"When I come up against the real world, I just vacillate"
About this Quote
Crumb’s line lands like a shrug that’s also a confession: not fear exactly, but a chronic wobble when fantasy collides with consequences. “Come up against” frames the real world as an opponent, something you meet in a hallway with no exit. “Vacillate” is the killer word - clinical, almost polite - for what’s actually paralysis, an inability to decide how to behave when there isn’t a cartoon panel to contain the mess.
The intent is anti-heroic. Crumb isn’t selling sensitivity as virtue; he’s indicting his own reflex to retreat into ambivalence. That self-implication is central to his cultural role: the underground comix king who made libido, shame, misogyny, self-loathing, and self-mythology all share the same ink. His work thrives on the gap between compulsive interior life and public ethics. This sentence names the gap without redeeming it.
Context matters: Crumb emerges from a late-60s counterculture that prized authenticity while also giving artists enormous license to be grotesque, “honest,” and unchecked. “The real world” can mean jobs, relationships, politics, women, responsibility - the things that don’t sit still for satire. His persona often performs disgust at mainstream conformity, yet here he admits that confrontation doesn’t produce rebellion; it produces wavering.
The subtext is that vacillation is both shield and style. If you can’t commit, you can’t be pinned down. It’s a defensive maneuver that doubles as an artistic method: hesitation becomes observation, and observation becomes a way to keep living without choosing a side.
The intent is anti-heroic. Crumb isn’t selling sensitivity as virtue; he’s indicting his own reflex to retreat into ambivalence. That self-implication is central to his cultural role: the underground comix king who made libido, shame, misogyny, self-loathing, and self-mythology all share the same ink. His work thrives on the gap between compulsive interior life and public ethics. This sentence names the gap without redeeming it.
Context matters: Crumb emerges from a late-60s counterculture that prized authenticity while also giving artists enormous license to be grotesque, “honest,” and unchecked. “The real world” can mean jobs, relationships, politics, women, responsibility - the things that don’t sit still for satire. His persona often performs disgust at mainstream conformity, yet here he admits that confrontation doesn’t produce rebellion; it produces wavering.
The subtext is that vacillation is both shield and style. If you can’t commit, you can’t be pinned down. It’s a defensive maneuver that doubles as an artistic method: hesitation becomes observation, and observation becomes a way to keep living without choosing a side.
Quote Details
| Topic | Anxiety |
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