Customer Reviews

The R. Crumb Handbook Limited Edition

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Forget comix. R. Crumb is amongst the most brutally honest writiers in any genre, ever! What is more, when we look at his dead-on observations of himself, what we really see are universal characteristics about ourselves. If you laugh at Mr. Crumb, you better make doggone sure you ain't taking your-own-self too seriously.

There isn't anyway to begin describing this book. Each page jumps up and slaps your around equally. Lots of our old favorites are included, but the thing that is most vital to me as a reader are the solutions Mr. Crumb proposes. Like it or no, he has a keen sense of life's fairness, inequities, balance and absurdity.

Anyone can bitch, few can propose workable answers. Therein lies the depth of Mr. Crumb's thinking, albeit masterfully integrated within the fabric of highly personalized and skillful artistic abilities.

R. Crumb is a famous underground comic, who in recent years has been elevated to cultural icon. Crumb's work is an exposition of his psyche - sometimes autobiographical, sometimes concentrating on his obsessions with sex and large, powerful women, sometimes, rather disconcertingly, both. His work divides critics - some hail him as a satirical genius: he has been compared to literary satirists Rabelais and Swift; and by art critics to Breughel and Goya. Others view his work as misogynistic pornography, socially degrading, emotionally immature, racist and sexist. There is merit in both views, I can certainly understand why some find his work offensive. However, I love his work and tend to agree with the former view, even if I do find some of the more lavish praise tends towards hyperbole. I suspect that Crumb does not really buy all of the hype - for example the book contains two well-known cartoons, both self-portraits: one with the line "Broigal it ain't", the other with the line "Yeah, but is it art".

This book is part biography including numerous photographs and commentary from critics, part collection of cartoons and sketches with together with a fantastic CD of some of Crumb's music (rooted firmly in the 1920s - an interesting mixture of blues & bluegrass played mainly on the banjo).

The cartoons amazing, the music CD brilliant (to be honest the CD on its own is worth the price of the whole package) and the biography is very interesting (personally I found the photographs the most disturbing part of the book - the picture of Crumb's wife Aileen giving him a piggy back while striking a `muscle' pose is too close to the imagery of the drawings for comfort). This is a wonderful introduction to Crumb, the man and his work, but even readers already very familiar with Crumb's work will find much to enjoy here.

A final note: if you have not seen it then I recommend the wonderful documentary Crumb, directed by Crumb's friend Terry Zwigoff.

The R. Crumb Handbook is a superb collection of his art is a fine record of his lifetime body of work. Crumb himself writes frankly about his childhood, his youthful fascination with comics and with early blues, and his voyage since the 1950s through drugs, the counterculture and his rise to fame (and concurrent depression) and his subsequent rehabilitation mentally, emotionally, as well as professionally in the world of serious art.

Crumb is by turns flaky, bemused, gutsy, sentimental and always 100% honest - and this beautifully produced volume helps us get to know and understand the complete life of this man: a true outsider who touches our collective inner nerve.

His essays make great reading, and he illustrates these with samples of his work that suddenly take on new meaning. I never realised the degree to which his Keep on Truckin' character became a millstone around his neck.

This book is perfect bedside material. Good for dipping into, and as our librarian belatedly found (below), somewhat raunchy too. I was given this volume as a gift, and it has not only entertained, it has filled in a juicy piece of my cultural upbringing. Robert Crumb is a hero, and icon even, but above all he's an honest reporter of our human condition. What a unique and illuminating book.

This book is a lot to digest, I can tell you that. It's truly a comprehensive crash course on Crumb including zillions of drawings, essays, photos, tributes from celebs/artists/writers, and even a CD of Crumb playing with different bands! Like many into Crumb, I was worried I had seen it all before. Thankfully, much of this is brand new to me.

Which is not to say this book is for everyone. Anyone indoctrinated by the American Dream might find themselves disgusted by its counter-cultural images and ideas. Crumb offends everyone that cannot (or refuses) to think for themselves. Blind patriots will find it un-American. Militant feminists will say it promotes violence against women. The religious right will call it as they see it; pornography. But to quote the man himself, "it's only lines on a page, folks."

Social commentary doesn't sit well with willfully ignorant herds, and that's a common thread running through this book. These people just want apple pie and baseball. They don't care if the apples are grown at gunpoint and they'll gladly ignore that hypodermic twitching from the abscesses of our great American pastime. To them, the world is just as it should be; perfect. Those of you paying attention know the world is far from perfect. Like Crumb, some of you are convinced it's damaged beyond repair.

If you don't get satire, you won't get anything out of this book. If you understand that it's the socially constructed (and accepted) race and gender roles he's attacking, then you might find him something of a reluctant humanist, hyper-aware of the control mechanisms stretched across your lifetime, your bank account and your bedroom. Crumb is a dying breed, an iconoclast deconstructing the propaganda of the post-world war II media blitz that forced this country's homogeny. He responds the only way he knows how; by answering the media's fetishism of the family unit with his own brand of fetishism. It doesn't always go down easy but you may thank him for the challenge. Or you may vomit uncontrollably. It all depends on you.

R. Crumb is a masterfully gifted illustrator but a bit of a deviant. That being said Crumb's status as an artist, from the days when he was one of the pioneers of the underground comic book to today when the New Yorker gives him multiple color pages, continues to grow. No less of an art critic than Robert Hughes ("The Shock of the New") lauds Crumb as one of the greatest living artists of our times.
Although some of his work is not for the faint of heart (sometimes being sexually graphic while at other times being emotionally and psychologically challenging) I recommend this work to anyone that can take it (adults only). I especially recommend it to any student of art. To say the sexually graphic images of R. Crumb's have no redeeming value is to entirely miss the point as through his words and illustrations he is a unique social critic. Indeed some of the shocking aspects of his art are wake up calls that jolt the soul.
This volume is a great overview of Crumb but it is by no means complete and true hard-core Crumb fans might be disappointed at some slight omissions in his biography. Indeed a more complete autobiography is contained in the complete opus of Crumb's artwork. Nevertheless I highly recommend this book to every adult.
Robert Crumb is truly an individual I would like to know personally. He is in many ways a contradiction (or perhaps so he would like us to believe). As self admitted misanthrope his cartoons show a man who is quite the opposite. For although his work can be quite brutal he again and again through his work betrays his sympathy for the human condition. Many times depicting women is what I will put delicately as "compromising situations" and charactures I believe it is not so much that Crumb is a misogynist (which he has called himself) but a sympathetic as well autobiographical commentary on how women are viewed and treated in society. Crumb always has been self deprecating yet is obviously aware of his place in art.
The book comes complete with CD of Crumb's music and makes for a nice package (in a strange way by ths mulitmedia approach living up to the title). Put the CD in the player and listen as you slowly absorb the life, views and most importantly the art of R. Crumb.

Back in the late 1970's, there was this great little comic book shop about a half hours drive from my home. It was in this little, old time downtown area in a building that had two floors...great old wooden floors that sold old records, movie posters, 8MM movies and books upstairs while the basement was dedicated to comics. Not too far from Captain America and Spiderman was an "adult section" that had just a little wait high door that sectioned it off. I was only 16 but I looked old enough...and there were these comics so unlike the mainstream stuff. Stuff like the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Zap Comix. Zap is where I saw R. Crumb's work for the first time. I remember buying a few and actually being a little scared to have them. I mean they were so counter-culture with the drugs and sex but wow, were they different and were they ever funny! Crumb has changed a bit from those more carefree days. He's more socially conscious, that's for sure although I'm sure I missed a lot of the points to his work way back then, concentrating more on the sex part without really getting the underbelly of his work. Genius is a term that's tossed around to easily these days and I'm not going to confer genius status on Crumb. The book is a satirical marvel but probably won't have a great deal of appeal to non-Crumb fans or at least those like me who still remember those great underground books of the 1970's. It certainly brings back some great memories as I really haven't kept up with Crumb that much over the past 20 years or so. A must read for Crumb fans.

I'm not vouching for the viewpoints taken or the commentaries on our bizarre human condition and culture necessarily, but this thick book (with a great cd of original and funny music) with its outrageous take on everything sacred is an inspiring dig into an artist's convoluted (but somehow eerily solid) psyche. I first saw many of these strips and characters in underground comics, tabs, independent newspapers, etc. back when I was a teen in the 70's and always was amazed at the hard-hitting art and dialogue. IT IS A TRIP! Sometimes, when the right frame of mind is brought around, this book will have you laughing more than you can barely stand. Just flow with it and forget your rigid alter-ego at the coat check. This is theater for the insane (with strong metaphorical realism). TAKE IT FOR FOR WHAT IT IS! A WINDOW INTO THE MIND OF A TRUE ARTIST. Makes a great gift for the moral majority members of your local PTA.

This limited edition handbook should have been named "The R Crumb Bible" It's truly an amazing piece of artwork all by itself. Inside the deep blue cloth covered box is a signed and numbered lithograph protected in a mylar cover. The Handbook also has a mylar book cover. In the book Crumb covers his entire life, from his birth in Philadelphia and his turbulent youth moving around the country, to his move to France at age 48. He is quite candid (as usual) about his stuggle with depression and his recent spiritual growth through meditation. One of the highlights of the book is his "Depression-Graph" an emotional timeline of his life, with thoughts on what the future might bring.

R. Crumb just may well be the most honest observer of the American scene of our generation. Since the mid-60s he's been looking at us and himself and putting his findings on paper. His eye has shifted focus several times over the past 50 years: early, cute satire; greeting card stuff that frequently was too risque to make it into print; the zapped LSD-inspired hippie drawings that made him the "father of underground comix"; the sexual confessions that earned him the hatred of some feminists and got him blacklisted from libraries (see the librarian's review of this book); the social critic who deplores consumerism, agri-industry, mass media, the ratrace, and the worship of the Almighty Buck; the music afficionado who writes incredible stories about his favorite musicians and musical genre; the philosopher who speculates about life, sex, fear, fame, and death; and always the autobiographer, who plumbs and probes and fingers his own psyche.

The R. Crumb Handbook is the latest chronological/autobiographical compilation of his work. It's a good companion volume to The R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book, which came out a decade ago. Crumb apparently doesn't like putting these things together, and does so only when he needs some cash (the Coffee Table Art Book paid for putting central heating in his French house). But both books are fine introductions to Crumb's work for those who've just discovered him, and nice walks down memory lane for those who are longtime fans. The artwork is punctuated by short Crumb essays, as well as a few appropriate quotes from folks like James Kunstler, C.G. Jung, and Charles Bukowski. The Crumb essays are interesting, but not as detailed as those found in the Coffee Table Art Book. But the Handbook includes the fantastic CD of music recorded over a period of 30 years by Crumb and his music pals

But there are some pleasant surprises in the hefty Handbook. There are several pages, for example, of "The Crumb Family," a strip co-authored by Crumb and Aline Crumb-Kominsky (pp. 218-229). It's absolutely hilarious, and exceedingly clever--which may be why the strip never made it to serialization. There are photos of Crumb-inspired tattoos--including one on a woman's firm tush--is it Aline's?--and of the life size statues of Devil Girl and Vulture Goddess Crumb sculpted in the 1990s. The Handbook also documents several European exhibitions of Crumb's work, including the one at the 1992 Angouleme comics Festival in France which featured a huge walk-in sized Crumb exploding head.

For my money, though, the best of the latest stuff collected in the Handbook are the "philosophical reflections" on knowledge, personal identity, significance, and so on, with which Crumb filled his sketchbooks in the late 90s (pp. 370-390). They suggest a man who's beginning to feel his time running out and who wants to try to figure out a few things before the night closes in.

One of the most touching--and revealing--illustrations in the Handbook is its final illustration in which Crumb lists the cartoonists and illustrators who've influenced him. At the very top of the list is his genius and tragic older brother, Charles Crumb, Jr.

This is actually the first book that I have bought in awhile. And, actually it was kind of an accident. I was just browsing in a bookstore for another book, when my eyes fell on this bright yellow over-sized book. I picked it up and glanced through it. At first I thought that it was just a compilation of his comix, but then I noticed written text and chapters. After seeing the documentary by Terry Zwigoff, I became a little fascinated with this guy.
So, I bought the book without even looking at the price. I took it home and noticed that it came with a FREE CD!! Me being an avid music lover I thought this was a really cool bonus surprise! I was skeptical of the disc because I havent heard of any of the material. So, I played it and it REALLY BLEW ME AWAY!! EVERY song is classic. I had no idea that Crumb was also musically gifted. I would have paid 25$ just for the CD itself. All in all, a great bargain, and a great book. Oh yeah, one last thing this book is for MATURE READERS ONLY!! I love it!!