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Modern Marvels:
Jewish Adventures in the Graphic Novel
Portland Public Library is pleased to
present the reading and discussion series, Modern Marvels: Jewish
Adventures in the Graphic Novel. The
series explores Jewish literature and culture through scholar-led
discussions of graphic novels addressing Jewish culture and
identity. The Library is one of over 250 libraries nationwide
receiving grants to host the series developed by Nextbook and the
ALA.
All meetings will be held on Tuesday evenings from 5:30-7:30 PM, in
Room 316 at the Main Library. 
Books will be available for loan.
July 15: A Contract with God
July 22: The Complete Maus
July 29: Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer
August 19: The Quitter
August 26: The Rabbi's Cat
Dr. Abraham Peck, the program scholar, is the
Director of the Academic Council for Post-Holocaust Christian,
Jewish and Islamic Studies at the University of Southern Maine. He
is also a member of the history department at the University and
scholar-in-residence of the Judaica collection of the Sampson
Center for Diversity. For more than two decades, Professor Peck has been actively
involved in numerous programs devoted to meaningful dialogue and
creative social action programs between members of the American
and international Jewish communities and members of the Christian,
African American, German and Polish communities. He has worked very closely with the Muslim community in
Portland and was the first non-Muslim invited to speak at Jumma
prayers in the Portland masjid (mosque).In May 2003, Dr. Peck received the Jefferson Award for
Cultural Diversity.
Register Online Now!
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July 15
WILL EISNER
A Contract With God: And Other Tenament Stories
DC Comics, $12.95
Each week during the 1940s, Will Eisner drew "The
Spirit," a comic about a masked detective that earned him
fans around the globe. He revolutionized comics a second time
when, in 1978, he reached back to his own beginnings to produce
the first "graphic novel"—a book-length form that now
includes such classics as Art Spiegelman's Maus.
Set among 1930s Bronx tenements, these four stories capture the
brutal, tender world of working-class Jews. In the title story,
Frimme Hersh's daughter suddenly dies, sorely testing the
"contract" this self-made man once entered into with
God. In "Cookalein," Eisner casts a humorous eye on the
amorous, social-climbing tendencies of young urbanites spending a
summer in the Adirondacks. Wry, honest, and sad, these four
stories showcase Eisner's unique ability to capture character with
the quick stroke of his pen.
July 22
ART SPIEGELMAN 
The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale
Pantheon Books, $28.00
The comic book transfigured, this graphic novel tells the story
of Spiegelman's parents Vladek and Anna, Jews reaching maturity
in a Europe on the verge of Nazism, and their terrifying history
and eventual survival in the concentration camps. Spiegelman
uses the broadest tools of the genre—Jews are drawn as mice,
Nazis as cats, Poles as pigs, Frenchmen as frogs, and so on—to
make vivid the unimaginable, both to the reader and to himself,
appearing as a character in the book listening to his father's
story.
A triumph of storytelling in panels, Maus changed forever the
way that readers, critics, and artists themselves thought about
the graphic novel. In 1992 the Pulitzer Prize committee
recognized the Spiegelman's groundbreaking achievement by
awarding him a special prize for Maus.
July 29
 BEN
KATCHOR
(Introduction by Michael Chabon)
Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: Stories
Little, Brown, $16.95
Steeped in a melancholy, grey-tinted world of elevated trains,
luncheonettes, and gently decaying tenements, Katchor's
perambulating photographer Julius Knipl documents a rapidly
vanishing urban netherworld. Peopled by men who map the
migration of hairstyles and those who belong to the Amalgamated
Panty-Waist Fitters Union, his cityscape is a familiar one,
albeit with the touch of a demented fairy tale.
This is a world where films like "The Wild Aspirin"
play at the Doloroso and wholesale calendar salesmen "enter
a state of self-induced hibernation" by mid-February, their
job complete for the year. Brilliantly conveying a deep and
abiding affection for lower middle-class city life, Katchor,
with his blocky ink drawings and wry Yiddish-flavored text,
implores his readers to open their eyes to the beauty of the
urban landscape.
August 19
HARVEY PEKAR
(art by Dean Haspiel)
The Quitter
Vertigo, $19.99
Pekar, the author of the celebrated comic book American
Splendor, spent his life quitting before he could fail. Here,
he enumerates the ways: an adolescence spent bullying other
children in Cleveland, where his immigrant parents owned a small
grocery; a lackluster academic career; an unending array of file
clerk jobs.
Ostensibly covering Pekar's early years, this dark graphic novel
tackles everything from his brief stint in the Navy to jazz
criticism and mid-century race relations. The gritty and
atmospheric artwork by American Splendor collaborator Dean
Haspiel perfectly captures Pekar's cantankerous tone. But a
surprisingly hopeful message ultimately surfaces. It's possible to
find your way in the world, Pekar suggests, even if it takes a
lifetime to do it.
August 26
JOANN SFAR
The Rabbi's Cat
Pantheon, $21.95
After eating a parrot, an aged Algerian rabbi's cat develops the
ability to speak and quickly
declares his desire not only to be Jewish, but to have a bar
mitzvah. The rabbi engages his pet in a spiraling debate, touching
on topics such as spelling, parental love, and the very nature of
Jewish identity.
French graphic novelist Sfar's delightful, vibrantly illustrated
story is set in Algeria and Paris in the 1930s, where the
encroaching modern world is rapidly shattering many long-held
customs and assumptions. And like his human counterparts, the
rabbi's cat has some tough choices to make: "Should I stay in
this house of Jews who are so elegant you'd swear they were
French, with the beautiful rugs and the smell of fine cooking, or
follow my master in the rain"?
This program is made available by a generous grant from
the American Library Association and Nextbook. For more
information, please contact Suzanne Sullivan, project director,
at sullivan@portland.lib.me.us,
or call 871-1725.
Register Online Now!
 
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