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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
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ONLY HUMAN

Dan Nadel

A Biography of Robert Crumb

Far from just a biography of a cartoonist, the story of Robert Crumb is the story of a complicated life at the forefront of both the underground and popular cultures of the 20th century.
ONLY HUMAN spans the traumas of World War II, the social pressures of the 1950s, the history and practice of graphic satire, early comic books, the birth of comics culture, the world of underground publishing, sex work and pornography, the birth and economic perils of the counterculture, even obsessive 78-rpm record collecting. It is about the optimism of the 1960s, the darkness of the 1970s and the greed of the 1980s. It is the story of an extraordinary family, and how one artist survived abuse, fame, more fame, and came out the other side intact.

Crumb has agreed in writing to cooperate fully with this book and will do a pre-publication review of the manuscript for factual accuracy, though he does not have final approval over the manuscript. This agreement is exclusive for seven years from the book's publication date. (Note Crumb has no plans to write his memoir or work with any other biographer.) Crumb will license up to 76 images for use in the book. Crum has also offered the author full access to his archives. The archive has meticulously filed material, much of which has never been published. The author also has exclusive permission to use content from 22 hours of audio recordings made with Crumb in 1987.

In all, ONLY HUMAN promises to be both unique and a lasting contribution to the history of popular culture.

Dan Nadel has been writing about the history of comics for 20 years. He is the author of Art Out of Time (Abrams, 2006) and Art in Time (Abrams, 2010). He co-founded "Comics Comics", a highly influential magazine about the medium, which operated from 2006 to 2011, and was co-editor of the "Comics Journal", the medium's only ongoing critical magazine, from 2001-2017. He has published on comics and art in The New York Review of books, The Paris Review, Artforum, The Washington Post, The Economist, Art in America, and elsewhere.
Available products
Book

Published by Scribner

Book

Published by Scribner