Will Eisner - Michael Schumacher [167]
One classic that caught Eisner’s attention was Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, a tale that had originally been serialized in a magazine for adults, then issued as a book by an adult trade publisher, but which over the years had become a children’s story. On a number of occasions in the novel, Dickens had identified Fagin, one of the book’s central characters, simply as “the Jew,” which Eisner found repulsive and damaging, especially since Fagin was the ultimate lowlife, a criminal who preyed on children to earn his income. The illustrations in the early editions of the book, focusing on the stereotypical look of European Jews, took it one step further.
Upon examining the illustrations of the original editions of Oliver Twist, I found an unquestionable example of visual defamation in classic literature. The memory of their awful use by the Nazis in World War II, one hundred years later, added evidence to the persistence of evil stereotyping. Combating it became an obsessive pursuit, and I realized that I had no choice but to undertake a truer portrait of Fagin by telling his life story in the only way I could.
Eisner’s graphic novel, Fagin the Jew, was a biography of Dickens’s fictional character. In interviews following the publication of the book, Eisner strongly defended his appropriation of another man’s character, stating that he had made no changes in his depiction of Fagin’s background that conflicted with Oliver Twist. In Eisner’s book, Fagin was still a criminal; he was still hanged at the end of the story. Fagin was useful as a tool for constructing a new type of graphic novel.
“Actually I am not intending this as an adaptation but rather a polemic,” he wrote Dave Schreiner in a cover letter accompanying an early pencil dummy of Fagin. “I hope I can attract sympathetic readers.”
What Eisner intended to do was present Fagin’s background in such a way that readers would see the reasons for Fagin’s criminal behavior and that those reasons had nothing to do with the fact that he was Jewish. By referring to Fagin’s Jewish background, Dickens had unwittingly reinforced a stereotype, similar to the way Shakespeare had in his portrayal of the moneylender Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. The illustrations in Dickens’s book did further damage.
Eisner conceded that his own cartooning history left him open to further criticism for his own stereotypical treatment—including the illustrations—of Ebony White in The Spirit. He’d taken a beating from critics and readers when the first Spirit reprints were issued, and he’d addressed the criticism at that time; he anticipated more of the same if he criticized Dickens for his portrayal of Fagin in Oliver Twist. Eisner learned during his research that Dickens was no more anti-Semitic than he, Will Eisner, was a racist, and that Dickens, troubled by his depiction of Fagin, had removed most of the references to his character’s Jewish background in later editions of Oliver Twist. Eisner addressed this in Fagin the Jew by working in a clever literary device: at the opening of his story, Eisner showed Fagin in prison, awaiting his execution, being visited by Charles Dickens himself. “Tarry a bit, Mister Dickens,” Fagin says, “while ol’ Fagin here tells you, sir, what I really was and how it all came to be!!”
What follows is Moses Fagin’s narration, the story of his life, as offered to the writer who created him. Eisner’s Fagin is the product of bohemian parents who, after fleeing a pogrom, wind up in London, only to find life slightly more tolerable than in their own country. Fagin’s father puts him to work on the street, selling buttons and needles to supplement the family income. But it’s a meager, steal-or-starve existence, and Fagin’s father learns how to swindle and steal in order to survive—a skill that he passes on to his son.
An orphan in his teens, Fagin grows up quickly, working as a servant to Eleazor Solomon, a wealthy and influential Jewish merchant who hopes to use his power to build a school for Jewish children. Fagin’s life