r. crumb

I googled him before going off to watch the documentary last night.  After seeing some of his images that Google spat out I immediately recognized the art style and thought of his famous "keep on truckin'" character.  After browsing some of the additional google images search results, I realized that I'd actually seen some of Crumb's comics previously in a comic shop I used to go to occasionally.  I remember never really looking into them beyond the covers because they looked weird.  And in retrospect, its probably good that I didn't look into them back then.

Robert Crumb is, as one can tell from his illustrations, a very disturbed man.  And sadly it seems that he is how he is in part as a result of his home life growing up and the culture and influences around him.  The same goes for his siblings.

In high school I read a book called Angela's Ashes.  It was about a boy who was born in the US to immigrant parents who moved back to their hometown in Ireland due to their economic situation.  Throughout the entire book, the main character, Frank, is constantly ignored by his alcoholic father and mother.  His father always spends his weekly earnings on alcohol and ends up going off to fight in the war so that money can be sent back to his family without him having the temptation to spend it on booze.  The money never comes.  Frank's mother is forced to have sex with another abusive drunk so that she and Frank have a place to stay.  Growing up, Frank never had parents to help him in life.  When it came to important topics like love, sex, and religion, frank was left without a person to talk to and without a good influence in his life.  He was left to learn these complex topics for himself and as a result was hurt and warped from it all.  For those of you who have read the book, you know what I'm talking about.  I won't spoil it for those of you who haven't.

Frank was the first person I thought of when watching the Robert Crumb documentary.  How some misguidance from our surroundings and parents can have such detrimental effects on us.  While I'm sure that all of the factors that contributed to Crumb's current state are far more complex and involved, I can't help but wonder what may have been the end result had he been raised differently.