The Buy-ble

R. Crumb’s illustration of the first chapters of Genesis in the magazine this week illuminates the sublime text with dazzling visual wit. But the word “Bible” comes from the ordinary Greek word “biblos,” or “book”—i.e., an ordinary object that can be bought and sold, which is the function it serves in the Maysles brothers’ groundbreaking documentary “Salesman,” from 1968. The filmmakers follow a quartet of door-to-door Bible salesmen on their rounds in New England and in Florida—in particular, one, Paul Brennan, called The Badger, whose self-awareness, in such a brazen industry, is also his curse. The directors’ quiet persistence, alertness, and sensitivity to the rich and dark emotions that the salesmen and their targets arouse make the film a classic; it’s also a template for a genre of documentary that has been popular long since, the “exotic subculture flourishing unnoticed among us” film.