Surrealism, Bugs Bunny, and the Blues : Selected Writings on Popular Culture.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rosemont, Franklin.

Contributor:

Susik, Abigail.

Buhle, Paul.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Popular culture--United States.

Popular culture.

Surrealism--United States.

Surrealism.

Art criticism.

art criticism.

United States.

Genre:

Essays.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (369 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Oakland : PM Press, 2025.

Summary:

Surrealism, Bugs Bunny, and the Blues is a collection of Franklin Rosemont's writings on popular culture over a period of more than forty years. Rosemont, a self-taught scholar, poet, and artist, playfully uncovers the sometimes hidden-in-plain-sight writers and artists who managed to be both popular, vernacular, and in their own ways profoundly revolutionary. Rosemont skillfully weaves together what most would regard as unlikely threads. The labor culture of the nineteenth-century anarchist movement gains new meaning when connected to the famed Chicago musicians of blues and jazz. His interests from childhood extended from his favorite animators and comic art--Mel Blanc and Tex Avery, Scrooge McDuck, Mighty Mouse, Krazy Kat, Smokey Stover, and Powerhouse Pepper--to nineteenth-century drug-taker Benjamin Paul Blood, or the barely remembered best-selling utopian writer Edward Bellamy. Palindromes and other wordplay counted along with radical environmentalism, modern dance alongside the 'mad' self-taught writer-artist Henry Darger. Find all these and much more, exploring the inventory of Franklin Rosemont's discoveries and his luminous, unpredictable exploration of himself. An introductory essay by Abigail Susik and an afterword by Paul Buhle frame his work and life.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Contents

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION: "Long Live Krazy Kat! Long Livethe Surrealist Revolution!" Franklin Rosemont's Search for Surrealist Affinities by Abigail Susik

PART I: Americana and Chicagoana

1: The Seismograph of Subversion: Notes on Some American Precursors

2: Notes on the Legacy of Cthulhu

3: Frank Belknap Long

4: Free Play and No Limit: An Introduction to Edward Bellamy's Utopia

5: A Bomb-Toting, Long-Haired, Wild-Eyed Fiend: The Image of the Anarchist in Popular Culture

6: Writing on the Telephone

7: The Rise and Fall of the Dil Pickle

PART II: Comics, Animation, and Self-Taught Artists

8: Introduction to the Life and Times of the Incredible Hulk

9: Bugs Bunny and Dialectics

10: Homage to Henry Darger

11: Basil Wolverton (Powerhouse Pepper)

12: Bill Holman (Smokey Stover)

13: Carl Barks (Uncle Scrooge)

14: Chester Gould (Dick Tracy)

15: George Herriman (Krazy Kat)

16: Homage to Tex Avery

17: Mel Blanc, Wizard of Audio

18: Dream-Conscious Times: Surrealism and Early Cinema

19: A Short Treatise on Wobbly Cartoons (1988)

PART III: Music, Cinema, and Dance

20: Mods, Rockers, and the Revolution

21: The Jimi Hendrix Experience

22: A Revolutionary Poetic Tradition

23: Black Music, by Any Means Necessary

24: Black Music and the Surrealist Revolution

25: Buster Keaton

26: Modern Dance

PART IV: Labor History and Culture

27: T-Bone Slim and the Phonetic Cabala

28: Juice Is Stranger than Friction: T-Bone Slim

29: Joe Hill

PART V: Play and Humor

30: Rats Live on No Evil Star: A Selection of Palindromes

31: Humor: Here Today and Everywhere Tomorrow: A Short Introduction to the Next Revolution

32: Revolution as Play

PART VI: Ecology

33: Radical Environmentalism.

PART VII: Autobiography and Reminiscences

34: Autobiographical Kaleidoscope

35: My Three San Francisco Renaissances

Afterword by Paul Buhle

Notes

Index

About the Author and Editors.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9798887440927