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Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium. Edited by Jeet Heer
and
Kent Worcester. Jackson,
MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2004. 176pp.
Paperback: ISBN-10: 1578066875 || ISBN-13: 978-1578066872
Hardcover: ISBN-10: 1578066867 || ISBN-13: 978-1578066865
Find in a Library
with WorldCat
Library of Congress: PN6710 .A84 2004 || Dewey: 741.5/09 22
Google Books || Google Scholar
Publisher's
Online Information || Jeet Heer's Website
|| Kent Worcester's Website
Publisher's Description
With essays by Ralph Bergengren, e. e. cummings, Umberto
Eco, Sidney Fairfield, Manny Farber, Leslie Fiedler, Clement Greenberg,
Irving Howe, C. L. R. James, Gershon Legman, Thomas Mann, Annie Russell
Marble, Marshall McLuhan, Walter J. Ong, Dorothy Parker, Donald Phelps,
Harold Rosenberg, Delmore Schwartz, Gilbert Seldes, Robert Warshow
When Art Spiegelman's "Maus"--–a two-part graphic
novel about the Holocaust–--won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992, comics
scholarship grew increasingly popular and notable. The rise of
"serious" comics has generated growing levels of interest as scholars,
journalists, and public intellectuals continue to explore the history,
aesthetics, and semiotics of the comics medium.
Yet those who write about the comics often assume analysis
of the medium didn't begin until the cultural studies movement was
underway. "Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium" brings
together nearly two dozen essays by major writers and intellectuals who
analyzed, embraced, and even attacked comic strips and comic books in
the period between the turn of the century and the 1960s. From e.e.
cummings, who championed George Herriman's "Krazy Kat," to Irving Howe,
who fretted about Harold Gray's "Little Orphan Annie," this volume
shows that comics have provided a key battleground in the culture wars
for over a century.
With substantive essays by Umberto Eco, Marshall McLuhan,
Leslie Fiedler, Gilbert Seldes, Dorothy Parker, Irving Howe, Delmore
Schwartz, and others, this anthology shows how all of these writers
took up comics-related topics as a point of entry into wider debates
over modern art, cultural standards, daily life, and mass
communications.
"Arguing Comics" shows how prominent writers from the Jazz
Age and the Depression era to the heyday of the New York Intellectuals
in the 1950s thought about comics and, by extension, popular culture as
a whole.
Introduction ... vii
Part One: Early
Twentieth-Century Voices ... 1
Sidney Fairfield - From "The Tyranny of the Pictorial'' ... 4
Annie
Russell Marble - From
"The Reign of the Spectacular''
... 7
Ralph
Bergengren - From
"The Humor of the Colored Supplement'' ... 9
Thomas
Mann - Introduction
to Frans Masereel, Passionate
Journey: A Novel Told in 165
Woodcuts ... 13
Gilbert
Seldes - "The
Krazy Kat That Walks by Himself'' ... 22
E.
E. Cummings - "A
Foreword to Krazy'' ... 30
Dorothy
Parker - "A
Mash Note to Crockett Johnson'' ... 35
Part Two: The New York Intellectuals ... 37
Clement Greenberg - "Steig's Cartoons: Review of All Embarrassed by
William Steig'' ... 40
Clement
Greenberg - "Limits
of Common Sense: Review of Years
of Wrath: A Cartoon History, 1931-1945 by David Low''
... 41
Irving
Howe - "Notes
on Mass Culture' ... 43
Delmore
Schwartz - "Masterpieces
as Cartoons'' ... 52
Robert
Warshow - "Woofed
with Dreams'' ... 63
Robert
Warshow - "Paul,
the Horror Comics, and Dr. Wertham'' ... 67
Harold
Rosenberg - "The
Labyrinth of Saul Steinberg'' ... 81
Part
Three: The Postwar Mavericks
... 85
Manny
Farber - "Comic
Strips'' ... 88
Manny Farber -"Comic Strips'' ... 91
Walter J. Ong - "Mickey Mouse and Americanism'' ... 94
Walter J. Ong - "Bogey Sticks for Pogo Men'' ... 99
Marshall McLuhan - From The
Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man ... 102
Marshall McLuhan - "Comics: Mad
Vestibule to TV'' ... 107
Gershon Legman - From Love
and Death: A Study in Censorship ... 112
Leslie Fiedler - "The Middle Against Both Ends" ... 122
Donald Phelps - "Over the Cliff'' ... 134
Donald Phelps - "Reprise: 'Love and Death''' ... 138
C. L. R. James - "C. L. R. James on Comic Strips'' ... 142
C. L. R. James - "Letter to Daniel Bell'' ... 144
Umberto Eco - "The
Myth of Superman" ... 146
Essayists ... 165
Index ... 171
Reviews
/ Features
Boxer, Sarah. 2007. "Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium edited by Jeet Heer and Kent Worcester." The New York Review of Books 54.10: 28.
Spurgeon, Tom. 2005. "A Brief Interview with Jeet Heer and Kent
Worcester." The
Comics Reporter (June 26). [access online]
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