Friday, August 24, 2012

R. Crumb Reflects On...

...Abraham Lincoln, Lyndon Johnson, Tom Waits, John Steinbeck, et.al.

In the discussion on Steinbeck, Crumb talks of how success changes an individual:

You get successful, you give a lot of interviews, you're constantly dealing with business and money and all that stuff I talked with you about when we were in Chicago. You just slowly lose touch with your original source of inspiration. It has something to do with being involved with real, common life; that's what makes any kind of story writing interesting to me. And then you get successful and you get separated from real life. It just happens. When I say real life, I'm talking about the common, everyday life of most people. Then you start getting treated like royalty — like you're something special — and it's not the same. And you're no longer the observer, you are the observed. That puts you in a whole different position in society; a whole different perspective. Now you're hunted, you're looked at, you're watched, you're admired, you're vilified, whatever. But you can't just go out and be part of the world as an observer anymore. It's hard. It's hard for me anyway.

Click the link to read the rest. In the sidebar at the Crumb website are the other parts of this extended interview (this is part 4).

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