The R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book

The bookish, sexually obsessed cartoonist Robert Crumb spills all in the pages of this retrospective volume of his work. His story, told through text and comics in The R. Crumb Coffee Table Art Book, moves from his repressed '50s childhood to the fame he enjoyed after founding the magazines Zap (in the '60s) and Weirdo (in the '80s). From his stoner epiphanies to his blistering self-critiques, Crumb's work is one long reaction to his maladjusted youth (grimly depicted in the 1995 documentary Crumb). His wimpy apologies for his racist and sexist caricatures don't make them any more palatable, but as an uncensored look at an id on the loose, this is a riveting collection. A-