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Conversations with George Saunders (Literary Conversations Series)
Par Michael O’Connell. 2022
Besides being one of America’s most celebrated living authors, George Saunders (b. 1958) is also an excellent interview subject. In…
the fourteen interviews included in Conversations with George Saunders, covering nearly twenty years of his career, the Booker Prize–winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December provides detailed insight into his own writing process and craft, alongside nuanced interpretations of his own work. He also delves into aspects of his biography, including anecdotes from his childhood and his experiences as both a student and teacher in MFA programs, as well as reflections on how parenthood affected his writing, the role of religious belief and practice in his work, and how he has dealt with his growing popularity and fame. Throughout this collection, we see him in conversation with former students, fellow writers, mainstream critics, and literary scholars. In each instance, Saunders is eager to engage in meaningful dialogue about what he calls the “big questions of our age.” In a number of interviews, he reflects on the moral and ethical responsibility of fiction, as well as how his work engages with issues of social and political commentary. But at the same time, these interviews, like all of Saunders’s best work, are funny, warm, surprising, and wise. Saunders says he has “always enjoyed doing interviews” in part because he views “intense, respectful conversation [as], really, an artform—an exploration of sorts.” Readers of this volume will have the pleasure of joining him in this process of exploration.C'mon, Get Happy: The Making of Summer Stock
Par David Fantle, Tom Johnson. 2023
In their third and final screen teaming, Judy Garland and Gene Kelly starred together in the MGM musical Summer Stock.…
Despite its riveting production history, charismatic lead actors, and classic musical moments, the movie has not received the same attention as other musicals from MGM’s storied dream factory. In C’mon, Get Happy: The Making of “Summer Stock,” authors David Fantle and Tom Johnson present a comprehensive study of this 1950 motion picture, from start to finish and after its release.The production coincided at a critical point in the careers of Kelly and an emotionally spent Garland. Kelly, who starred in An American in Paris just one year later, was at the peak of his abilities. On the other hand, Summer Stock was Garland’s final film at MGM, and she gamely completed it despite her own personal struggles. Summer Stock includes Kelly’s favorite solo dance routine and Garland’s signature number “Get Happy.”The authors discuss in rich detail the contributions of the cast (which included Gloria DeHaven, Eddie Bracken, Phil Silvers, and Marjorie Main); the director (Charles Walters); the producer (Joe Pasternak); the script writers (George Wells and Sy Gomberg); the songwriters (which included Harry Warren and Mack Gordon); and top MGM executives (Louis B. Mayer and Dore Schary). The volume features extensive interviews, conducted by the authors, with Kelly, Walters, Warren, and others, who shared their recollections of making the movie. Deeply researched, C’mon, Get Happy reveals the studio system at work during Hollywood’s Golden Era.Additionally, the authors have written a special section called “Taking Stock” that buttonholes numerous contemporary dancers, singers, choreographers, musicians, and even Garland impersonators for their take on Summer Stock, its stars, and any enduring legacy they think the film might have. Artists from Mikhail Baryshnikov, Ben Vereen, and Tommy Tune to Garland’s and Kelly’s daughters, Lorna Luft and Kerry Kelly Novick, respectively, offer their unique perspective on the film and its stars.The Supervillain Reader
Par Robert Moses Peaslee and Robert G. Weiner. 2020
Contributions by Jerold J. Abrams, José Alaniz, John Carey, Maurice Charney, Peter Coogan, Joe Cruz, Phillip Lamarr Cunningham, Stefan Danter,…
Adam Davidson-Harden, Randy Duncan, Richard Hall, Richard Heldenfels, Alberto Hermida, Víctor Hernández-Santaolalla, A. G. Holdier, Tiffany Hong, Stephen Graham Jones, Siegfried Kracauer, Naja Later, Ryan Litsey, Tara Lomax, Tony Magistrale, Matthew McEniry, Cait Mongrain, Grant Morrison, Robert Moses Peaslee, David D. Perlmutter, W. D. Phillips, Jared Poon, Duncan Prettyman, Vladimir Propp, Noriko T. Reider, Robin S. Rosenberg, Hannah Ryan, Lennart Soberon, J. Richard Stevens, Lars Stoltzfus-Brown, John N. Thompson, Dan Vena, and Robert G. Weiner The Supervillain Reader, featuring both reprinted and original essays, reveals why we are so fascinated with the villain. The obsession with the villain is not a new phenomenon, and, in fact, one finds villains who are “super” going as far back as ancient religious and mythological texts. This innovative collection brings together essays, book excerpts, and original content from a wide variety of scholars and writers, weaving a rich tapestry of thought regarding villains in all their manifestations, including film, literature, television, games, and, of course, comics and sequential art. While The Supervillain Reader focuses on the latter, it moves beyond comics to show how the vital concept of the supervillain is part of our larger consciousness. Editors Robert Moses Peaslee and Robert G. Weiner collect pieces that explore how the villain is a complex part of narratives regardless of the original source. The Joker, Lex Luthor, Harley Quinn, Darth Vader, and Magneto must be compelling, stimulating, and proactive, whereas the superhero (or protagonist) is most often reactive. Indeed, whether in comics, films, novels, religious tomes, or video games, the eternal struggle between villain and hero keeps us coming back to these stories over and over again.Conversations with William T. Vollmann (Literary Conversations Series)
Par Daniel Lukes. 2020
Across fiction, journalism, ethnography, and history, William T. Vollmann’s oeuvre—which includes a “prostitution trilogy,” a septology (Seven Dreams) about encounters…
between first North Americans and European colonists, and a more-than-three-thousand-page philosophical treatise on violence—is as ambitious as it is dazzling. Conversations with William T. Vollmann collects twenty-nine interviews, from early press coverage in Britain where his career first took flight, to in-depth visits to his writing and art studio in Sacramento, California. Throughout these conversations, Vollmann (b. 1959) speaks with candor and wit on such subjects as grief and guilt in his work, his love of guns and his experience of war, the responsibilities of the artist as witness, the benefits of looking out into the world beyond the confines of one’s horizon, the limitations of what literature can achieve, and how we can speak to the future. Bringing to the fore several expanded, unpublished, and hard-to-find interviews, this volume offers a valuable set of perspectives on a uniquely rewarding and sometimes overwhelming writer. On the road promoting his books or in a domestic setting, Vollmann comes across as reflective and humane, humble in his craft despite deep dedication to his uncompromising vision, and ever armed with a spirit of mischief and capacity to shock and unsettle the reader.John Jennings: Conversations (Conversations with Comic Artists Series)
Par Donna-Lyn Washington. 2020
John Jennings (b. 1970) is perhaps best known for his collaboration with Damian Duffy on the New York Times bestseller…
and Eisner Award–winning graphic novel adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Kindred. However, Jennings is also a graphic designer and comic book scholar who, throughout his career, has conducted several interviews that shed light on the importance of Black Speculative narratives. The most enlightening of his interviews are brought together in John Jennings: Conversations.As a collective these interviews explore folklore, systemic racism, his Mississippi roots, and the phrase Jennings cocreated, the Ethnogothic. Jennings discusses the necessity for black heroes, not just for the sake of diversity, but for inclusiveness, touching on the conventions he has cofounded, such as the Schomburg Center’s Black Comic Book Festival in Harlem. He addresses the struggle to be financially compensated for work, and he speaks at length about how being a professor informs his craft where he continues to examine black stereotypes in popular culture with courses of his own design. As a group the interviews in John Jennings: Conversations give a picture of a black man forging a way where comic books have afforded him a means to carve out an important space for people of color.Jack Kent: The Wit, Whimsy, and Wisdom of a Comic Storyteller
Par Paul V. Allen. 2023
Jack Kent (1920–1985) had two distinct and successful careers: newspaper cartoonist and author of children’s books. For each of these…
he drew upon different aspects of his personality and life experiences. From 1950 to 1965 he wrote and drew King Aroo, a nationally syndicated comic strip beloved by fans for its combination of absurdity, fantasy, wordplay, and wit. The strip’s DNA was comprised of things Kent loved—fairytales, nursery rhymes, vaudeville, Krazy Kat, foreign languages, and puns. In 1968, he published his first children’s book, Just Only John, and began a career in kids’ books that would result in over sixty published works, among them such classics as The Fat Cat and There’s No Such Thing as a Dragon. Kent’s stories for children were funny but often arose from the dark parts of his life—an itinerant childhood, an unfinished education, two harrowing tours of duty in World War II, and a persistent lack of confidence—and tackled such themes as rejection, isolation, self-doubt, and the desire for transformation.Jack Kent: The Wit, Whimsy, and Wisdom of a Comic Storyteller illuminates how Kent’s life experiences informed his art and his storytelling in both King Aroo and his children’s books. Paul V. Allen draws from archival research, brand-new interviews, and in-depth examinations of Kent’s work. Also included are many King Aroo comic strips that have never been reprinted in book form.Open at the Close: Literary Essays on Harry Potter
Par Cecilia Konchar Farr. 2022
Contributions by Lauren R. Carmacci, Keridiana Chez, Kate Glassman, John Granger, Marie Schilling Grogan, Beatrice Groves, Tolonda Henderson, Nusaiba Imady,…
Cecilia Konchar Farr, Juliana Valadão Lopes, Amy Mars, Christina Phillips-Mattson, Patrick McCauley, Jennifer M. Reeher, Jonathan A. Rose, and Emily StrandDespite their decades-long, phenomenal success, the Harry Potter novels have attracted relatively little attention from literary critics and scholars. While popular books, articles, blogs, and fan sites for general readers proliferate, and while philosophers, historians, theologians, sociologists, psychologists, and even business professors have taken on book-length studies and edited essay collections about Harry Potter, literature scholars, outside of the children’s books community, have paid few serious visits to the Potterverse. Could it be that scholars are still reluctant to recognize popular novels, especially those with genre labels “children’s literature” or “fantasy,” as worthy subjects for academic study? This book challenges that oversight, assembling and foregrounding some of the best literary critical work by scholars trying to move the needle on these novels to reflect their importance to twenty-first-century literary culture. In Open at the Close, contributors consciously address Harry Potter primarily as a literary phenomenon rather than a cultural one. They interrogate the novels on many levels, from multiple perspectives, and with various conclusions, but they come together around the overarching question: What is it about these books? At their heart, what is it that makes the Harry Potter novels so exceptionally compelling, so irresistible to their readers, and so relevant in our time?Funny Girls: Guffaws, Guts, and Gender in Classic American Comics
Par Michelle Ann Abate. 2019
For several generations, comics were regarded as a boys’ club—created by, for, and about men and boys. In the twenty-first…
century, however, comics have seen a rise of female creators, characters, and readers. While this sudden presence of women and girls in comics is being regarded as new and noteworthy, the observation is not true for the genre’s entire history. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the medium was enjoyed equally by both sexes, and girls were the protagonists of some of the earliest, most successful, and most influential comics. In Funny Girls: Guffaws, Guts, and Gender in Classic American Comics, Michelle Ann Abate examines the important but long-overlooked cadre of young female protagonists in US comics during the first half of the twentieth century. She treats characters ranging from Little Orphan Annie and Nancy to Little Lulu, Little Audrey of the Harvey Girls, and Li’l Tomboy—a group that collectively forms a tradition of Funny Girls in American comics. Abate demonstrates the massive popularity these Funny Girls enjoyed, revealing their unexplored narrative richness, aesthetic complexity, and critical possibility. Much of the humor in these comics arose from questioning gender roles, challenging social manners, and defying the status quo. Further, they embodied powerful points of collection about both the construction and intersection of race, class, gender, and age, as well as popular perceptions about children, representations of girlhood, and changing attitudes regarding youth. Finally, but just as importantly, these strips shed light on another major phenomenon within comics: branding, licensing, and merchandising. Collectively, these comics did far more than provide amusement—they were serious agents for cultural commentary and sociopolitical change.Literary critics and authors have long argued about the importance or unimportance of an author’s relationship to readers. What can…
be said about the rhetorical relationship that exists between author and reader? How do authors manipulate character, specifically, to modulate the emotional appeal of character so a reader will feel empathy, awe, even delight? In At Arm’s Length: A Rhetoric of Character in Children's and Young Adult Literature, Mike Cadden takes a rhetorical approach that complements structural, affective, and cognitive readings. The study offers a detailed examination of the ways authorial choice results in emotional invitation. Cadden sounds the modulation of characters along a continuum from those larger than life and awe inspiring to the life sized and empathetic, down to the pitiable and ridiculous, and all those spaces between. Cadden examines how authors alternate between holding the young reader at arm’s length from and drawing them into emotional intensity. This balance and modulation are key to a rhetorical understanding of character in literature, film, and television for the young. Written in accessible language and of interest and use to undergraduates and seasoned critics, At Arm’s Length provides a broad analysis of stories for the young child and young adult, in book, film, and television. Throughout, Cadden touches on important topics in children’s literature studies, including the role of safety in children’s media, as well as character in multicultural and diverse literature. In addition to treating “traditional” works, he analyzes special cases—forms, including picture books, verse novels, and graphic novels, and modes like comedy, romance, and tragedy.Conversations with Joe R. Lansdale (Literary Conversations Series)
Par Andrew J. Rausch and Mark Slade. 2022
Joe R. Lansdale (b. 1951), the award-winning author of such novels as Cold in July (1989) and The Bottoms (2000),…
as well as the popular Hap and Leonard series, has been publishing novels since 1981. Lansdale has developed a tremendous cult audience willing to follow him into any genre he chooses to write in, including horror, western, crime, adventure, and fantasy. Within these genres, his stories, novels, and novellas explore friendship, race, and life in East Texas. His distinctive voice is often funny and always unique, as characterized by such works as Bubba Ho-Tep (1994), a novella that centers on Elvis Presley, his friend who believes himself to be John F. Kennedy, and a soul-sucking ancient mummy. This same novella won a Bram Stoker Award, one of the ten Bram Stoker Awards given to Lansdale thus far in his illustrious career. Wielding a talent that extends beyond the page to the screen, Landsdale has also written episodes for Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series. Conversations with Joe R. Lansdale brings together interviews from newspapers, magazines, and podcasts conducted throughout the prolific author’s career. The collection includes conversations between Lansdale and other noted peers like Robert McCammon and James Grady; two podcast transcripts that have never before appeared in print; and a brand-new interview, exclusive to the volume. In addition to shedding light on his body of literary work and process as a writer, this collection also shares Lansdale’s thoughts on comics, atheism, and martial arts.M. Night Shyamalan: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)
Par Adrian Gmelch. 2023
As a visionary and distinctive filmmaker, M. Night Shyamalan (b. 1970) has consistently garnered mixed reception of his work by…
critics and audiences alike. After the release of The Sixth Sense, one of the most successful films from the turn of the millennium, Shyamalan promptly received two Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. Since then, lauded films such as Unbreakable (2000), Signs (2002), and Split (2016) have alternated with less successful and highly criticized works, such as Lady in the Water (2006), The Last Airbender (2010), and After Earth (2013). Yet despite his polarizing aesthetics and uneven career, for two decades Shyamalan has upheld his cinematic style and remained an influential force in international film. With interviews spanning from 1993 through 2022, M. Night Shyamalan: Interviews is the first survey of conversations with the filmmaker to cover the broad spectrum of his life and career. This collection includes interviews with renowned American film journalists such as Jeff Giles, Carrie Rickey, and Stephen Pizzello, and reflects the intense international interest in Shyamalan’s work by including newly translated conversations from French and German sources. Through its thorough and careful curation, this volume is bound to shake up readers’ perceptions of M. Night Shyamalan.Robert Williams: Conversations (Conversations with Comic Artists Series)
Par Joseph R. Givens and Darius A. Spieth. 2023
A legendary figure of underground comix, Robert Williams (b. 1943) is an important social chronicler of American popular culture. The…
interviews assembled in Robert Williams: Conversations attest to his rhetorical powers, which match the high level of energy evident in his underground comix and action-filled canvases.The public perception of Williams was largely defined by two events. In 1987, Guns N’ Roses licensed a Williams painting for the cover of their best-selling album Appetite for Destruction. However, Williams’s cover art stirred controversies and was moved to the inside of the album. The second defining event was Williams’s participation in the Helter Skelter exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art in 1992. Protests ensued when a room was set aside to feature his work. Uncovering long-forgotten and hard-to-find interviews, this collection serves as a social chronicle of counterculture from the 1960s through the early 2000s. One of the founders of the original ZAP Comix collective in the 1960s, Williams drew inspiration from pulp fiction, hot rod culture, pin-up girls, and traditional academic art. He invented the comics character Cootchy Cooty and worked for the studios of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. He rubbed shoulders with outlaw motorcycle gangs and tested the legal limits of what was permissible comic book art during his day. He has often been described as a figure courting scandal and controversy, a reputation he discusses repeatedly in some of the interviews here. Since the 1980s, Williams has emerged as a force in the fine art world, raising interesting questions about how painting and comic art interrelate.For No Reason at All: The Changing Narrative of the First World War in American Film
Par Jeffrey A. Hinkelman. 2022
The years following the signing of the Armistice saw a transformation of traditional attitudes regarding military conflict as America attempted…
to digest the enormity and futility of the First World War. During these years popular film culture in the United States created new ways of addressing the impact of the war on both individuals and society. Filmmakers with direct experience of combat created works that promoted their own ideas about the depiction of wartime service—ideas that frequently conflicted with established, heroic tropes for the portrayal of warfare on film.Those filmmakers spent years modifying existing standards and working through a variety of storytelling options before achieving a consensus regarding the fitting method for rendering war on screen. That consensus incorporated facets of the experience of Great War veterans, and these countered and undermined previously accepted narrative strategies. This process reached its peak during the Pre-Code Era of the early 1930s when the initially prevailing narrative would be briefly supplanted by an entirely new approach that questioned the very premises of wartime service. Even more significantly, the rhetoric of these films argued strongly for an antiwar stance that questioned every aspect of the wartime experience. For No Reason at All: The Changing Narrative of the First World War in American Film discusses a variety of Great War–themed films made from 1915 to the present, tracing the changing approaches to the conflict over time. Individual chapters focus on movie antecedents, animated films and comedies, the influence of literary precursors, the African American film industry, women-centered films, and the effect of the Second World War on depictions of the First. Films discussed include Hearts of the World, The Cradle of Courage, Birthright, The Big Parade, She Goes to War, Doughboys, Young Eagles, The Last Flight, Broken Lullaby, Lafayette Escadrille, and Wonder Woman, among many others.Asian Political Cartoons
Par John A. Lent. 2023
2023 CHOICE Outstanding Academic TitleIn Asian Political Cartoons, scholar John A. Lent explores the history and contemporary status of political…
cartooning in Asia, including East Asia (China, Hong Kong, Japan, North and South Korea, Mongolia, and Taiwan), Southeast Asia (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam), and South Asia (Bangladesh, India, Iran, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka).Incorporating hundreds of interviews, as well as textual analysis of cartoons; observation of workplaces, companies, and cartoonists at work; and historical research, Lent offers not only the first such survey in English, but the most complete and detailed in any language. Richly illustrated, this volume brings much-needed attention to the political cartoons of a region that has accelerated faster and more expansively economically, culturally, and in other ways than perhaps any other part of the world. Emphasizing the “freedom to cartoon," the author examines political cartoons that attempt to expose, bring attention to, blame or condemn, satirically mock, and caricaturize problems and their perpetrators. Lent presents readers a pioneering survey of such political cartooning in twenty-two countries and territories, studying aspects of professionalism, cartoonists’ work environments, philosophies and influences, the state of newspaper and magazine industries, the state’s roles in political cartooning, modern technology, and other issues facing political cartoonists. Asian Political Cartoons encompasses topics such as political and social satire in Asia during ancient times, humor/cartoon magazines established by Western colonists, and propaganda cartoons employed in independence campaigns. The volume also explores stumbling blocks contemporary cartoonists must hurdle, including new or beefed-up restrictions and regulations, a dwindling number of publishing venues, protected vested interests of conglomerate-owned media, and political correctness gone awry. In these pages, cartoonists recount intriguing ways they cope with restrictions—through layered hidden messages, by using other platforms, and finding unique means to use cartooning to make a living.With Great Power Comes Great Pedagogy: Teaching, Learning, and Comics
Par Susan E. Kirtley, Antero Garcia and Peter E. Carlson. 2020
Contributions by Bart Beaty, Jenny Blenk, Ben Bolling, Peter E. Carlson, Johnathan Flowers, Antero Garcia, Dale Jacobs, Ebony Flowers Kalir,…
James Kelley, Susan E. Kirtley, Frederik Byrn Køhlert, John A. Lent, Leah Misemer, Johnny Parker II, Nick Sousanis, Aimee Valentine, and Benjamin J. Villarreal More and more educators are using comics in the classroom. As such, this edited volume sets out the stakes, definitions, and exemplars of recent comics pedagogy, from K-12 contexts to higher education instruction to ongoing communities of scholars working outside of the academy. Building upon interdisciplinary approaches to teaching comics and teaching with comics, this book brings together diverse voices to share key theories and research on comics pedagogy. By gathering scholars, creators, and educators across various fields and in K-12 as well as university settings, editors Susan E. Kirtley, Antero Garcia, and Peter E. Carlson significantly expand scholarship. This valuable resource offers both critical pieces and engaging interviews with key comics professionals who reflect on their own teaching experience and on considerations of the benefits of creating comics in education. Included are interviews with acclaimed comics writers Lynda Barry, Brian Michael Bendis, Kelly Sue DeConnick, and David Walker, as well as essays spanning from studying the use of superhero comics in the classroom to the ways comics can enrich and empower young readers. The inclusion of creators, scholars, and teachers leads to perspectives that make this volume unlike any other currently available. These voices echo the diverse needs of the many stakeholders invested in using comics in education today.Stuart Gordon: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)
Par Michael Doyle. 2022
Animated by a singularly subversive spirit, the fiendishly intelligent works of Stuart Gordon (1947–2020) are distinguished by their arrant boldness…
and scab-picking wit. Provocative gems such as Re-Animator, From Beyond, Dolls, The Pit and the Pendulum, and Dagon consolidated his fearsome reputation as one of the masters of the contemporary horror film, bringing an unfamiliar archness, political complexity, and critical respect to a genre so often bereft of these virtues. A versatile filmmaker, one who resolutely refused to mellow with age, Gordon proved equally adept at crafting pointed science fiction (Robot Jox, Fortress, Space Truckers), sweet-tempered fantasy (The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit), and nihilistic thrillers (King of the Ants, Edmond, Stuck), customarily scrubbing the sharply drawn lines between exploitation and arthouse cinema.The first collection of interviews ever to be published on the director, Stuart Gordon: Interviews contains thirty-six articles spanning a period of fifty years. Bountiful in anecdote and information, these candid conversations chronicle the trajectory of a fascinating career—one that courted controversy from its very beginning. Among the topics Gordon discusses are his youth and early influences, his founding of Chicago’s legendary Organic Theatre (where he collaborated with such luminaries as Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, and David Mamet), and his transition into filmmaking where he created a body of work that injected fresh blood into several ailing staples of American cinema. He also reveals details of his working methods, his steadfast relationships with frequent collaborators, his great love for the works of Lovecraft and Poe, and how horror stories can masquerade as sociopolitical commentaries.Blockheads, Beagles, and Sweet Babboos: New Perspectives on Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts
Par Michelle Ann Abate. 2023
Blockheads, Beagles, and Sweet Babboos: New Perspectives on Charles M. Schulz's "Peanuts" sheds new light on the past importance, ongoing…
significance, and future relevance of a comics series that millions adore: Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts. More specifically, it examines a fundamental feature of the series: its core cast of characters. In chapters devoted to Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Franklin, Pigpen, Woodstock, and Linus, author Michelle Ann Abate explores the figures who made Schulz’s strip so successful, so influential, and—above all—so beloved. In so doing, the book gives these iconic figures the in-depth critical attention that they deserve and for which they are long overdue. Abate considers the exceedingly familiar characters from Peanuts in markedly unfamiliar ways. Drawing on a wide array of interpretive lenses, Blockheads, Beagles, and Sweet Babboos invites readers to revisit, reexamine, and rethink characters that have been household names for generations. Through this process, the chapters demonstrate not only how Schulz’s work remains a subject of acute critical interest more than twenty years after the final strip appeared, but also how it embodies a rich and fertile site of social, cultural, and political meaning.Out of the Blue: Life on the Road with Muddy Waters (American Made Music Series)
Par Brian Bisesi. 2024
Out of the Blue: Life on the Road with Muddy Waters begins with a moment lifted from a young musician’s…
dreams. Brian Bisesi, a guitarist barely out of his teens, is invited on stage to fill in for a missing member of the band backing blues legend Muddy Waters. This life-changing quirk of fate opens the door into a world of challenges and opportunities that Bisesi, an Italian American reared in the comforts of a New York City suburb, can barely imagine. Despite their differences, Bisesi and Waters hit it off, and what might have been a one-night stand turns into a career. From 1978 to 1980, Bisesi works for Waters as his road manager, bean-counter, and at times his confidant, while often sitting in with the band. Bisesi’s years with the band take him to Europe, Japan, Canada, and across the United States as Waters tours—and parties—with rock gods like Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, a Beatle, and the gamut of musicians who came of age with Waters and introduced a younger generation to the blues. In Out of the Blue, Bisesi captures it all: from the pranks and tensions among bluesmen enduring a hard life on the road, to observations about Waters’s technique, his love of champagne and reefer, his eye for women, and his sometimes-acrid views of contemporary music. Bisesi has sharp insights into the ill-conceived management decisions that led to the dissolution of Waters’s longest-serving band in June of 1980. This book will rivet, amuse, and occasionally infuriate blues aficionados. It is a raucous and intimate portrait of the blues scene at a pivotal moment in time that fascinates music historians and blues fans alike.I Can Read It All by Myself: The Beginner Books Story
Par Paul V. Allen. 2021
In the late 1950s, Ted Geisel took on the challenge of creating a book using only 250 unique first-grade words,…
something that aspiring readers would have both the ability and the desire to read. The result was an unlikely children’s classic, The Cat in the Hat. But Geisel didn’t stop there. Using The Cat in the Hat as a template, he teamed with Helen Geisel and Phyllis Cerf to create Beginner Books, a whole new category of readers that combined research-based literacy practices with the logical insanity of Dr. Seuss. The books were an enormous success, giving the world such authors and illustrators as P. D. Eastman, Roy McKie, and Stan and Jan Berenstain, and beloved bestsellers such as Are You My Mother?; Go, Dog. Go!; Put Me in the Zoo; and Green Eggs and Ham. The story of Beginner Books—and Ted Geisel’s role as “president, policymaker, and editor” of the line for thirty years—has been told briefly in various biographies of Dr. Seuss, but I Can Read It All by Myself: The Beginner Books Story presents it in full detail for the first time. Drawn from archival research and dozens of brand-new interviews, I Can Read It All by Myself explores the origins, philosophies, and operations of Beginner Books from The Cat in the Hat in 1957 to 2019’s A Skunk in My Bunk, and reveals the often-fascinating lives of the writers and illustrators who created them.Critical Directions in Comics Studies
Par Thomas Giddens. 2020
Contributions by Paul Fisher Davies, Lisa DeTora, Yasemin J. Erden, Adam Gearey, Thomas Giddens, Peter Goodrich, Maggie Gray, Matthew J.…
A. Green, Vladislav Maksimov, Timothy D. Peters, Christopher Pizzino, Nicola Streeten, and Lydia Wysocki Recent decades have seen comics studies blossom, but within the ecosystems of this growth, dominant assumptions have taken root—assumptions around the particular methods used to approach the comics form, the ways we should read comics, how its “system” works, and the disciplinary relationships that surround this evolving area of study. But other perspectives have also begun to flourish. These approaches question the reliance on structural linguistics and the tools of English and cultural studies in the examination and understanding of comics. In this edited collection, scholars from a variety of disciplines examine comics by addressing materiality and form as well as the wider economic and political contexts of comics’ creation and reception. Through this lens, influenced by poststructuralist theories, contributors explore and elaborate other possibilities for working with comics as a critical resource, consolidating the emergence of these alternative modes of engagement in a single text. This opens comics studies to a wider array of resources, perspectives, and modes of engagement. Included in this volume are essays on a range of comics and illustrations as well as considerations of such popular comics as Deadpool, Daredevil, and V for Vendetta, and analyses of comics production, medical illustrations, and original comics. Some contributions even unfold in the form of comics panels.