This is one of the most disturbing and grotesque books I've ever read, and I have a sneaking suspicion that I would have gotten more out of it if only I had at some point done a lot of psychotropic drugs. I can't say I enjoyed this book, but I was kind of amazed by it. I think the story and the characters are on a level of screwed up I am nowhere close to - and by the end of the novel I was really very grateful for that. This is a reading experience of shock and awe, maybe, then. I honestly can't say how much of Cruddy was a little over the top, and how much was just something I've never experienced and so seemed to me a little unrealistic. I didn't relate to the characters at all, nor did I like them, and I had trouble even feeling sympathy for them most of the time. Sometimes a really interesting or original thought from one of them would shine through, but it never really redeemed the book for me. All that being said, I think this is an excellent book, just maybe not for me. It's amazingly gutsy and I've never read anything more emotionally raw and brutal. Cruddy is certainly more worthwhile and original than many of the more critically acclaimed, self-important, "dark" contemporary works.I loved that the main character wasn't ugly-but-not-really-ugly, or sexy-ugly, or ugly-until-the-makeover or whatever; no, she was described several times as being really, really truly messed up looking. A couple of times in the novel other characters recoil from her countenance in revulsion or horror. There just aren't enough really unattractive protagonists in literature. I kind of think Lynda Barry took all the painfully awkward and horrible feelings of adolescence, intensified them to a radioactive level, and then put them in a literal context, all onto one character. Imagine if things really were as bad as they felt when you were 13? If your insides really were your outsides, every secret fear a boil on your face? If it sounds like it might be intense and a little difficult to read, it is. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that no matter what kind of problems you might have... this book will give you a little perspective on how it could be worse. I'm glad that I read this book, but I can't see myself reading it again for quite a while, and I can't possibly imagine who I would recommend it to. I think if I knew someone that I thought should be reading this book, what I would recommend to them instead would be about ten different kinds of intensive therapy.
This is the very first case of 'don't judge a book by its cover' that I have been affiliated with. A roommate had a dogeared and water damaged copy laying on a stack of magazines and every time I passed it I added another layer of resentment for the book. My right hand, of its own accord, grabbed it off the magazine stack as I walked outside for a smoke. First sentences are said to sell or destroy a book. I will type Lynda Barry's sentence so you too can move beyond the cover and get hooked like I did. "Once upon a cruddy time on a cruddy street on the side of a cruddy hill in the cruddiest part of a crudded-out town in a cruddy state, country, world, solar system, universe." This is not really the first sentence of the book. It is the first sentence of chapter two. For me, this is where the story began.Also, chapter one is a short one paragraph chapter. It's funny that since I read Cruddy, I cannot stop copping her writing style, even though it's unintentional.I will go back for a second read once I force myself to forget enough of it. A great thing about the story is the surprise brutality and pop-up darkness that just keeps coming. Our girl, the human tumble weed, Miss Roberta Rohbeson is my newest anti-hero/reluctant vigilante. She is the antidote to our popular culture diet of poison femme fatales who have been put up there on screens and inside books recently for us to either lust over, idolize or vacillate between the two. Roberta is the person you wish was real so you yourself can give her what she honestly, finally needs. This heroine is clear of femininity and desirability. She moves through the pinball machine gauntlet like a soldier/crashtestdummy.This could go on.
What do You think about Cruddy (2000)?
I'll never understand why drippy guys like Eggers and Franzen get such Oproid levels of attention for their emotion stuff, creeps like Klosterman and Self get fanboy appreciation for their dark violence, and most women writers get shunted (albeit loudly) into the chick lit ghetto, and yet Lynda Barry is still under our radar. This book is powerful, stunning in its emotional depth, redolent of the dark corners of youth, violent and scary. Definitely not chick lit. Lynda Barry is probably the most undervalued literary artist in AmericaAnd I should add to my above injustices piss-poor draughtsmen like Ware and Spiegelman getting Pulitzer-level attention for their crappy drawings and bogusly opaque writing (in the case of Ware) or theft (in the case of Spiegelman's skull-fucking his father's travails in the camps. While Cruddy is not a comic, Barry has indeed already written the great American novel. It is the collected Marlys comics. Read those, too.
—Donkeyballs
The other day I heard an uptalking coed describe a community garden as “like, the most epic place I’ve ever seen.” I could easily describe the landscape of Cruddy on the same terms. It is epic. It would translate easily into a silver screen gem. It is apocalyptic and brutal.The story shifts between two time periods: 1971 (our narrator is 16 years old) and 1966 (our narrator is 11). At eleven, Roberta is on the lam with her father—a murderer who self-identifies as “Navy” and “Slaughter House.” Both are handy in his line of work—the slaughter house stuff in particular. Roberta’s father calls her Clyde, and she convinces everyone she is a mute, “half-mongoloid” 11-year-old boy. They roam; they tell elaborate lies; they drink Old Skull Popper; they wield knives with feminine monikers (e.g., Little Debbie). Roberta is a wily child with heaps of know-how; she literally "gets away with murder" because folks think childhood + special needs = double innocence. At sixteen Roberta is experimenting with drugs and most of those chapters are told through the lens of hallucinogens. This impresses me. The dialogue and diction are just spot on—you can hear the father drawling in your head; you can hear the Turtle’s stoner ramblings.Yes, yes and yes!
—Leslie
First off, Lynda Barry is fucking awesome. Watch her speak on youtube. Why is that the people who create the most disturbing shit are the people who seem the most optimistic, happy, and stable? They are onto something. My art school grad student teacher had us reading quite a few graphic novels with intense material. I judged Cruddy by the cover. I expected it to be bland and depressing like the girl.. thing.. person on the cover. Depressing, it was. But somehow Barry managed to make depressing into the most hilariously disturbing philosophical book I have ever read. (That seems to be a theme for me- disturbing done RIGHT). Cruddy describes the ugly world that the main character, a teenager named Roberta, lives it. Roberta is described as equally ugly, hence the cover. This is her story of her tragic life. She is usually the passive observer in the midst of constant chaos around her at home, on the run with her dangerous father, and with her friends. Expect more dark illustrations throughout the book. This book is totally underrated! It probably the most original book I've ever read. Barry's writing style that combines naivety, grossness (for lack of a better word), and humor to create an impressive depth.
—Jenny Donahue
