Genesis: The Word According to R. Crumb

The obsessive cartoonist interprets Genesis, and climbs to the top of Amazon's Christian best-seller list

R. Crumb and Robert Alter / W.W. Norton

Few Biblical scholars would have made R. Crumb — the counterculture cartoonist famous for creating Fritz the Cat — their no. 1 choice for reinterpreting the first book of the Pentateuch. And few among Crumb's cult following would have elected that he spend four of his creative years drawing pictures to go with Sarah Palin's favorite bedside reading. Yet the weird, obsessive, oversexed artist's pictorial interpretation of Genesis, which came out Oct. 19, has shot up best-seller lists: as of this writing, it's no. 1 on the New York Times graphic novel bestseller list and on Amazon.com's Christian books list, which...

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