The Tortured Artist

Abstract

In this chapter, Lynn Marie Kutch demonstrates why Crumb’s artistic style is supremely adept at telling Kafka’s story and visually interpreting his fiction stories. The chapter argues that Crumb’s distinct style of seeing and drawing substantially supplements the plethora of existing work on Kafka by providing concretely provocative and aggressive graphic renditions of the abstract elements—such as abuse, torment, monstrousness, self-doubt, and absurdity—that characterized Kafka’s life and shaped his oeuvre. The book weaves biographical elements from Franz Kafka’s tortured life story with brief summaries of his main works such as “In the Penal Colony,” “The Hunger Artist,” and “The Metamorphosis.” Just as he did in Self-Loathing, Crumb confrontationally provokes the reader with images of revulsion and the “iconic ugliness” with which Kafka also viewed himself. Crumb and Mairowitz borrow yet also significantly modify the catalogue of themes and terms that characterize Crumb’s body of work. They centralize Kafka’s monstrous and creepy self-portraits, while also consistently threading throughout the text episodes of Kafka’s revulsion and documented distaste for sexual encounters. Similar to Crumb, it was not the female form that disgusted Kafka, but rather his grotesque view of himself fumbling awkwardly in her presence.