Skip to main content

40 Years and Counting

By

The 40th anniversary of Doonesbury passed me by.  Here's a nice write up in the Guardian.  Not much interest in American political cartoons over here.  This looks like a fabulous collection from Andrews McMeel Publishing.  I loved what they did with Calvin & Hobbes and The Far Side.  Both collections sit proudly in my attic office.  Actually read through the entire C&H with my daughter, who absolutely loved it.

To me Doonesbury is an indelible part of contemporary America.  Trudeau has been able to stir a few hornets' nests over the years and his characters have aged wonderfully.  I can't think of any political cartoon that has left such a stamp on the American imagination.

Comments

  1. avrdsNovember 14, 2010 at 5:13 PM

    Here's a little preview and walk down memory lane:

    http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/10/the-story-of-a-generation/8229/

    There's also an interesting article in that same issue about the "boomers":

    http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/10/the-least-we-can-do/8228

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonNovember 17, 2010 at 8:13 AM

    Kind of quiet around here. I hope Doonesbury didn't clear the room.

    ReplyDelete
  3. RickNovember 17, 2010 at 2:08 PM

    This post had me pulling Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas off the shelf and reading the opening pages with glee all over again. Which reminded me of that truly forgettable film made a few years ago starring Johnny Depp.

    ReplyDelete
  4. James FergusonDecember 9, 2010 at 9:15 AM

    Received my copy. Printed in China of course. I guess that's how they get such a mammoth volume of Doonesbury to the public for $60. Enjoying leafing through the early years of Doonesbury at Walden.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more