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Archive for the ‘Popular culture’ Category

 
Crumb’s The Book of Genesis Illustrated is one of the most exciting books of the year. I reviewed the volume for Bookforum, which can be found here. On the Inkstuds radio program, I engaged in an extended conversation on the book with Paul Stanwood, an English professor at the University of British Columbia. You can [...]

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The recently-released movie adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things are has been quite a hit. One happy result of the success of the movie is that many people are returning to the original book. A surprisingly cogent essay on Sendak was written in 1980 by Hilton Kramer, before his descent into terminal crankiness. Kramer reviewed [...]

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In a plot line inspired by Robert Frost’s poem Road Not Taken, fictional character Archie Andrews has already proposed to Veronica and will propose to Betty next month.  I wonder what it would be like if other comics were inspired by poems…(imagine dreamy music and blurry vision.)
On His Blindness—John Milton
Spiderman is blind, worries about his [...]

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What’s that you say?  A cat lady on the Upper West Side?  How weird.
My Cats or My Future Baby?

Barf on the floor
Poop on the floor
Pee on the floor
Has a brain larger than a handful of [...]

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Daughter of a Tamil revolutionary, witness to civil war, refugee, pioneer of “global ghetto funk”, outspoken creator of a politically-charged debut album and of an even more creative follow-up album that she recorded in locations around the world after being denied a visa to work in the U.S. — a rebel’s badge of honour if [...]

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Snorting has greeted Niall Ferguson’s new column, which begins like this:
President Barack Obama reminds me of Felix the Cat. One of the best-loved cartoon characters of the 1920s, Felix was not only black. He was also very, very lucky.
But aside from derision, Ferguson’s comments deserve some analysis. There is a reason why Ferguson, when he [...]

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The subset of Sans Everything readers who are interested in comics will want to read the following articles:
1. Patrick West on the politics of Herge (which West argues were Catholic conservative rather than fascist). A quote:
Posterity has not been kind to Hergé. In many ways, his life resembles that of P G Wodehouse. Both authors [...]

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I’d like to share a recent review of my book Japan’s Open Future: An Agenda for Global Citizenship by Dr. Hans Schattle, an expert on global citizenship and author of the 2007 book The Practices of Global Citizenship. 
I have not yet had the chance to read Schattle’ s book, but according to the Amazon review, it “provides a detailed and [...]

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The Wall Street Journal has just translated from Japanese a hilarious interview with Hiroshi Kimura, ostensibly Japan Tobacco Inc.’s president and chief executive. Either we are being had by another Sascha Baron Cohen character, or the translator is a  wicked prankster. This is high comedy: 
… Mr. Kimura has a law degree from Kyoto University and joined the company in [...]

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Robert Crumb’s nostalgia for that old time music.
 
Nostalgia is a suspect emotion, both psychologically and politically. Emotionally, nostalgia carries connotations of escapism, ignoring present realities while longing for a mythical past. Politically, nostalgia has often been used by conservative and Fascist leaders who have deployed images of the good old days in order to thwart [...]

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