Personal History…Latest Addition To The Spill Library: R. Crumb’s Heroes Of Blues, Jazz & Country
From various parts of the Hudson Valley, one can glimpse the western edge of the Berkshires. It seemed a shame yesterday not to get outside and see the mountains’ Fall show of leaves and — bonus! — visit my favorite used bookstore, Rodgers Book Barn.
I rarely visit the bookstore without finding something — yesterday was no exception. Within a minute after walking in the door, I’d found a copy of Joe Mitchell’s The Bottom Of The Harbor. It would be my go-to purchase if nothing else showed up. (“Go-to” because it was a modern copy — if I’m only going to have one copy of that book, I’d rather it was an early edition, preferably shopworn).
A few minutes later, and in a different part of the store, in the music section, I spied the above copy of R. Crumb’s Heroes Of Blues, Jazz & Country (Abrams, 2006), with the cover facing out to the room (and to the customers). There was no way I wouldn’t buy it (price: $4.00). And — bonus #2! — it came with a disc of music that Crumb himself had selected.
The Spill library probably has no more than a dozen of Crumb’s books and less than a dozen of his comic books (comix?). I add his books to the library because his work made a huge impression on me as a teenager (I do the same with books about Batman — that work made an impression on me in grammar school); many of my high school drawings show the strong Crumb influence.
–above: Under the Crumb influence as a teenager: a sketchbook drawing from the 1970s
Knowing where I soon went, graphically and otherwisely (meaning to Thurberville) it baffles me now how tight a grip Crumb’s style had on me. Maybe it’s as simple as: I loved how he drew, and wanted to draw like him. But drawing like him — trying to draw like him that is — never felt right — it felt like copying, not exploring. Crumb is Crumb, like Steinberg is Steinberg. I absorbed their influence, then moved on. But the interest in their work never ends.