In '50 to 50' I'm counting down to my 50th birthday by reading one graphic novel from every year of my life. Y(ou can find an index here.
A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories
By Will Eisner
Originally published by Baroney Books 1978
Version reviewed: Will Eisner Centennial Edition published in 2017 by W W Norton & Company
1978, the year I was born. Need we say any more!? Well, I suppose we should. It was a time of great change, of the first steps toward the 21st century; the first GPS satellite was launched, the first call on a mobile phone was made, and the first test tube baby was born. In the comics related world, there was of course Superman: The Movie - laying the foundations for the current domination of cinema by superhero films - and the very first Garfield strip made its appearance. Other popular films included Grease, and The Last Waltz, both of which musically harked back to different periods of America's past. In this environment, Will Eisner released A Contract With God - a comic that was revolutionary but looked back to the America of the early 20th century. It was billed as the first ever graphic novel, and whilst it's now accepted that isn't the case, it was almost certainly the first comic to be marketed as such. Eisner eschewed comics publishers in favour of traditional book publishers, and consciously approached the project with the intention of creating work on a par with 'literature'. Eventually striking a deal with Baronet Publishing, A Contract With God was published to critical (if not commercial) acclaim, and has firmly established itself as one of the most historically important comics of all time.
Influenced by Eisner’s upbringing, the stories are all set in the same tenement in New York City, at the fictional address of 55 Dropsie Avenue, the Bronx. Tenements are large buildings, divided up into smaller individual homes (apartments as we would call them now). The New York tenements, which you’ve almost certainly seen many of in various TV shows and movies, were in Eisner’s time occupied by the poor, and were often rundown and overpopulated. Though following the Tenement House Act of 1901 they were at least habitable places with running water, electricity, and fire regulations.
The first story is the titular A Contract With God, a parable borne of Eisner’s real life trauma of his teenage daughter’s death. Frimme Hersh is a Jewish immigrant from Russia, who was chosen to be the only member of his village who it’s elders could afford to send to America to escape the murderous programs that swept the country in the 1880s*. During that journey, and following a discussion with a companion about ‘justice’, he etches into stone a ‘contract with God’. Upon arrival in America he keeps his end of the contract, living a pious life and becoming a respected and trusted member of the Hassidic community in New York and his local synagogue. Due to his status he is chosen by some unknown mother as the doorstep recipient of a new born baby, which he duly raises and loves as his own - until she tragically dies young from an illness (unnamed in the comic - Eisner’s own daughter died of leukaemia). In the comic’s central dramatic sequence Hersh argues with ‘God’ that he has honoured their contract but God has not lived up to his end of the bargain (‘God’ answers through the thunder and lightning of a unusually severe storm - leaving the reality of the conversation ambiguous to the reader).
Tearing up his contract with God (in this case, throwing the etched stone out into the alley), Hersh embarks on a decidedly non-pious life; becoming obsessed with money and wealth (he becomes landlord of his own tenement, and then builds a property empire), taking a young wife but showing her no affection, raising rents on former friends and neighbours. He even illegally uses bonds from the synagogue - entrusted to him for safe keeping - as collateral in his business dealings. Eventually he uses his lease of the original tenement as leverage to convince the elders of the synagogue to write him a new contract with God. Upon receipt of this he vows to abandon his sinful life and live a new one of charity, and to marry and have a family. However, at that instant his dies of a heart attack, as a familiar storm of thunder and lightning rages outside. In an epilogue a young bullied Hassidic boy finds the discarded etched stone, and enters into his own contract with God.
What is the message of this dark parable? Some details are kept purposefully ambiguous; we never see the wording of either contract, the discussions with God are either Hersh literally shouting at the wind or God ‘talking’ via the forces of nature (a common metaphor) - your interpretation will differ according to your beliefs. As an atheist the message seems clear; any contract with God is worthless, how devoutly you live your life makes no difference to whether you or your family live or die, your behaviour to your fellow man is more important than following the wishes of a God that doesn’t exist. Eisner did not talk publicly about his daughter’s death until a foreword of a new version of the book was published in 2001, and then made no comment on whether that impacted his religious belief or not. It seems, given the ambiguities of the story, and the respect given to some religious elements (such as the elders of the Synagogue) that there was at least some spiritual intent behind the story. For believers, the message is perhaps murkier; whilst an obvious reading could be that you should always live a life devoted to God because death can come at any time, it doesn’t really explain the ‘good life’ Hersh lived that culminated in the death of his daughter, That said, I’m sure we are all familiar with the stories of Abraham and Job - so perhaps it’s simply the longstanding religious message that you should retain your belief and service to God regardless of the events and tragedies in your life, or expecting anything in return during your mortal life.
The concept of a contract with God is of course not unique to the graphic novel. There is an implied contract in most religions - certainly the Abrahamic ones - that if you believe in certain things and behave in certain ways then God will look after you, whether that is in this life or the next. It’s a concept that has been adopted by secular societies. When we look at modern constitutions, and talk about the ‘social contract’, we are talking about rights and responsibilities - what we give and what we receive. If we renage on our responsibilities (as Hersh does) do we forfeit our rights (in Hersh’s case his life)? Eisner doesn’t give us any clear cut answers, indeed with the epilogue he suggests that such issues are still being grappled by each new generation.
Eisner’s art style here; black ink on paper, sketchy, heavily shaded and cross-hatched, feel like entries into a personal journal, and works perfectly in bringing together the principle concept behind the project - his recollections of his early life in the very same New York tenements. Many scenes are half-hidden in shadow, silhouette, or the deluge of rain that washes over the early pages reflecting the storm of grief in Hersh. (Is there anyone in comics better than making the pages feel drenched in water, as it pours down every surface available? One more of Eisner’s many accomplished techniques). This not only reflects the dark tones of the story, but the dark, cramped, and dangerous buildings themselves.
Interestingly, despite (or perhaps because of) Eisner being a master of page layout and panel-to-panel transitions, the majority of the A Contract With God story is told in single image pages, and often narration by way of oversized text takes up much, even the majority, of the page. At times this approach veers more towards an illustrated prose story than sequential art. Did Eisner feel that the mature literate art he was trying to create necessitated a compromise between traditional comics and prose literature? Regardless, what he loses in the storytelling opportunities of multiple panels, he more than makes up for with his wonderful body language and facial expressions. Hersh’s emotions - despair, grief, anger, indifference, hope, relief - feel so real and raw that the accompanying text is often unnecessary.
A Contract with God is the closest Eisner comes in this book to achieving his goal of a ‘literate comic’ or graphic novel. However, in reaching for the stars it feels like he forgot to keep his feet on the ground. The remaining stories have more interesting and rounded characters, and go much further in immersing the reader into the life of a tenement in the 1920s and 30s.
The Street Singer features a deadbeat alcoholic husband and father who makes what little money he can wandering the alleys of the tenements singing for change - a kind of travelling busker. On one of his rounds he’s called into the apartment of an ex-opera singer widow whose career was derailed after she also married a deadbeat alcoholic husband. She seduces him and, pitching a double-act, sees him as her ticket back to the stage, and he sees her as his ticket out of his miserable tenement life. This fanciful plan falls apart the very next day when the drunken street singer is unable to remember which of the endless alleys and apartments the lusty diva lived in. Again the facial expressions reveal the inner emotions and thoughts of Eisner’s characters. Whilst his figures are drawn realistically, he happily exaggerate expressions and veers into caricature in order to tell the story and reveal personality.
If more mature adult comics means complex characters and situations, and a more realistic moral world then the traditional black-and-white right-and-wrong that epitomised traditional America comics, then it is no better demonstrated than in the third tale of the book,
Super. Ostensibly the tale of a paedophile supervisor of the tenement paying the ultimate price for his predilections, Eisner weaves the short story back and forth playing with notions of sympathy and disgust for the ‘super’ and the 10-year old object of his attention. The notable art here is a full page close up of the super’s face, rendered in much more detail than Eisner’s usual style. It’s a jarring image that makes the character more real than just a cartoon on a page, and works perfectly with the humanising intention of the story.
The final instalment surprisingly takes place, for the most part, away from the tenements of the city and into the Catskill Mountains in rural upstate New York. Titled Cookalein, after the Yiddish-English word meaning ‘cook alone’, the story looks at the farms in the countryside who opened their doors to guests from the tenements in the summer - though patrons had to cook their own meals, hence the name. Eisner’s tale follows different characters escaping the infamous New York summer heat to these getaways, but in keeping with the rest of the book there’s lust, infidelity, romance, and violence impacting everyone’s lives. The main narrative revolves around a young man (Bennie) and woman (Goldie), both poor and desperate, who journey to the mountains separately in search of a rich prospective spouse. In order to make a good impression Goldie saves up and buys fancy clothes, and Benny hires a new car. Obviously this ostentatiousness backfires, as they each figure the other for the well-to-do partner they’ve come looking for. The amusing tale takes a dark turn when Goldie’s reveal of her true background leads to Benny raping her. The two end up with a fiancé/fiancée they probably wouldn’t have picked - but who have the money they’re looking for anyway. It encapsulates Eisner’s ability to move from comedy to drama within the same story, and present the lives of his characters as human and as contradictory as real life.
This collection of short stories retains high quality throughout, and they are varied enough to be distinct from each other while also retaining a cohesive impression of life in the tenements. The only issue I would take is the slight disconnect with the metaphysical nature the lead story with the more kitchen-sink drama of the others. This is only reinforced by the ‘illustrated prose’ approach of the former, contrasting with the traditional comic format of the latter.
Overall Eisner can feel his mission accomplished with A Contract With God, not only did it help American comics take a stride towards adults respectability, he pushed the quality of the writing and art along with it. It remains the peak of Eisner’s substantial career, and possibly even 70s America comics themselves.
*For more on Jewish persecution in Russia at the 19th century see Eisner’s graphic novel The Plot: The Secret Story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was discussed on the podcast HERE.
The Give Me Comics or Give Me Death podcast is available from all your usual podcast providers, or see all episodes here
