Crumb, but might want to. I'd like to meet Robert Crumb.

What is it? : Franz Kafka's biography with text by David Mairowitz, and illustrations by celebrated underground comic artist Robert Crumb.

Technical Quality: High. Book is a well made, 175 page, trade paperback. Note the somewhat chilling cover with an orange Prague cityscape drawing , with a green insert of Kafka writing.

Innovative Quality: High. The book uses the graphic novel approach to tell the life story of the troubled but brilliant Franz Kafka. Crumb illustrates the main biographical events and portions from some of Kafka's most celebrated works.

Review: Three parts come together to make this a memorable and notable read: Franz Kafka's life and works, Robert Crumb's illustrations on every page, and an informative biographical text by David Zane Mairowitz.

Mairowitz writes: "Before ever becoming the ADJECTIVE (Kafkaesque) Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a Jew from Prague, born into its inescapable tradition of story-tellers and fantasists, ghetto-dwellers and eternal refugees. His Prague, "a little mother' with 'claws' was a place that suffocated him, but where he nonetheless chose to live all but the last eight months of his life."

That well sums up a lot of the main threads of Kafka's life too. He was a Jew in a country that more and more hated and persecuted the Jews. He had an oppressive and abusive father that, like Prague, he could never escape. He had troubled relationships with all the women he was attracted to, and he never got the respect for his writing in his life time that he deserved.

The book goes into detail on all these issues and lets us see his world - a depressing world where it seems his only escape was his writing. And what writing he did. Throughout the book are illustrated excerpts of major Kafka works including: an early story 'The Judgement', the famous "Metamorphosis' where Gregor Samsa turns into an enormous bug; "The Burrow" an animal fable; "In the Penal Colony" with the new killing machine invention; his best known work, the novel, "The Trial" where 'K' is arrested - but for what?; "The Castle" the 2nd of 3 novels; "A Hunger Artist" who is a sideshow freak for his ability to starve himself, and "Amerika" his last unfinished novel.

At the age of 39 he retired from his insurance job (one that by improving safety standards actually saved many lives) due to tuberculosis. Kafka instructed his friend Max Brod, to destroy almost all his works upon his death. Fortunately for us, Brod did not carry that wish out.

The bio is fascinating, and the excerpts cover some of the best of Kafka's work. Now add to that the superb black and white illustrations of Crumb and we get a very great book indeed.

Crumb, known for his underground comics, has taken that style of art to high art here. His drawing style is the technical equal of any illustrator. Yet beyond that he has a gift for characterization , an eye for detail, and the ability to illustrate any scene. Had the bio and excerpts been any less compelling, the illustrations would have still been notable. Each page was filled with drawings and many of them are minor masterpieces on their own. An example are the illustrations on page 64 and 65. Kafka wrote many letters to Felice Bauer one of 4 women that he had important
relationships with. On the left side we see the couple up to their chests in pages of letters. On the right side of the page, we see Kafka writing at his desk in the bottom right corner with letter after letter stacked through the air, all the way up to the upper left corner.

Wisely Mairowitz, who wrote the text, does not try to embellish his work, instead his comments are sparse and to the point , thus better allowing Kafka the classic writer, and Crumb a world class gifted illustrator, to shine.

High marks all around in this new classic.