Mr. O'Malley Flies Again

I'm a big fan of comics, but I hadn't realized that Crockett Johnson had a comic strip back in the 1940s. Of course, it was a little before my time, but I had thought Harold and the Purple Crayon and his subsequent adventures were his only work. Turns out it was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Johnson's Barnaby ran between 1942 and 1952, but failed to find a significant audience, despite praise from Dorothy Parker and other writers of the time. He found himself overshadowed by the far more successful Blondie. Barnaby eventually took off with the release of bound volumes of cartoons by Henry Holt (pictured above). Johnson would have a big influence on Maurice Sendak, and inspire Charles Schulz and Bil Keane, whose Peanuts and Family Circus became international institutions.

Fantagraphiics books has collected the first two years of Barnaby in a beautiful volume, and plans to release further volumes in the near future. I think much of the renewed interest in Johnson was the result of the successful reprinting of Harold and the Purple Crayon, A shame that Johnson couldn't enjoy this new interest in his work. He passed away in 1975. These books are a real treasure.

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

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, not...

Dylan in America

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.

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''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

Dispatches from Vilnius

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