Essential reading for comics fans and history buffs, Krazy is a roaring success, providing an indispensable new perspective...
A revelatory biography of the influential “Krazy Kat” creator George Herriman (1880-1944).
Set among the desert mesas of Coconino County, “Krazy Kat” graced the funny pages from 1913 to 1944 and featured the philosophical antics of Krazy and the brick-throwing mouse, Ignatz. Tisserand (Sugarcane Academy: How a New Orleans Teacher and His Storm-Struck Students Created a School to Remember, 2007, etc.) reveals the depths of their age-old rivalry, tracing influences from Cervantes and Othello to minstrel shows and the Jack Johnson vs. Jim Jeffries bout of 1910. “Krazy Kat” always had a racial angle: Herriman was born a fair-skinned boy to African-American parents and grew up in the Creole community of New Orleans. His complexion allowed him to “pass” as white, a controversial practice that Herriman carried secretly throughout his life. Though he penned numerous strips—e.g., "Us Husbands," "Baron Mooch," and "The Family Upstairs"—it wasn’t until the publication of “Krazy Kat”in 1913 that he moved toward the life of a celebrated artist, garnering praise from the likes of e.e. cummings and President Woodrow Wilson. Herriman’s unique racial perspective allowed him to sneak some remarkably potent themes into his cartoons, many of which were likely lost on his readers at the time: Krazy, for instance, is revealed to have been born in the cellar of a haunted house, in a “tale which must never be told, and yet which everyone knows.” In another gag, Ignatz flings a mug at Krazy saying it’s not the black coffee he wanted. “Sure it is,” Krazy tells him. “Look unda the milk.” Tisserand elevates this exhaustively researched and profusely illustrated book beyond the typical comics biography. Seamlessly integrating the story of Herriman’s life, he executes an impressive history of early-20th-century race relations, the rise of Hearst and the newspaper boom, and the burgeoning cross-continental society life of New York and Los Angeles.
Essential reading for comics fans and history buffs, Krazy is a roaring success, providing an indispensable new perspective on turn-of-the-century America.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-173299-7
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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