Your Vigor for Life Appalls Me Collected Letters (1956-1972)

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.

Since I AM a dedicated fan of R. Crumb, I give this book 5 stars -- but i'll also be the first to tell you that unless you are either over the top about Crumb (like me) or are a rapid comics book collector enthusiast (which I am becoming) then this book really won't offer you much of anything. For people who enjoy the fine details and like to read about Crumb like you were studying a fine masterpiece of an artist, this book is very meaningful. I think also it would be a great book for anyone who feels they want to become a comic artist. All that said, if I were NOT a Crumb fan and a comics book fan, I would have given this book 2 to 3 stars.

Dedicated collectors of Crumb will appreciate this book for what it is - a genuine tribute to hope and youthful enthusiasm through the eyes of 'the first punk' (see "Confessions of.."). "Your Vigor for Life Appalls Me" adds a deeper layer of insight into Crumb's fascinating family life and his discovery in the 1950's of a world outside his closed Catholic existence. And fittingly, between the lines of Crumb's writing, so to are the rich lives of Marty Pahls, Mike Britt and Charles-Maxon-Sandra-Carol-Beatrice-Charles Snr Crumb. All people whose lives were one way or another turned inside-out by the works of Harvey Kurtzman, Charles Barks, and ultimatetly - one Robert "voice of countercultureMrSixtiessexpervertlovechildidealistonceinagenerationGENIUS" CRUMB. I'm 27 and find Robert Crumb's comics to be the work a 'classic' modern artist. Yes I've suffered the appalled looks and barbs of many a dissident, but I maintain that even when his work is grotesque and repellent you can't help but be fascinated by this man's focus and tenacity. OK, does anyone not know that Crumb loves voluptuos, fleshy women and doesn't mind getting kinky with 'em? I mean is that pretty much absolutely VERY OBVIOUS BY NOW FOLKS?? AND that he had the kind of troubled childhood that is vividly echoed in this (very endearing!) book of letters? This is a chidhood/teenagehood that I think people of our time would be able to relate to.. particularly those who are creatively inclined or at an early age blankly questioned subjects such as religion, philosophy, art, 'fandom', what makes things 'good' or meaningful, family, the unknown.. Here we see Crumb asking these questions that at some stage in an artists life, just have to be asked. To paraphrase - "Could pretty much all of what I've been told is good and true be made up of lies? Would they actually do that just to make a buck?" This book establishes that even in his early teens, Robert Crumb was an individual with talent, passion and an incredible focus. And the letters are hardly 'tedious'.. Knowing full-well what Crumb would become is half the joy of reading this book, which if you've read this far you know you must purhcase. ESSENTIAL for the Crumb collector.

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".

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.