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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Glimpses into the psyche of a comix genius,
By A Customer
This review is from: Your Vigor for Life Appalls Me: Collected Letters (1956-1972) (Paperback)
It is easy to deconstruct the graphic ouvre of R. Crumb. This does not mean that understanding his creative mind is an easy task. This collection of his letters from the early years of his career gives the reader a glimpse into the passions and motivations of America's formost cultural iconoclast.This book is not for the Politically Correct crowd, which is a blessing. Crumb is not only honest in his creative work, but in describing his attitudes about American popular culture--the more obscure the expression, the more he appreciates it. A must-have for any scholar of pop culture.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Probably for completists , mostly...,
By
This review is from: Your Vigor for Life Appalls Me: Collected Letters (1956-1972) (Paperback)
This collection of letters focuses primarily on R. Crumb's life from age 16 to about age 21. It's particularly useful in its presentation of how the budding artist formulated his views while he was still in such an impressionable stage of life. All 50 of the letters printed in this volume are addressed to one or the other of his youthful friends (Mike Britt and Marty Pahls), with whom he shared the primary interests of comic-book collecting (fandom) and collecting records from the 1920s. A lot of the content of these letters consists of lists of comics and records with the accompanying minutiae relating to them. While this makes for tedious reading at times, it demonstrates the obsessive passion Crumb had for the worlds of these particular collectibles. Sprinkled among the letters are incompletely formed philosophical tracts about isolation, religion, the commercialism of American society, and personal relations. It also includes some examples of early artwork which Crumb included within his letters to his friends. While this collection does not present Crumb's evolution past his early-20s, it does give the reader a sense of an idealistic, youthful, and sometimes sweet R. Crumb that his fans are unlikely to find elsewhere. So while I would recommend this to Crumb completists, I would suggest that those less knowledgable about the artist start with Zwigoff's documentary, "Crumb", or "The R.Crumb Coffee Table Art Book".
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Your Vigor for Life Appalls Me,
By
This review is from: Your Vigor for Life Appalls Me: Collected Letters (1956-1972) (Paperback)
R. Crumb's Your Vigor for Life Appalls Me is an excellent look into the life of the adolescent underground comic. His letters to his two boyhood pals, Mike Britt and Marty Pahls, seethe with teen angst and the first hints of what would appear in his comics show up in these letters.
If one reads these letters carefully, and considers the autobiographical movie Crumb, the essence of the artist is really displayed for all to see. There is also an excellent book on Crumb interviews that helps to fill in the gaps; however, the interviews become repetitive after reading a few. The one thing that stands out in Your Vigor... is how obsessed Robert was with drawing AND collecting comics and how he turned that obsession into a fine career as probably the most respected of the underground comic artists that came out of the 60s. Two thumbs up...an excellent read.
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