Aline Kominsky-Crumb: Introduction to Dirty Laundry

Aline: Ghod Robert, it's kind of embarrassing reading this early "Dirty Laundry" stuff. My persona was so immature and undeveloped and I encourage you to humiliate me... Didn't I have any self-esteem?

Robert: ...And I enjoyed humiliating you! I was the one who was embarrassingly immature...I was a silly-assed, clownish, young fool...l can barely look at those old drawings I did of myself! By comparison, you come off as cool, sophisticated, poised...

A: You've got to be kidding! Why, my scribbling is about as backwards as it gets, and my dialogue is about as evolved as a grunting pig... Plus, our life was totally chaotic and out of control!

R: It's painful to look at that early work and remember our life then - Potter Valley in the early seventies- Neither of us had the courage to make a comic character out of Dana, my first wife, who was living in "The Big House"- with Paul Seidman, I believe. I lived in the cabin. You lived in your trailer, and Weaver had his trailer down below. Isn't that how it was?

A: Maybe we should fill in some background... Weaver had been one of "The Fugs", and he was an old friend of mine, and he ended up with us in our miserable "commune" because your wife Dana fancied him, even though she still had her hooks in you, and was "married" and had a kid, "The Little Adam" with Paul Seidman, who she eventually threw out, and he became gay. Meanwhile, you were still involved with Kathy Goodell in San Francisco, and then there was Jesse, your son with Dana.. .Oy veh.. .those early 'Seventies... The social fabric had completely broken down and we were all living like a bunch of animals.

R: It's true... That hippy way of life degenerated into a squalid mess...and the fact of my being a minor counter-culture celeb' and the money pouring in, and not having any kind of handle on any of it, just added to the chaos...A new crisis every day I'd have to run away, get away from all the neurotic entanglements in Potter Valley, but then I'd come crawling back, seeking refuge from the world...! didn't know my ass from my elbow... Actually, you were the most together, stable person around...Guess that's why I ended up sticking with you...

A: Yeah, lucky for you I repeatedly saved your ass!! And now look at us, here in the South of France, in our ancient house.. There's a cool breeze blowing through the open French doors here in your studio...our cat's asleep on the balcony, and I can seethe old medieval bridge in the background. Yes, we've come along way, dear!

R: Guess I could a done worse...And things are maybe slightly less crazy than they were back in those days.. .Although it is still hard to concen¬trate and get any work done...Guess it's something you always have to contend with.. There goes Sophie, playing that song again for the two thousandth goddamn time, on the piano downstairs... What's it called??

A: I dunno, I blocked it out.. Something by Beethoven...an' yea yur right, it's always something...like that irresistible urge I had to reproduce around 1980, and now there's 'The Soph" at age eleven, a real force to be reckoned with. But then again, there's that drive to go on and create something, express yourself, leave your mark...Anyway, at least you're famous and considered a great artist and cultural icon...Look at me, twenty years later and still nobody's heard o'me...

R: You're better off... But don't worry, Arlene, your day'll come... I think it's entirely possible that you will go down in history as a better artist than me.. The fact that my comics have more popular acceptance in our time means next to nothing in th'sweep of history...You know that I'm not eating humble pie when I say this, and I know that in your heart you believe your work's as good or better than mine.

A: Yeah, well, sounds good to me... Meanwhile let's get back to "introducing" this book. In the second "Dirty Laundry" comic, we'd moved out of Potter Valley to a quiet farm town in the Central Valley, and our life was definitely more tranquil...except that Dana and the I.R.S. were out to "get" you...Remember how the I.R.S. decided you were "secreting assets" and brought tax fraud proceedings against you after Dana told them you were hiding your valuable antique toy robot collection from them?

R: I ended up selling that collection of toy robots for three-hundred dollars to pay off the I.R.S. debt, but, Jeeziz, let's not get into all that crap...What a nightmare! I still get the shakes whenever someone mentions the I.R.S....I think the second issue of D. L. is better than the first… At least my part is...I was getting a little better at focusing my concentration, having only one female driving me crazy instead of three. Then again that was the era of the "Suits"...Another big distraction...

A: Yes… Those lovable bums...Remember how I tried to push my way into the band, with my four-string guitar? I even played the drums on some album...Ghod, I was such a monstuh! I used to get really drunk at "Suits" band jobs and heckle the band...One time I threw up and passed out in the parking lot of some club, and I woke up with gravel embedded in my face...

R: I remember that incident... It was at Club Zayante in the Santa Cruz mountains...One minute, I saw you making out with some guy at the bar...We were playing on a little stage, and the next minute I happened to glance out this side door to my left and I saw you lying face down in the gravel next to the "Suits" van...

A: Pretty yumiliating...

R: You used to turn into a complete psychopath when you got drunk... It was scary... You don't get that drunk anymore...

A: The worse thing was that the "Suits" blamed me when you quit the band...

R: Of course they blamed you! Why else would I give up such a fun thing!? Hanging out together, playin' old tunes 'n' eating donuts, havin' adventures on the road, flirting with girls...So we had a few ego battles, so I was pestered to death by comic fanboys and media hypesters at every fuckin'band job, what'd they care!? But y'know, it really was sort of fun for a while...It was the only one time in my life I ever had like a group of buddies to hang out with...So they were riding on my coattails, I still liked all those guys. Mainly, I think I quit because I wanted to get back and devote more time and energy to the drawing...And I did...I think my work improved a lot right around that time, and I had come to despise the "business" part of the music business...

Hey an' how 'bout all those Crumb fans who wrote in after the first D.L. who hated seeing your crude scrawls next to my work and said things like, "She might be a good lay but keep her off the fucking page"...

A: Yeah, well I was treading in shark-infested waters when I dared to put myself on the sacred page with you. But if you must know, I got off on antagonizing those narrowminded fanboys. It thrilled me to be hated by them, and it energized me to think of those fuming twerps wringing their sweaty palms in disgust when they had to look at my tortured scratching intertwined with your fine rendering.

R: Finerenderingdothnotagreatartistmake... Fine rendering can be a trap, a web of clichés and techniques. Your work is entirely free of such comic-book visual banalities... You remain amazingly impervious to the pernicious influence of all cartoon stylistic tricks...which is mainly why so many devotees of the comics medium are put off by your stuff.

A: Yes, nothing penetrates my thick skull, it's true...Anyway, I was just reading the end of D.L. number two and I forgot that I asked you to marry me, and you, like afool, eventually gave in. I didn't keep anything to myself in those days. As my therapist once said I had a distorted sense of "boundaries". I didn't know where I ended and you began.. .Of course, I'm nothing like that now...Post-therapy, post mid-life crisis...Why, I have it all figured out now. Right, Bob?

R: I should hope that eight-thousand dollars worth of therapy did something!

A: Eleven-thousand...

R: Really? It was eleven-thousand dollars??

A: Yeah, but wasn't it worth it? It was the best eleven-thousand dollars you ever spent!

R: Yeh, right...So, then, in 1978 we did that story about the Whole Earth Jamboree on assignment from the "CoEvolution Quarterly", but Stewart Brand, the editor, wouldn't print it because it was too negative, so it ended up in one of my comic books. Then, the next time we collaborated was in that strip we did for "Winds of Change", that alternative newspaper in Davis we were involved in for a few years.

A: Boy were those people annoyingly politically correct! I did a gossip column called "Blabette Yakowitz", and they canned it for being "sexist and anti-Semitic". Too bad it was the only funny thing in the paper. An1 you did that goody-goody "Mr. Appropriate" and got razzed by all your cynical badboy pals for being too candy-assed...Ha...We were a coupla chumps...Years later, I found out that those goody-goodies were all involved in the most sordid sex scandals you could imagine...

R: That experience kinda turned me off on politics...Those people were "humor-impaired"...That paper was a high-minded exer¬cise in futility.. .And then "The Soph" was born and our lives changed forever...

A: Oy...Yew aint lyin'! But of course, it changed for the better...

R: It did??

A: We wouldn’t be the wise, compassionate, patient beaten dogs that we are now if it wasn’t for The Soph...I think of her as my little Zen master...Why, if I hadn't been pushed over the edge by the pressure of parenting I might still be mindlessly enjoying myself! Also, I must admit that having a child is the ultimate form of work avoidance!

R: Those years when The Soph was a toddler were the low point of our relationship... How I hated you, oftentimes...! felt like killing you...l couldn't take the pressure...Even then, though, we still managed to do a collaboration..."That Thing in the Back Bedroom"...That panel where Sophie is jumping up and down in her crib, coming out of her skin first thing in the morning.. .She ran us ragged...It was like boot camp...

A: Yeah, and since I couldn't be an artiste any more I devoted what spare time I had to aerobicising and decorating my body. I really became a "Jazzermonster" and a tennis-playing, white wine-sipping, shallow, irritating California yuppie housewife. Is that enough self-contempt for you?? This was probably the only period of my life when my mother thought I was almost human... A truly low point in my spiritual development!

R: I'd say you almost became all those things - not quite...You pulled yourself out of it - Guess that's why we ended up in France.. .One last note on the contents of this book - those daily paper-style strips called "The Crumb Family" that we did in 1985 were the result of an offer from the San Francisco Examiner, when Willie Hearst was trying to rescue it from declining circulation with a new "hip" editorial policy. But our strip was turned down, and the paper never did become "hip".

A: Yeah, even though we did try to be com¬mercial, the editor thought it was too "off-beat"... He especially went nuts over the second strip where I'm telling about my mother buying a hand¬bag "right next to where they hung up Jesus". I thought it was a priceless line myself, but it just goes to show I've been "underground" too long...

R: The editor told us if they printed that strip the phones would be ringing for days with people screaming about it...

A: Now that we've finished this "Dirty Laundry" book I hafto go up to my studio all alone... We each have to face that blank white page on our own...oy...l have the urge to draw a really smutty story...

Sauve, France, August 1992