Gods' man ; Madman's drum ; Wild pilgrimage / Lynd Ward ; edited by Art Spiegelman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ward, Lynd, 1905-1985.

Contributor:

Spiegelman, Art.

Series:

Library of America ; 210.

Library of America

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Wood-engraving--20th century.

Wood-engraving.

Stories without words.

Genre:

Stories without words.

Physical Description:

xxv, 833 pages : chiefly illustrations (some color) ; 21 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Library of America : Distributed to the trade in the U.S. by Penguin Group (USA), [2010]

Summary:

From the eve of the Great Depression to the onset of World War II, Lynd Ward, America's first great graphic novelist, bore witness to the roiling, dizzying national scene as both a master printmaker and a socially committed storyteller. His medium of expression, the wordless "novel in woodcuts," was his alone in the United States, and he quickly brought it from bold iconic infancy to a still unrivaled richness of drama, characterization, imagery, and technique. In this , the first of two volumes collecting all his woodcut novels, The Library of America brings together Ward's earliest books, published when the artist was still in his twenties. Gods' Man (1929), the audaciously ambitious work that made Ward's reputation, is a modern morality play, an allegory of the deadly bargain a striving young artist often makes with life. Madman's Drum (1930), a multigenerational saga worthy of Faulkner, traces the legacy of violence haunting a family whose stock-in-trade is human souls. Wild Pilgrimage (1932), perhaps the most accomplished of these early books, is a study in the brutalization of an American factory worker whose heart can still respond to beauty but whose mind is twisted in rage against the system and its shackles. The images reproduced in this volume are taken from prints pulled from the original woodblocks or first-generation electrotypes. Ward's novels are presented, for the first time since the 1930s, in the format that the artist intended, one image per right-hand page, and are followed by four essays in which he discusses the technical challenges of his craft. Art Spiegelman contributes an introductory essay. "Reading Pictures," that defines Ward's towering achievement in that most demanding of graphic-story forms, the wordless novel in woodcuts.

Contents:

Reading pictures / Art Spiegelman

Gods' man

Madman's drum

Wild pilgrimage

Essays.The way of wood engraving

On "Gods' Man"

On "Madman's Drum"

On "Wild Pilgrimage".

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

Contains:

Gods' man.

Madman's drum.

Wild pilgrimage.

ISBN:

9781598530803

1598530801

OCLC:

548596916