The molesting of women in public, leading to criminal prosecution, a guilty plea, and psychiatric hospitalization. The failed relationships and bad LSD trips. The ego-shattering ridicule from Charles and Robert. Those who read the book fresh-eyed probably haven’t stopped shaking their heads yet. Man in flowered skirt, full-length, mismatched earrings,īeard for Fat Tuesday – or forever – smiles over keyboard.Įven those familiar with Maxon’s story will find much in Whyte’s telling to drop their jaws even further toward the floor. EAZY MUTHA Fīuddy guy’s mother told him, "you don’t want to be here, you better not on skid row” who engaged in devotional practices which included sitting on a bed of nails and performing a cleansing ritual of passing a three-inch-wide, fifteen-foot-long cloth through his digestive tract, concealed that he was “a vastly complex, gentle and wise man” with a deep knowledge that encompassed everything from arcane religions to the how-to’s of street survival, and an “irrepressible creativity.” Van Gogh Shooting Himself in a Cornfield, 1973ĭrop of hours old rain falls from glass-paneled awning įiligree across hood of meter-anchored green datsun ![]() The foreword, by Robert, informs that Maxon had been viciously “mocked” as a child but grew into “an inordinately advanced individual” and “a great artist.” Whyte’s preface notes that Terry Zwigoff’s documentary Crumb (1994), which brought Maxon to national attention as “an unkempt weirdo who lived. Kudos to editor Gary Groth, designer Sean David Williams, production guy Paul Baresh. The contents are nicely spaced, beautifully laid out. The text is modest (30,000 words, I’d estimate) but complete and enriched by illustrations, black-and-white and color, more than two dozen full-pagers, as well as samples of Maxon’s and his older brother Robert’s correspondence, hand-printed in their distinctive styles – art in itself. You sense in its construction deep care/attentiveness. A Maxon totem-pole-like abstract commands the right side, and columned text, complimentary colored – ochre, orange, rust – southwestern feel – the left. The book has good weight, solid feel, a fine gloss to its cover. Whirls, retreats, crosses Hearst against traffic, screams and swirls. “Only you can make the difference between life and death for your rabbit,”īoy’s arms swing as if palsied he growls, anger-eyed, But she’s no Robert Ludlum.”Ī woman said, “A bunch of these moms I’ve been hanging with, Umbrellas tread below UC building overhang, undissuaded White vans stream through unforecast rain hopefully dry-keeping The rhythm of daily writing had become important to my days and this seemed an interesting beat to add. ![]() I emailed the nephew but did not hear from Maxon. ![]() (I knew it had changed me, and I wondered if that those changes included my characterological assessment.) But Whyte said Maxon no longer communicated with him and could be contacted only through a nephew in Colorado. We’d had no contact since he’d come to a reading of mine for Outlaws, and I wondered how time had treated him. 2018), I said I would if I could interview him again. When I was asked to review Malcolm Whyte’s illustrated biography of Maxon 1, Art Out of Chaos (F.U. He was, I still say, the strangest person I ever met. In 1999, I interviewed and wrote about Maxon Crumb (“Alone in the Western World,” The Comics Journal #217, November 1999, reprinted in Levin, Outlaws, Rebels.).
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