05/21/2018
Krimstein’s fascinating if cluttered biographical portrait divides political theorist Hannah Arendt’s extraordinary life into a loose triptych. In Germany, she is a curly-haired scribble of a girl (a smudge of green in a black-and-white landscape) and a precocious scholar among a who’s-who of 20th-century thinkers. Martin Heidegger is her lover and foil. As the Nazis rise, she flees to France and, later, New York. The footnote-heavy primer suffers by being more intent on recording names, faces, and historical details than on quality storytelling. Krimstein’s use of the first person, adopting Arendt’s voice, is sporadic and jarring. Yet his love for his subject is undeniable, as he argues that Arendt’s struggles as a Jew and a woman enabled her to transcend the work of traditional truth seekers. His tribute is at its most tender when Arendt speaks to the ghost of Walter Benjamin, who appears to her as a water stain on her ceiling. When Arendt says about captured SS officer Adolf Eichmann, “If we turn into a demonic monster, we somehow absolve him of his crime, and all of us our potential crime,” she roils under backlash that evokes today’s woker-than-thou Twitter pile-ons. This is a complicated, moving, uneven story that resonates in just such times. Agent: Jennifer Lyons, Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency (Sept.)
"Gorgeous . . . despite the often dark subject matter, it’s packed with wit . . . it’s a fun and, especially in a final illustration that encapsulates Arendt’s hopes for a better world, inspiring work." - Minneapolis Star Tribune
"[The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt] depicts Arendt in a way no other book has—bringing her passion and physicality to life using the medium of comics to distill Arendt's dense writings to their essence and to make us feel the passion of her thinking . . . intimate, immediate and real." - The Forward
"Krimstein brings brilliant political theorist Arendt to life in his artful and compelling biographical collage." - 5 Hot Books, The National Book Review
"The astounding life of a 20th-century original as told by a skillful cartoonist frolicking in long form . . . A compelling performance with great pacing that makes abstruse political theory both intelligible and memorable." - Kirkus (Starred Review)
"As Krimstein deftly weaves Arendt’s life and thought, he captures the excitement of the philosophical enterprise in both word and image. . . Both smart and entertaining; highly recommended and not just for graphic novels readers." - Starred Review, Library Journal
"A graphic novel that plays with memory and thought . . . What's certainly clear is how deeply the author respects and understands his subject, beautifully elucidating key arguments in [Arendt's] work as well as defending her robust reputation as a thinker during her lifetime . . . A wonderful honoring of one of the greatest minds of the 20th century." - Starred Review, Shelf Awareness
"The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt: A Tyranny of Truth is startlingly original and offers us insights that traditional literary criticism can't. [Krimstein's] wonderful drawings and provocative and unconventional text illuminates unfamiliar aspects of philosopher Hannah Arendt's controversial life." - The Jerusalem Post
"It's remarkable how lively Krimstein makes thought look in the book . . . cafe society scenes in Weimar Berlin in particular show how propulsive Krimstein's style is, how fluidly he conveys freewheeling conversations, how nimbly he switches gears." - The Chicago Reader
"Krimstein tells Arendt's story with eloquence in his text and illustrations, as she continues her quest for truth and understanding, through difficult times." - The New York Jewish Week
"A bold and lovely graphic biography . . . Krimstein’s original look at Arendt—thoughtful, entertaining and provocative—will answer a number of questions and inspire many others." - Book Reporter
"The book that will make me a graphic-format reader." - Library Journal
"Ken Krimstein's deeply moving graphic memoir about the life and thoughts of philosopher Hannah Arendt is not only about Hannah Arendt. It's also, through her words, about how to live in the world, the meaning of freedom, the perils of totalitarianism, and our power as human beings to think about things and not just act blindly. Krimstein explains Arendt's ideas with clarity, wit, and enormous erudition, and they still resonate." - Roz Chast
"As an émigré intellectual who lived through dark times, Hannah Arendt led a life that was the stuff of legend, yet it was largely a life of the mind. In a remarkable feat of imagination, Ken Krimstein has condensed and envisioned it into a fully dimensional graphic novel, at once the story of an iconic figure and a requiem for a generation." - Morris Dickstein
"In this brilliant, beautiful, and all-too-timely reimagining of the life of Hannah Arendt, Ken Krimstein has invented a new way to chronicle one of the 20th century's most inventive thinkers. The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt is in turns a wartime adventure tale, coming-of-age story, graphic novel of ideas, political biography, and love letter to truth-telling. There is magic on these pages." - Michael Tisserand, author of KRAZY
"Riveting, engaging, and enlightening, Ken Krimstein’s graphic biography is the most intimate and imaginative dive to date into Arendt’s personal and political lives." - Roger Berkowitz, Academic Director, Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, Bard College
"Krimstein makes his account engrossing and even entertaining, thanks to his breezily wispy drawing style and freewheeling layouts as well as the unexpected humor he brings to Arendt’s story." - Booklist
"As an admirer of Hannah Arendt, I appreciate the significant enrichment that this book offers to an understanding of her life and times. Ken Krimstein brings his spare and elegant aesthetic to the depiction of a profound life lived in the shadow of fascism." - Emil Ferris, author of MY FAVORITE THING IS MONSTERS
"It seems counterintuitive that Hannah Arendt, known for her fiercely independent and pioneering philosophical writings, should be the subject of a cartoon biography, but Ken Krimstein has captured her epic life comprehensively. This by turns whimsical and poignant work is irresistible." - Joseph Berger, author of DISPLACED PERSONS
"Ken Krimstein conveys a fundamental, crucial message regarding Arendt’s thinking about the world and the possibility of a recurrence of the thoughtless, meaningless evil of destruction that appeared in 20th century totalitarian regimes. The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt is beguiling, unsettling, and marvelous." - Jerome Kohn, Trustee, Hannah Arendt Bluecher Literary Trust
"This is an incredible story, artfully told with exuberance, humor, and compassion." - Deborah Levy, two-time Booker Prize finalist
★ 2018-06-18
The astounding life of a 20th-century original as told by a skillful cartoonist frolicking in long form.This creative biography takes considerable liberties in retelling the story of Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), the German political theorist who fled the Nazis to Paris before settling in the United States and becoming the first female professor at Princeton. Krimstein (Communications/DePaul Univ.; Kvetch as Kvetch Can: Jewish Cartoons, 2010), who draws for the New Yorker and the Wall Street Journal, among others, ventriloquizes the writer's thoughts and conversations, an approach that risks making her into a "Great Philosophers" finger puppet. However, he bases this narrative bricolage on well-regarded Arendt biographies and intellectual histories as well as her own writing. Moreover, the book relates the starkest moments in a tumultuous life without trivializing—e.g., Arendt's arrest and detainment for researching Nazi propaganda and her time in a French work camp. Krimstein's wry, expressive faces enliven the debates and lend poignancy to the turmoil that beset Arendt and her circle of intellectual refugee friends, including Walter Benjamin, who vouchsafed his final manuscript with Arendt just before his death. Krimstein shares his wonder at the richness of Arendt's networks in countless name-dropping cameos supported by lengthy but skimmable footnotes. Arendt's coverage of the Adolf Eichmann trials in Jerusalem alienated her from her community of American Zionist supporters, and her infamous affair with her one-time professor and Nazi sympathizer Martin Heidegger, revealed after her death and illustrated here in moments of overt historical fiction, further damaged the popular reception of her work. This timely reimagining revives her distinctive existential spirit and dwells on her theory of the "abyss," the rip in the fabric of humanity she attributed to totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. The irony remains that this book celebrates—even as it violates—Arendt's arguments for keeping public and private lives separate. Perhaps the cartoons' hasty, unfinished style acknowledges the unbridgeable distance between the author and the personalities he imaginatively inhabits.A compelling performance with great pacing that makes abstruse political theory both intelligible and memorable.
