Graphic Canon

This is going to be fun: Robert Crumb, Will Eisner, and 128 other illustrators are going to condense the western canon (not to be confused with the Russian canon) into a three-volume graphic novel that will total 1,334 pages in length. The first volume (From the Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Dangerous Liasons) is coming out in April, with part two (Kubla Khan to the Brontë Sisters to The Picture of Dorian Gray) due in July. The final installment (From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest) is scheduled for October.

From The Epic of Gilgamesh to Infinite Jest via Dante, Dangerous Liaisons and Dubliners, the western canon is set to be turned into a 1,344-page, three-volume graphic novel.

The ambitious project from New York press Seven Stories is being hailed as the “graphic publishing literary event of the year”. Each of the 189 works of literature covered is being interpreted by a comics artist, with 130 illustrators contributing to the project including Robert Crumb, Will Eisner and Hunt Emerson. The first volume of The Graphic Canon – ”From The Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Dangerous Liaisons” – is out in May, to be followed by the second (“Kubla Khan to the Brontë Sisters to The Picture of Dorian Gray”) in August and the third (“From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest”) in October.

Crumb covers James Boswell’s London Journal, in an adaptation “filled with philosophical debate and lowbrow debauchery”, as well as Sartre’s Nausea, capturing the author’s “existential dread”, while Eisner interprets Don Quixote. There will be two graphic takes on Moby Dick, one by Eisner Award-winning artist Bill Sienkiewicz, Emerson takes on Coleridge with an illustrated interpretation of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Dame Darcy turns the Alice books into a “16-page tour-de-force”, as well as visualising Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.

(Source: Guardian)

In what looks to be the graphic publishing literary event of the year, Seven Stories Press will publish the first volume of the Graphic Canon: Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Dangerous Liaisons in May, the first of a three-volume anthology of graphic interpretations of the world’s literary classics created by 130 comics artists and illustrators. The next two volumes, Volume 2: Kubla Khan to the Brontë Sisters to the Picture of Dorian Gray and Volume 3: From Heart of Darkness to Hemingway to Infinite Jest, will be published in July and October of 2012, respectively.

Edited by Russ Kick, editor of several bestselling anthologies including You Are Being Lied To, for the Disinformation Company, The Graphic Canon is an ambitious effort to create imaginative comics adaptations of classic literary works from the beginning of civilization to today. The massive books are in full color, and the artists (some with multiple contributions) interpret the prose works of 150 writers and poets, and 189 works of literature. The artists include relative newcomers alongside veterans like R. Crumb, Gareth Hinds, Will Eisner, Peter Kuper, Molly Crabapple, Rick Geary, and Roberta Gregory. Each volume will sell for $34.95, and all three volumes will be available in a boxed-set collector’s edition (that’s 1,344 pages if you’re counting) for $100.

(Source: publishersweekly.com)

Editor Kick (Everything You Know Is Wrong) gives me the scoop: “My vision from the start was to essentially create The Norton Anthology of Literature in graphic form”—and he’s getting three volumes to play with. “Lyric poems and short stories are contained [in these volumes] in their entirety,” he continues. “But novels, plays, and epic poems are usually excerpted. Not always, though. Lysistrata, Medea, the Book of Revelation, and a handful of others contain the complete narrative, though they are condensed/abridged.” About 80 percent is new material; the rest reprints. Looks like a must-buy for all academic libraries, many public libraries, and many high schools, and an exciting new benchmark for comics! Expect volume 2 in July and volume 3 in October.

Article by Martha Cornog

(Source: reviews.libraryjournal.com)