As this volume opens we find our hero at age 46, solidly into the midlife crises years. Crumb has lived his entire life in anxious, introspective, self-flagellating crises. More words accompany the drawings, demonstrating Crumb’s brilliant powers of observation. As the artist advances into his mid-50s, towards the end of the volume, fantasies of regression to childhood dependence on strong female figures, and even of a good death, carried away on the back of a sturdy young angel, speak less of angst than acceptance of the aging process. Our curmudgeon finds a measure of peace, a certain French acceptance, of the cruel whims of fate. Until the final pages, when he pronounces himself, out of nowhere, “such a fucking QUEER.”
Hardcover
