I’ve loved Katchor’s comics since the 80s — they’re all perfect and puzzling — they create their own magical world.
This isn’t a comic book, though, but instead a 470 page illustrated book. Let’s have a look.
So we start off with a retelling of the story of the Garden of Eden, and here my problems start already: I just don’t know from this stuff. I mean, I know that it’s supposed to be a garden with an apple tree, and here Katchor has a date tree. But I have no idea whether he’s 1) being satirical, 2) totes blasphemous, 3) presenting an alternative, also valid story or 4) just goofing off. I’m so non-religious that I just can’t tell.
Katchor seems to be writing a polemical text, as far as I can tell from the way many things are phrased, but I just don’t know what he’s arguing against. And the text isn’t funny enough in and of itself — I think this book just isn’t for me. If you were to write a book specifically designed to not have me as the target audience, I think this would be that book.
(Except for the artwork, which is, of course, very nice.)
From what I remember of the Cain and Abel thing, this seems like a fair recap, I guess? Isn’t it?
Were there two sets of tablets in the bible stories? Hmm. Yeah, I think so? Are there differing traditions as to whether they contained different sets of laws?
OK, OK, I’m going to stop — this book isn’t for me, and after reading 50 pages, I skipped the rest.
That is, I skipped ahead a lot, and … this seems to be an overview of dairy restaurants in New York? I’m sure Katchor made his way from the Bible to New York in the 400 pages between somehow…
The Dairy Restaurant (2007) by Ben Katchor (buy new, buy used, 3.60 on Goodreads)