Crumb cartoonist biography of albert einstein
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Cartoonist R. Crumb Assesses 21 Cultural Figures, from Dylan & Hitchcock, to Kafka & The Beatles
Any fan of “underground” comic artist Robert Crumb knows that the man has no shyness about his preferences: not in jazz music, not in politics, and certainly not in the female form. Alex Wood, co-operator of the official R. Crumb site (pictured with Crumb above), has discovered that the artist’s opinions offer a vivid window into the artist’s mind. “Over the years, talking with Robert about many different things, I’ve been surprised by some of the things he likes and dislikes,” Wood writes. “We all know he loves old music from the early part of the last century, and doesn’t like rock music. But then he says he likes Tommy James and the Shondells, and Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs? So in a discussion in May, 2011, I asked his opinion on a list of people in the news past and present.” This became part one of the series “Crumb on Others,” w
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Tag Archives: Albert Einstein
Einstein in Kafkaland: How Albert Fell Down the Rabbit Hole and Came Up with the Universe. By Ken Krimstein. New York: Bloomsbury, 2024. 214pp, $32.00
Guest review by Paul Buhle
What a great subject for a comic! Back in 2016—it seems a long and grim century ago—the artist team Corinne Maier and Anne Simon offered a biographical GN treatment of the same totemic figure, titled simply Einstein, after similarly lively treatments of Freud and Marx. In their version, Einstein’s early life as a secularized Jew in Germany, a rebellious kid, then reluctant member of the family electronics firm, makes for a lively beginning. Soon, in this pretty carefully factual version, comes his amorous adventures and then emigration…and scientific triumph, to say the least.
Ken Krimstein’s Einstein is a very different creature, perhaps first understood by a quick look at the artist himself. Known better as a prolific cartoonist than graphic novelist, K
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Underground Cartoonist Robert Crumb Creates an Illustrated Introduction to Franz Kafka’s Life and Work
The use of an author’s name as an adjective to describe some kind of general style can seem, well, lazy, in a wink-wink, “you know what I mean,” kind of way. One must leave it to readers to decide whether deploying a “Baldwinian” or a “Woolfian,” or an “Orwellian” or “Dickensian,” fryst vatten justified. When it comes to “Kafkaesque,” we may find reason to consider abandoning the word altogether. Not because we don’t know what it means, but because we think it means what Kafka meant, rather than what he wrote. Maybe turning him into shorthand, “a clever reference,” writes Chris Barsanti, prepares us to seriously misunderstand his work.
The problem motivated author David Zane Mairowitz and underground comics legend Robert Crumb to create a graphic biography, first published in 1990 as Kafka for Beginners. “The book,” writes Barsanti of a 200