Fagin the Jew

It's easy to forget one central fact: Fagin was a fictional character imagined by Charles Dickens who was quietly influenced by the prevailing wind of "Jew stereotyping" in his day. Will Eisner makes a valiant effort of debunking general cultural ignorance of Jewish history by providing a well-researched and believable context for the criminal character of Fagin, the Jew. That does not mean that the immortalized Fagin ever existed! Unfortunately, every effort to make Fagin more believable reflects the Jewish Messianic complex of saving the world from its guilt and sin. And of course, authenticity begins with self-critique. Which is why all forms of antisemitism is born in the Bible which is the diary of Israel, i.e. Israel's family history. That Jews criticize themselves is a mark of character integrity. It is worthy of respect and should not become a licence for universal condemnation. Those who seek to blame Jews for the abuses of 19th century England will be disappointed that the contrast between Dickens' poor child victims and the sinister, crass lowlife who exploit them is diminished. Welcome to the truth of all times. We have seen evil in the face and we have all partaken of it. In his other novel exposing the lie of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Eisner makes clear that evil cannot be blamed on any one people in the world. That is a worthy message for yesterday, today and tomorrow. Kudos to Will!

I am ashamed, so very ashamed, to have never read "Oliver Twist." So, I have no idea how faithful Will Eisner is to Dickens's masterpiece. This matters, since Dickens's novel, and Eisner's work are mirrors of one another. Eisner focuses on the life story of Moses Fagin, the unscrupulous street criminal whom Dickens refers to as "The Jew," bringing in Twist only halfway through the story. Eisner follows Fagin from the poverty of the Sephardim community in London, through near scrapes with luck, to disgrace and loss of education and employment, to a stint in a prison colony. Having been denied good fortune, as seems true of many in Victorian England, he makes friends in low places and becomes a receiver of "acquired" merchandise. Eisner is at pains to show Fagin in a positive light, mostly to dispel biased previous interpretations that implicitly laid the blame for Fagin's criminality on his race and religion. Eisner makes a case for imagining Fagin with rounder, Germanic features, rather than as the scrawny insectoid form often used to portray him. Eisner succeeds in large measure, giving us a plausible back story for this famous villain, while teaching us a bit about the hardship of life in Dickens' time as well as the special hardship that was the lot of the Jewish inhabitants of Europe. Eisner's style suffers only in that his drawings, meticulous and full of emotional energy, are skimmed over so quickly. After an initial turn, the reader should reread the book, pausing to admire Eisner's mastery of his form.

While I loved the idea, I think Eisner made Fagin a bit too nice to be believable in this version. In the novel, Fagin can be nice, but is definitley creepy and is hinted at being a pedophile and a homosexual. So seeing him like this was a little unbelievable, but if you do accept the notion that Fagin was real and told his story to Dickens, then maybe this works. And the story is compelling, particuarly the first part with Fagin growing up as a young Jewish boy. I particuarly loved the scene where Fagin and his father celebrate Daniel Mendoza (a real Jewish wrestler)'s victory. The middle is fine as well, but when Eisner tries to cover the last bit of the story its a bit too much of a crunch. You just can't compress such a huge novel like that. Also, he gets a few important facts in the story wrong. Nevertheless, the epilogues were great. Those who complain about coincidence need to remember that Dickens relied on that often in his books. All in all, not the best or most believable graphic novel, but one that I liked a lot as a Jew and a Dickens fan.

Will Eisner, a master of the graphic novel, has given the story of Oliver Twist a new perspective by presenting Fagin in the accurate historical context of the Ashkenazic Jewish community in Dickensian London. The first third of the story invents a back-story for Fagin that shows how mistreatment and prejudice forced him into a life of crime as his only means of survival. This section also makes an impassioned statement about the hardship faced by the German and Middle European Jews, who had problems integrating into British life. The rest of the story is mostly a rehashing of the original Dickens story in Fagin's voice. In the book's foreword and epilogue, Eisner says that his awareness of the influence of imagery on popular culture led him to create graphic novels with themes of Jewish ethnicity and prejudice. He discusses how Dickens portrayed the Jews as a criminal element in London and provides prints by George Cruickshank and other artists of that time who perpetuated the visual Jewish stereotype. Although his illustrations are rendered in sepia tones that recall the illustrations of Dickens' novels, Eisner has tried to counter the stereotypical portrayal of Fagin by drawing him as he might really have looked. All in all, this novel provides new insight into the complex character of Fagin and a fresh and innovative retelling of the Dickens classic. Eileen Rieback

I really like Eisner's straightforward graphic novels. He's much more concerned with telling the story than with inventive layouts, cinematic artwork, and impenetrable plot-lines, as so many of his younger contemporaries are. That said, I'm afraid I'm not as impressed with this effort as with, say, _A Contract with God._ This is a retelling of Dickens's _Oliver Twist_ from the point of view of the much-loathed Fagin, mentor of street urchins in the ways of London ghetto survival, with emphasis on his early life and character development. The thing is, even knowing how he developed into the creep he became, even sympathizing to some extent with his lousy home life and bad breaks, there's still not much to like about Fagin. Although there's not much to like about most of his contemporaries, either. For that matter, Oliver himself, revealed in adulthood as a rather smugly successful barrister, also comes across as less than admirable. If this is the point Eisner wanted to make, he has succeeded, but I had hoped for something psychologically a bit deeper.