Robert Crumb (b. 1943) read widely and deeply a long roster of authors including Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Dickens, J. D. Salinger, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg, as well as religious classics including biblical, Buddhist, Hindu, and Gnostic texts. Crumb’s genius, according to author David Stephen Calonne, lies in his ability to absorb a variety of literary, artistic, and spiritual traditions and incorporate them within an original, American mode of discourse.

R. Crumb: Literature, Autobiography, and the Quest for Self charts Crumb’s intellectual trajectory and explores the recurring philosophical themes that permeate his depictions of literary and biographical works.

Calonne explores the ways Crumb develops concepts of solitude, despair, desire, and conflict as aspects of the quest for self in his engagement with the book of Genesis and works by Franz Kafka, Jean-Paul Sartre, the Beats, Charles Bukowski, and Philip K. Dick, as well as Crumb’s illustrations of biographies of musicians Jelly Roll Morton and Charley Patton. Crumb’s love for literature led him to attempt an extremely faithful rendering of the texts he admired while at the same time highlighting for his readers the particular hidden philosophical meanings he found most significant in his own autobiographical quest for identity.

The book is published by University Press of Mississippi. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

"R. Crumb is a fascinating analysis...Calonne is able to deftly blend an analysis of Crumb’s art style and his influences." (Dan Newland, The Comic Book Yeti)

"Outstanding observations on Crumb’s drawing style and changes over the decades." (D. K. Holm, editor of R. Crumb: Conversations)