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Saturday, August 25, 2007

Amazing Everything Stories!

Posted by John Holbo on 08/25/07 at 10:28 AM

I’ve been a bit under the weather, but enjoying this whole ‘Department of Everything Studies debate’. Let me just make a pictorial comment - under the fold - responding to one remark in tomemo’s post: “Some of those differences of perception are based in differences of race and class, which is the other reason why Leonard’s call for Lethem to “[close] his comic books for good,” in favor of the classics, is untenable: Lethem is writing about Dylan in his social and historical context, and in that context, people read comics, not Kafka.”

I don’t disagree. In fact, I agree with most of tomemo’s post. Still, things can get confused.

The issue is from June, 1953 - the last issue, after which the magazine evidently died of confusion.

Comments

John, that’s awesome. I particularly love that helpful, parenthetical “Author of ‘The Fountainhead.’” For the eleven-year-olds who are thinking, “Rand…Rand…where I have I heard that name…”

But there I go making assumptions about comics readers…

By tomemos on 08/25/07 at 02:02 PM | Permanent link to this comment

How come you haven’t brought up Plato, John? After all, you are the resident philosopher.

Didn’t he object to literature on the grounds that people regarded poets (e.g. Homer) as masters of everything in or implied by their texts when, in fact, they couldn’t possibly master all that material. In fact, they’re liars.

So now it’s come full circle to the point where lit departments are setting up as those deceptive masters of everything denounced by Plato.

By Bill Benzon on 08/25/07 at 02:59 PM | Permanent link to this comment

True, Bill. But Aristotle, some might say, legitimated literature (Greek tragedy, at least) by treating it as a rational, principled art whose constituent features/elements can be identified and systematized.

Plato may have banished the poets, but Aristotle at least regarded their craft as a valid area of scholarly inquiry.

By on 08/25/07 at 03:28 PM | Permanent link to this comment

It should be made law that all magazine covers, regardless of the genre, content or style of the magazine, be obliged to carry the byline: “ALSO KAFKA’S METAPHORPHOSIS” at the bottom, preferably in fonts of ascending size.

By Adam Roberts on 08/25/07 at 04:10 PM | Permanent link to this comment

Or “...METAMORPHOSIS”. Either. I wouldn’t want to split hairs.

By Adam Roberts on 08/25/07 at 04:11 PM | Permanent link to this comment

I bet Harold Bloom knows what metaphorphosis is and can give you a zillion examples . . . plus anxiety!

By Bill Benzon on 08/25/07 at 05:21 PM | Permanent link to this comment

Does anyone remember Classic Comic’s version of Macbeth?

By on 08/25/07 at 09:31 PM | Permanent link to this comment

Matthew Cheney provides us with the rest of the table of contents for the issue in question:

Worms of the Earth by Robert E. Howard
Pendulum by Ray Bradbury and Henry Hasse
Bernie Goes to Hell by Arthur Dekker Savage
Find the Happy Children by Benjamin Ferris
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Haunted Hostel by Emma L’Hommedieu Frost
Dirge (Aztec) by Louis M. Hobbs
Anthem by Ayn Rand

Apparently Gnaediger (the editor) reprinted Dunsany, Chesterton, William Hope Hodgson, Jack London and other authors not necessarily associated with the pulps.

By John Holbo on 08/26/07 at 01:10 AM | Permanent link to this comment

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Saturday, August 25, 2007

Amazing Everything Stories!

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