The Enigma of Al Capp

1953, “Al Capp Exposed: The Secret Sex Life,” revealing in huge garish headlines, “It Took a New York State Legislative Committee to Reveal the Shocking Fact That a Comic Strip Read by 40 Million People Cunningly Conceals the Type of ...

Author: Alexander Theroux

Publisher: Fantagraphics Books

ISBN: 9781560973409

Category: Literary Criticism

Page: 64

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The National Book Award-nominated author of Darconville's Cat and Three Wogs delivers this slender-yet-rich monograph on the controversial life of cartoonist Al Capp, creator of Li'l Abner. "The left eventually broke his heart," wrote John Updike of Capp. A genuine American mythmaker and celebrated funnyman, Capp used his strip for years to expose greed, corruption and social injustice, while bringing belly laughs and dramatic suspense to the lives of millions of people every day. Theroux, however, dives head-first into the often glossed-over side of Capp, delivering a keen (but not without compassion) analysis of Capp's degeneration into a bitter, disillusioned, conservative extremist, who began using his strip in later years to attack the very causes he once championed. This is a rich and compelling investigation into the psyche of a paradoxical American icon, who at the height of his fame was one of America's highest-paid and most well-known entertainers, gracing the cover of Time and other magazines, and franchising Li'l Abner into film, theater, radio, merchandising and more. Illustrated throughout with examples of Capp's cartoons.
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The Hidden History of Coined Words

Shmoos : Berger , Li'l Abner , 114-19 ; Theroux , The Enigma of Al Capp , 26–28 ; Schumacher and Kitchen , Al Capp , 136-39 ; Denis Kitchen , “ The Shmoo from Al Capp's Li'l Abner : Shmoo ( not Schmoo ) ...

Author: Ralph Keyes

Publisher: Oxford University Press

ISBN: 9780190466787

Category: Language Arts & Disciplines

Page: 320

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Successful word-coinages--those that stay in currency for a good long time--tend to conceal their beginnings. We take them at face value and rarely when and where they were first minted. Engaging, illuminating, and authoritative, Ralph Keyes's The Hidden History of Coined Words explores the etymological underworld of terms and expressions and uncovers plenty of hidden gems. He also finds some fascinating patterns, such as that successful neologisms are as likely to be created by chance as by design. A remarkable number of new words were coined whimsically, originally intended to troll or taunt. Knickers, for example, resulted from a hoax; big bang from an insult. Casual wisecracking produced software, crowdsource, and blog. More than a few resulted from happy accidents, such as typos, mistranslations, and mishearing (bigly and buttonhole), or from being taken entirely out of context (robotics). Neologizers (a Thomas Jefferson coinage) include not just scholars and writers but cartoonists, columnists, children's book authors. Wimp originated with a book series, as did goop, and nerd from a book by Dr. Seuss. Coinages are often contested, controversy swirling around such terms as gonzo, mojo, and booty call. Keyes considers all contenders, while also leading us through the fray between new word partisans, and those who resist them strenuously. He concludes with advice about how to make your own successful coinage. The Hidden History of Coined Words will appeal not just to word mavens but history buffs, trivia contesters, and anyone who loves the immersive power of language.
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Cartoonists Works and Characters in the United States Through 2005

Al Capp , Creator of Li'l Abner , Is Dead at 70. " American Cartoonist . April 1980 , 1 p . 3728. ... Al Capp's ' Autobiography ' in Comic Strip Form . " The Funnies Paper . May / June 2003 , pp . 34-37 . ... The Enigma of Al Capp .

Author: John A. Lent

Publisher: Greenwood Publishing Group

ISBN: 0313312125

Category: Social Science

Page: 574

View: 515

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Provides a comprehensive listing of American cartoonists, their works, characters, and titles, that will enable the growing number of comic art scholars to research the field.
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Rain Taxi Review of Books

THE ENIGMA OF AL CAPP Alexander Theroux Fantagraphics Books ( $ 6.95 ) kole The Enigma of AL Capp by David Auerbach W because of Capp's deficiencies , not in spite of them : his mistrust of rhetoric and decided unsophistication ...

Author:

Publisher:

ISBN: STANFORD:36105113359884

Category: Arts, Modern

Page: 660

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Al Capp

The Enigma ofAl Capp. Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics Books, 1999. Waugh, Coulton. The Comics. New York: Macmillan, 1947. Wertham, Fredric. Seduction of the Innocent. New York: Rinehart, 1954. White, David Manning.

Author: Michael Schumacher

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

ISBN: 9781608197859

Category: Biography & Autobiography

Page: 368

View: 927

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More than thirty years have passed since Al Capp's death, and he may no longer be a household name. But at the height of his career, his groundbreaking comic strip, Li'l Abner, reached ninety million readers. The strip ran for forty-three years, spawned two movies and a Broadway musical, and originated such expressions as "hogwash" and "double-whammy." Capp himself was a familiar personality on TV and radio; as a satirist, he was frequently compared to Mark Twain. Though Li'l Abner brought millions joy, the man behind the strip was a complicated and often unpleasant person. A childhood accident cost him a leg-leading him to art as a means of distinguishing himself. His apprenticeship with Ham Fisher, creator of Joe Palooka, started a twenty-year feud that ended in Fisher's suicide. Capp enjoyed outsized publicity for a cartoonist, but his status abetted sexual misconduct and protected him from the severest repercussions. Late in life, his politics became extremely conservative; he counted Richard Nixon as a friend, and his gift for satire was redirected at targets like John Lennon, Joan Baez, and anti-war protesters on campuses across the country. With unprecedented access to Capp's archives and a wealth of new material, Michael Schumacher and Denis Kitchen have written a probing biography. Capp's story is one of incredible highs and lows, of popularity and villainy, of success and failure-told here with authority and heart.
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Why Gender

The Enigma of Al Capp. Seattle, WA: Fantographics Books. Turse, Nick. 2013. Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. New York: Henry Holt. Williams, Richard. 1969. Melody Maker, December 6, 13, 20. Reprinted as: 2010.

Author: Jude Browne

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

ISBN: 9781108833370

Category: Literary Collections

Page: 401

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World-famous scholars from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds each consider the same question - why is gender so important for understanding the world in which we live?
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Collected Poems

... Lollipop Trollops and Other Poems NONFICTION The Primary Colors The Secondary Colors The Enigma of Al Capp The Strange Case of Edward Gorey Estonia Grammar of Rock Theroux Alexander CollectedPoems FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS Seattle, WA.

Author: Alexander Theroux

Publisher: Fantagraphics Books

ISBN: 9781606998021

Category: Poetry

Page: 672

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This is a collection of the National Book Award-nominated author’s poems: sonnets, odes, ballads, and more. The publication of Alexander Theroux’s Collected Poems, a gathering of more than 660 poems, an astonishing creative output, will be among the major literary events of the year. Here is a full cornucopia of sonnets, odes, ballads, free verse, triolets, pure, satires, narratives, dramatic monologues, fanciful meditations, flytings and harangues, ruminations on death and lost love, and no end of lyrics both beautiful and fierce. Taken altogether they contrive to make up a record of the author’s deepest thoughts and reflect the dramatis personae of his life. Theroux captures in his work those rare, frail, but precious truths, inaccessible to the common run of men that would otherwise have vanished into nescience. Sardonic, astute, impertinent, tender, clever, warmhearted, delphic, truculent, comic, defiantly aggressive, and often achingly personal, he shows an intensity of observation and invention.
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Peanuts Every Sunday Vol 5

Alexander Theroux is an award-winning novelist, poet, and teacher whose prose works include Laura Warholic: Or, The Sexual Intellectual, Estonia, and the two artist monographs The Strange Case of Edward Gorey and The Enigma of Al Capp.

Author: Charles Schulz

Publisher: Fantagraphics Books

ISBN: 9781683960638

Category: Young Adult Fiction

Page: 288

View: 329

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Since their original publication, Peanuts Sundays have almost always been collected and reprinted in black and white. But many who read Peanuts in their original Sunday papers remain fond of the striking coloring, which makes for a surprisingly different reading experience. Peanuts Every Sunday: 1971-1975 has been scrupulously re-colored to match the original syndicate coloring, and these early 1970s strips showcase Schulz at his philosophical and illustrative peak.
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Goliath as Gentle Giant

4. Campbell, “Small Human Ordinariness.” 5. Tom Gauld, Goliath (Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly, 2012). 6. Campbell, “Small Human Ordinariness.” 7. Ibid. 8. See Alexander Theroux, The Enigma of Al Capp (Seattle ...

Author: Jonathan L. Friedmann

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

ISBN: 9781666904703

Category: Religion

Page: 169

View: 829

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Goliath as Gentle Giant cuts through biblical biases and post-biblical images and considers sensitive and more nuanced portrayals of the giant in popular media, offering revisionist retellings of Goliath that challenge readers to humanize the “other.”
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Laura Warholic

... Master Snickup's Cloak POETRY The Lollipop Trollops and Other Poems NONFICTION The Primary Colors The Secondary Colors The Enigma of Al Capp The Strange Case of Edward Gorey FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS | 7563 Lake City Way NE | Seattle, ...

Author: Alexander Theroux

Publisher: Fantagraphics Books

ISBN: 9781560977988

Category: Fiction

Page: 878

View: 974

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A brilliant satire from one of the great novelists of his time. In his first novel in nearly twenty years, Alexander Theroux, National Book Award Nominee, returns with a compendious satire, a bold and inquisitorial circuit-breaking examination of love and hate, of rejection and forgiveness, of trust and romantic disappointment, of the terrors of contemporary life. Eugene Eyestones, an erudite sex columnist for a Boston cultural magazine, becomes enmeshed in the messy life of a would-be artist named Laura Warholic, who, repulsing and fascinating him at the same time, becomes a mirror in which he not only sees himself but through which he is forced to face his own demons. Not only does she inadvertently supply him with material for his columns, but she exemplifies all that Eugene considers wrong with contemporary America (of which the publishing profession and its recognizable denizens serves as a microcosm)a garish and dunce-filled Babylon that Theroux scorches with inventive and relentless satire. Nostalgic for the old days and old manners, a way of life lost to grace, loving from afar a mysterious beauty named Rapunzel Wisht, Eugene fights against the rising tide of stupidity, focusing on Laura in the hope that by saving her he can validate his ethical beliefs. But feckless Laura and the colorful but bizarre cast of characters surrounding Eugenebrilliant bigots, nihilists, Generation-X slackers and zanies of all sexual persuasionsthreaten to pull him under, leading to the novel's unforgettable conclusion, a climax of betrayal and redemption of Dostoevskyan power.
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