The Jew of New York
by Ben Katchor
Pantheon
Cartoonist Ben Katchor has risen to the top of his profession in recent years, making his name with the remarkable "Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer." While "Knipl" found Katchor using his considerable artistic talent to paint a world of loosely connected anecdotes and tiny city vistas, "The Jew of New York" is an altogether different — and in many ways, more ambitious — work.
Katchor's book takes readers back to the early 19th century, when New York was just starting to become a metropolis. There are already 1000 Jews in New York, and the idea of a "Judeo-American" is just beginning to be spoken of, and understood. At the core of this city, which still rubs shoulders with fur trappers and Native Americans is an effort to produce "The Jew of New York," an anti-Semitic play written by the masked and sinister Professor Solidus, and starring the aging but beautiful one-legged Miss Patella in her swansong as an actress.
Swirling around the production are mysteries involving characters as artfully bizarre as any in literature. Stalking through the book's pages are a disgraced kosher butcher, a man in an India rubber suit, an anti-Semitic playwright and a would-be Messiah with designs on creating a new holy land near Buffalo, N. Y.
But "The Jew of New York" doesn't settle for becoming a collection of forced mystery and oddities. It deals, in an extremely engaging and roundabout way, with the very nature of Jewish identity and tradition. It's an old question, but one handled skillfully by Katchor, whose inky, rumpled drawings belie an amazing power to enchant and entertain.
"The Jew is not a museum specimen to be admired on Sunday afternoons," says one character. One page earlier, a Jew has been stuffed and put in an exhibit box for exactly that purpose. Mr. Katchor's nesting, self-referencing and surprising plot explores in 90 pages what other books have tried to explore in hundreds, and failed. Like a number of other recent graphic novels, it transcends its oft-belittled genre, and dizzily soars to success like an out-of-control bottle rocket.
