Meet the man who calls his own fans “scum,” R. Crumb. Crumb first rose to prominence after the 1968 debut of Zap Comix, the first of the majorly successful “underground comix” publications. His work with legendary poet Charles Bukowski is worth taking a look.
Born Weird
Breaking the Binary
Rachel Klein writes on raising a genderqueer, non-binary child. “Being a parent means, at some point, being able to look on as your child writes their own story, a story in which you play a role but which is ultimately not about you.”
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Break-Up Letter
“Did not really sleep: no Xanax / yesterday, which means I won’t sleep, / then the next night is usually OK, / Xanax or no. It’s Christmas Eve / in Spain, the important day. We’ll / break Dorota’s wafer. My mood / is less good than yesterday when / I would call it ‘normal’.” A few new poems by Kathryn Maris at 3:AM Magazine.
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The Awl’s Poetry Section
Poet Mark Bibbins is the author of The Dance of No Feelings, and he is also the poetry editor for The Awl. So far he’s published poems from Michael Shiavo, Rebecca Keith, Ben Lerner, and many others.
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The Bad Sex Award
What’s it like to win the Literary Review‘s Bad Sex award? As 2010 “winner” Rowan Somerville reports, “It’s a hard pill to swallow … Despite the magazine’s assertion that ‘it’s only a bit of fun’ there’s an atmosphere of bullying peculiar to public schools about the whole thing.”
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Carpet Reading
Poet and antiwar activist David Shook is raising money on Kickstarter. What for, you ask? He wants to rain poetry on a city with the help of a drone. (h/t Poetry Foundation)
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An Ugly Book-Burning Incident in Chicago
In his column in the Chicago Tribune today, Eric Zorn describes a particularly ugly incident that occurred at a library not far from where I live. Somebody set fire to a number of books at the John Merlo branch of the Chicago Public Library. Making matters worse, it appears as though the arsonist targeted the gay and lesbian books section of the library, which itself is located in a neighborhood with a large gay population. From Zorn’s column: Staffers detected the fire quickly and used an extinguisher to put it out before anyone was hurt. The library remained open, and if you visit there today, the only reminders of the incident are gaps on several shelves where destroyed books used to sit.But the location makes it a bigger event. For both symbolic and safety reasons, the idea of arson in the stacks, no matter how relatively unsuccessful, is chilling. Public libraries are not only embodiments of liberty but, with all that paper, prospective tinderboxes.More chilling still to many is that the unknown arsonist chose to set the fire in the heart of the Chicago area’s largest unified collection of gay and lesbian-oriented books.Zorn explores the topic further at his blog explaining why he decided to devote his column to what was, admittedly, a very minor fire, wondering “Do we not, in some ways, magnify the power of a hate crime when we publicize it?”I’m glad he decided to write the column. Coming on the heels of a book-banning attempt in a nearby school district, it’s been a rough couple of months for books in the Chicago area.Update: It turns out it wasn’t a hate crime. As Eric Zorn explains, they caught the culprit, a 21-year-old homeless woman who set the fire because “she was angry at library staff for being rude to her.”
Parting Is Blah Blah Blah
Say goodbye to Sadie Stein! Stein, who is moving on after two years as The Paris Review Daily’s correspondent, had this to say: “It is a strange thing to monetize your emotions. Anyone who writes or creates knows this. And the work one does on the Internet feels insubstantial, even by the flimsy standards of intellectual property. Any body of digital work is a funny mixture of ephemeral and immortal, and it’s hard to know how to feel about such an archive.”
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Crumb also illustrated a mid-80’s edition of Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang.
Following the first link, I was directed to an article titled “Cassandra Clare Created a Fantasy Realm and Aims to Maintain Her Rule” that doesn’t appear to concern R. Crumb at all (as hard as I looked for a connection).
Crumb’s drawings of old timey blues performers are profoundly well done, but I’ve been reading / looking at his material since (the often dangerous) Zap, then Weirdo and his projects with Harvey Pekar, Bukowski et al. Crumb’s line about his fans being “scum” comes out of a certain kind of darkly humorous, affectionately fatalistic, sensibility that was quite common among intellectuals of the late ’60 and ’70s. It should not be translated literally, by younger readers, to mean what they think it must mean.
Exactly right, Steven. I don’t think the people running The Millions really understand or care to know about Crumb/illustrated storytelling in general.
@Beamish13
I suspect that general disinterest has helped Crumb fly under the radar since the New Puritanism took hold in the ’80s… because who, in the Art world, crossed more lines than Crumb? Supposed bad boys like Hirst or Jeff Koons (for example) never came close to transgressions as shocking as “Angelfood…” or “Big Baby”. So it’s probably in Crumb’s best interest that he remain semi-obscure… laugh.
But let’s see how long it takes for someone to fix that link (so it actually leads to something about R. Crumb), eh?
Along with @Beamish13 and the others, I’m still waiting and hoping the link will be fixed for Crumb. And waaaaaaiiiiiting.
Sorry all — we’ve fixed the link.
Excellent! Thank you!
Erm, ” Aline is the chunky brunette who features in so much of Robert’s work…”
Chunky? “Gorgeous” would have been closer. Perhaps the Grauniad should have sent a slightly less ambivalent interviewer.