Donald Phelps Phelps has been writing about the
arts for over 40 years, published his own guerrilla cultural
magazine in the '60s, and has appeared in various literary,
political, and film magazines such as Pulpsmith, Jim
Stoller's Moviegoer, The New Leader, The Nation, and, most
recently, Film Comment. He has published two previous books
of literary and cultural essays, Covering Ground and The
Word and Beyond. Reading the
Funnies The comic strip-a feature
perhaps overlooked in your daily paper-is a creation
unique to American cultural life and has for a century
commented on the way we see and view ourselves as it has
fulfilled its daily appointed task of amusement and
distraction. From its "high culture" influence on Pop Art to
its "low culture" appeal to children of all ages, this
phenomenon has had a lasting hold on the imaginations of
generations, and Reading the Funnies collects a wide range
of noted writer Donald Phelps' ("...a phenomenon in
contemporary American criticism...[a] critic of
remarkable curiosity and perception," as Gilbert Sorrentino
has written) essays on this often overlooked
medium. From essays on popular classics
(such as Chester Gould's Dick Tracy, E.C. Segar's Thimble
Theatre, and Frank King's Gasoline Alley) to the more
obscure, Phelps' keen and discriminating eye discerns the
sublime qualities of this most American of art forms with
wit, candor, and an almost Baroque grace. As Phelps tellingly notes in his
introduction, he writes not "as comic strip specialist, nor
as comic strip expert, but rather as a critic of some
latitude and eclecticism, trying to articulate that which
pleases and creatively perplexes me in my own samples of
this phenomenon." For the curious and the well-versed
in the history of American comic strips, Reading the Funnies
offers an elegant and eloquent look into this fascinating
slice of American popular culture. It also serves as an
excellent anthology of the golden age of newspaper
cartooning, with copious examples of each strip Phelps
writes about. "Most writers react; a few do more
because they feel and know more. Donald Phelps is one of the
few." -Nat
Hentoff "Donald Phelps is a world class
critic, not just of comics, but of fiction, film, and poetry
as well.
Phelps is an old-fashioned critic, in the
tradition of an Edmund Wilson or an Alfred Kazin, who relies
upon self-cultivation, observation, love of language, and an
unparalleled eloquence to convey an appreciation for the
recondite pleasures of the newspaper strip, and Reading The
Funnies surely represents the most penetrating and sustained
body of comics criticism by a single individual in the
history of the medium. Phelps wrote these essays over the
past 30 years and, like his friend and aesthetic compatriot
Manny Farber, brings a rounded, sympathetic, and
idiosyncratic love of American culture to bear on a form
that has been severely neglected by both the reading public
and the intelligentsia." -Gary Groth,
Publisher of Fantagraphics "Donald Phelps is our great poet of
the poetics of comics. He has made me see comic strips I've
loved and come to take for granted with virgin eyes and
taught me to love strips I once misguidedly passed
over-all in an eloquent, besotted, lyric style that
could talk me into anything." -Art
Spiegelman Fantagraphics
7563 Lake City Way, NE
Seattle, WA 98115