“Industrial civilization figured out how to manufacture popular culture and sell it back to the people. You have to marvel at the ingenuity of it! The problem is that the longer this buying and selling goes on, the more hollow and bankrupt the culture becomes. It loses its fertility, like worn-out, ravaged farmland. Eventually, the yokels who bought the hype, the pitch, they want in on the game. When there are no more naive hicks left, you have a culture where everybody is conning each other all the time. There are no more earnest "squares" left—everybody's ‘hip.’ Everybody is cynical.”
- Robert Crumb
We Crumb obsessives have been eagerly awaiting the release of Dan Nadel’s new biography of the comic world’s favorite perv, which was finally unveiled yesterday. I’m still in the early chapters but I think Nadel has delivered what we’d hoped. He’s deftly captured the dismal dysfunction of Crumb’s family and the shallow illusions of mid-century American culture that shaped Bob’s visions. Animal Town Comics Club forever.
- A.H.
(And let’s not forget Ashley’s website, jam-packed with portraits and other drawings, his illustrated rant column, The Symptoms, his highly-affordable prints and books currently available, his eagerness for your portrait commission, and his contact email, thrdgll@gmail.com, where he longs to hear from you.)