Download or read book The MAD Files Writers and Cartoonists on the Magazine that Warped America s Brain written by David Mikics and published by Library of America. This book was released on 2024-09-03 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrate America's zaniest and most subversive magazine in 26 essays and comix from all-star contributors, including Roz Chast, Jonathan Lethem, and Grady Hendrix. Before SNL and the wise-guy sarcasm of Letterman and Colbert, before The Simpsons and online memes, there was . . . MAD. A mainstay of countless American childhoods, MAD magazine exploded onto the scene in the 1950s and gleefully thumbed its nose at all the postwar pieties. MAD became the zaniest, most subversive satire magazine ever to be sold on America’s newsstands, anticipating the spirit of underground comix and ’zines and influencing humor writing in movies, television, and the internet to this day. Edited by David Mikics, The MAD Files celebrates the magazine’s impact and the legacy of the Usual Gang of Idiots who transformed puerile punchlines and merciless mockery into an art form. 26 essays and comics present a varied, perceptive, and often very funny account of MAD’s significance, ranging from the cultural to the aesthetic to the personal. Art Spiegelman reflects on how he “couldn’t learn much about America from my refugee immigrant parents—but I learned all about it from MAD” Roz Chast remembers how the magazine was “love at first sight. . . . It was one of my first inklings that there were other people out there who found the world as ridiculous as I did.” David Hajdu and Grady Hendrix zero in on MAD’s hilarious movie spoofs Liel Leibovitz delves into the Jewishness behind the magazine’s humor and Rachel Shteir amplifies the often unsung contributions of MAD’s women artists. Several essays are admiring profiles of the individual creators that made MAD what it was: Mort Drucker, Harvey Kurtzman, Al Jaffee, Antonio Prohias, and Will Elder. For longtime fans and new readers alike, The MAD Files is an indispensable guide to America’s greatest satire magazine.
Download or read book Twitter The Comic The Book written by Mike Rosenthal and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2014-08-19 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a simple, brilliant premise—to create comics from the weirdest and funniest tweets around—artist Mike Rosenthal (@VectorBelly) has crafted a hilariously surreal world that has attracted over a million followers to his blog Twitter: The Comic. Each carefully curated tweet delivers concentrated humor in the language of the Internet, reproduced in the comics with typos and all. As envisioned by Rosenthal, each comes to life through a bizarrely recognizable cast of bassoon-playing cops, sarcastic teens, bear MDs, clueless dads, potential insect overlords, and more. Featuring more than 120 of these comics, including dozens unique to this book, Twitter: The Comic (The Book) is a dementedly funny vision of our strange online age.
Download or read book Allegory and Ideology written by Fredric Jameson and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fredric Jameson takes on the allegorical form Works do not have meanings, they soak up meanings: a work is a machine for libidinal investments (including the political kind). It is a process that sorts incommensurabilities and registers contradictions (which is not the same as solving them!) The inevitable and welcome conflict of interpretations - a discursive, ideological struggle - therefore needs to be supplemented by an account of this simultaneous processing of multiple meanings, rather than an abandonment to liberal pluralisms and tolerant (or intolerant) relativisms. This is not a book about "method", but it does propose a dialectic capable of holding together in one breath the heterogeneities that reflect our biological individualities, our submersion in collective history and class struggle, and our alienation to a disembodied new world of information and abstraction. Eschewing the arid secularities of philosophy, Walter Benjamin once recommended the alternative of the rich figurality of an older theology; in that spirit we here return to the antiquated Ptolemaic systems of ancient allegory and its multiple levels (a proposal first sketched out in The Political Unconscious); it is tested against the epic complexities of the overtly allegorical works of Dante, Spenser and the Goethe of Faust II, as well as symphonic form in music, and the structure of the novel, postmodern as well as Third-World: about which a notorious essay on National Allegory is here reprinted with a theoretical commentary; and an allegorical history of emotion is meanwhile rehearsed from its contemporary, geopolitical context.
Download or read book Enemy of the People written by Rob Rogers and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After 25 years as a political cartoonist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Rob Rogers was fired for drawing cartoons critical of President Trump. In Enemy of the People, Rogers writes, "Trump's open embrace of the darkest, ugliest corners of human nature has emboldened racists, neo-Nazis, criminals, thugs, despots, misogynists, and liars to come out from under their rocks and display their shameful behavior publicly. That includes publishers and editors who years ago may have been too ashamed to express their hateful views on the editorial page." From a cartoon killing spree to a social media buzz, all the way to an appearance on CNN to his final days at the paper, Rogers chronicles his unenviable journey with honesty, wit, and humor.
Download or read book Everything and Less written by Mark McGurl and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist Best Book of Fall (Esquire) and a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 (Lit Hub) What Has Happened to Fiction in the Age of Platform Capitalism? Since it was first launched in 1994, Amazon has changed the world of literature. The “Everything Store” has not just transformed how we buy books; it has affected what we buy, and even what we read. In Everything and Less, acclaimed critic Mark McGurl explores this new world where writing is no longer categorized as high or lowbrow, literature or popular fiction. Charting a course spanning from Henry James to E. L. James, McGurl shows that contemporary writing has less to do with writing per se than with the manner of its distribution. This consumerist logic—if you like this, you might also like ...—has reorganized the fiction universe so that literary prize-winners sit alongside fantasy, romance, fan fiction, and the infinite list of hybrid genres and self-published works. This is an innovation to be cautiously celebrated. Amazon’s platform is not just a retail juggernaut but an aesthetic experiment driven by an unseen algorithm rivaling in the depths of its effects any major cultural shift in history. Here all fiction is genre fiction, and the niches range from the categories of crime and science fiction to the more refined interests of Adult Baby Diaper Lover erotica. Everything and Less is a hilarious and insightful map of both the commanding heights and sordid depths of fiction, past and present, that opens up an arresting conversation about why it is we read and write fiction in the first place.
Download or read book Shadowhunters and Downworlders written by Cassandra Clare and published by BenBella Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2013-01-29 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore the world of the Mortal Instruments with Cassandra Clare and more Join Cassandra Clare and a Circle of more than a dozen top YA writers, including New York Times bestsellers Holly Black, Rachel Caine, and Kami Garcia, as they write about the Mortal Instruments series, its characters, and its world. Inside you'll read: • A cinematic tutorial on why the best friend (Simon) always loses out to the bad boy (Jace) • The unexpected benefits of the incest taboo • What we can read between the lines of Alec and Magnus' European vacation • The importance of friendship, art, humor, and rebellion • And more, from the virtues of Downworlders to the naughty side of Shadowhunting
Download or read book Science Fair Flop Ready Freddy 22 written by Abby Klein and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyone's favorite first-grade shark expert is back! With more than 3 million copies sold, it's clear that kids are ready for Freddy!Now that Freddy's in first grade he needs a real science experiment for the school fair. But Freddy isn't a science whiz like his best friend, Robbie. When he finally comes up with a plan -- growing mold -- his mom accidentally throws it away! Can he recreate it in time? Or will the fair be a total flop?
Download or read book Ardeur written by Laurell K. Hamilton and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-10-08 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Laurell K. Hamiltons Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series is a literary sensation, thanks to its strong female hero, well-fleshed (both literally and literarily) characters and unabashed attitude toward sex. The world Hamilton has created is powerfu...
Download or read book Blank Canvas My So Called Artist s Journey Vol 4 written by Akiko Higashimura and published by Seven Seas Entertainment. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Akiko has finally achieved her dream of becoming a manga artist! She's almost ready to fully immerse herself in the wonderful world of shoujo when Hidaka-sensei approaches her. Just what does he want?
Download or read book Mad Art written by Mark Evanier and published by Watson-Guptill. This book was released on 2002 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fiftieth anniversary tribute to MAD Magazine celebrates famous cartoon figures from its "Usual Gang of Idiots," in a volume that features rare sketches and interviews with veteran MAD artists and writers. Original.
Download or read book Writing in Society written by Raymond Williams and published by Verso. This book was released on 1983 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Raymond Williams’s work was always concerned with the relation between culture and society. This book focuses on specific texts and authors, exploring the historical and cultural sources of their particular forms of writing. In it, Williams examines dramatic form and language in Racine and Shakespeare; the politics of fiction in the English Jacobin novel; David Hume and Charles Dickens and the changing characteristics of English prose; Robert Tressell, The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, and the role of region and class in the English novel. Also included are Williams’s reflections on the rise of English studies, on their crisis as the literary traditions of Cambridge University were beset by the ‘structuralist controversy’, and on the wider implications of this redefinition of the critical field.
Download or read book The Tomb of Oedipus written by William Marx and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2022-10-11 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If Greek tragedies are meant to be so tragic, why do they so often end so well? Here starts the story of a long and incredible misunderstanding. Out of the hundreds of tragedies that were performed, only 32 were preserved in full. Who chose them and why? Why are the lost ones never taken into account? This extremely unusual scholarly book tells us an Umberto Eco-like story about the lost tragedies. By arguing that they would have given a radically different picture, William Marx makes us think in completely new ways about one of the major achievements of Western culture. In this very readable, stimulating, lively, and even sometimes funny book, he explores parallels with Japanese theatre, resolves the enigma of catharsis, sheds a new light on psychoanalysis. In so doing, he tells also the story of the misreadings of our modernity, which disconnected art from the body, the place, and gods. Two centuries ago philosophers transformed Greek tragedies into an ideal archetype, now they want to read them as self-help handbooks, but all are equally wrong: Greek tragedy is definitely not what you think, and we may never understand it, but this makes it matter all the more to us.
Download or read book Red November written by Joel B. Pollak and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A conservative journalist goes behind enemy lines to cover the 2020 Democratic primaries from the inside. The 2020 Democratic primaries were some of the most extreme in the history of the United States. But the show isn't over yet. Socialism is still on the rise, and ideas that used to be considered crazy are now even more mainstream than they were before. In Red November, conservative journalist Joel Pollak tells the story of how the Democratic party got so extreme, and give a riveting account of life on the campaign trail. There are stories from the Democratic debates, interviews with candidates, and scuffles between journalists. Part travelogue, part satire, part memoir, Red November is a factual, yet humorous, look behind-the-scenes at the candidates, activists, and voters as Democrats choose who will take on the sacred task of removing Donald Trump -- "45," as he is known to his haters -- from the White House and ushering in a utopian age of "Medicare for All" and the "Green New Deal."
Download or read book The Book written by Amaranth Borsuk and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-05-04 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book as object, as content, as idea, as interface. What is the book in a digital age? Is it a physical object containing pages encased in covers? Is it a portable device that gives us access to entire libraries? The codex, the book as bound paper sheets, emerged around 150 CE. It was preceded by clay tablets and papyrus scrolls. Are those books? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Amaranth Borsuk considers the history of the book, the future of the book, and the idea of the book. Tracing the interrelationship of form and content in the book's development, she bridges book history, book arts, and electronic literature to expand our definition of an object we thought we knew intimately. Contrary to the many reports of its death (which has been blamed at various times on newspapers, television, and e-readers), the book is alive. Despite nostalgic paeans to the codex and its printed pages, Borsuk reminds us, the term “book” commonly refers to both medium and content. And the medium has proved to be malleable. Rather than pinning our notion of the book to a single form, Borsuk argues, we should remember its long history of transformation. Considering the book as object, content, idea, and interface, she shows that the physical form of the book has always been the site of experimentation and play. Rather than creating a false dichotomy between print and digital media, we should appreciate their continuities.
Download or read book A Life in Words written by Paul Auster and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An inside look into Paul Auster's art and craft, the inspirations and obsessions, mesmerizing and dramatic in turn. A remarkably candid, and often surprisingly dramatic, investigation into one writer's art, craft, and life, A Life in Words is rooted in three years of dialogue between Auster and Professor I. B. Siegumfeldt, starting in 2011, while Siegumfeldt was in the process of launching the Center for Paul Auster Studies at the University of Copenhagen. It includes a number of surprising disclosures, both concerning Auster's work and about the art of writing generally. It is a book that's full of surprises, unscripted yet amounting to a sharply focused portrait of the inner workings of one of America's most productive and successful writers, through all twenty-one of Auster's narrative works and the themes and obsessions that drive them.
Download or read book Completely Mad written by Maria Reidelbach and published by M J F Books. This book was released on 1997-10-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated history of the most influential and unique humor magazine in post-war America.
Download or read book We Spoke Out Comic Books and the Holocaust written by Rafael Medoff and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crucial comic book stories about the Holocaust and interviews with their artists and writers, with a cover drawn especially for this book by Neal Adams. An amazing but forgotten chapter in comics history. Long before the Holocaust was taught in schools or presented in films such as Schindler's List, the youth of America was learning about the Nazi genocide from Batman, the X-Men, Captain America, and Sgt. Rock. Comics legend Neal Adams, Holocaust scholar Rafael Medoff, and comics historian Craig Yoe bring together a remarkable collection of comic book stories that introduced an entire generation to an engaging and important subject. We Spoke Out is an extraordinary journey into a compelling and essential topic.
