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The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture
By Glen Weldon. 2016
A witty, intelligent cultural history from NPR book critic Glen Weldon explains Batman's rises and falls throughout the ages--and what…
his story tells us about ourselves.Since his creation, Batman has been many things: a two-fisted detective; a planet-hopping gadabout; a campy Pop-art sensation; a pointy-eared master spy; and a grim and gritty ninja of the urban night. For more than three quarters of a century, he has cycled from a figure of darkness to one of lightness and back again; he's a bat-shaped Rorschach inkblot who takes on the various meanings our changing culture projects onto him. How we perceive Batman's character, whether he's delivering dire threats in a raspy Christian Bale growl or trading blithely homoerotic double-entendres with partner Robin on the comics page, speaks to who we are and how we wish to be seen by the world. It's this endlessly mutable quality that has made him so enduring. And it's Batman's fundamental nerdiness--his gadgets, his obsession, his oath, even his lack of superpowers--that uniquely resonates with his fans who feel a fiercely protective love for the character. Today, fueled by the internet, that breed of passion for elements of popular culture is everywhere. Which is what makes Batman the perfect lens through which to understand geek culture, its current popularity, and social significance. In The Caped Crusade, with humor and insight, Glen Weldon, book critic for NPR and author of Superman: The Unauthorized Biography, lays out Batman's seventy-eight-year cultural history and shows how he has helped make us who we are today and why his legacy remains so strong.The Obese Christ
By Sheila Fischman, Larry Tremblay. 2014
The asocial, sexually repressed Edgar, kneeling in grief at his mother's graveside, turns abruptly to witness a terrifying and life-altering…
event: the brutal rape of a young woman. Compelled by muddled instinct (and ingrained religious conviction), our hero bears the unconscious victim home, solemnly pledging to care for her - and to act as her saviour. As winter closes in, the captor's neuroses are revealed and his behaviour becomes increasingly violent, allowing the victim only one escape.With The Obese Christ, Larry Tremblay squarely situates himself within the realm of Hitchcock, Polanski, and Stephen King. A brilliant exercise in unease and paranoia, The Obese Christ demonstrates Tremblay's powerful ability to evoke dead and fear, while immersing the reader in a wrapped and putrid world told from Edgar's sanctified point of view.Piercing
By Linda Gaboriau, Larry Tremblay. 2010
The Sin of Youth
By Matheus Mundim, Bruna Picker. 2018
The Sin of Youth by Matheus Mundim The Sin of Youth is about getting old and the desire to…
go back in time to change things relive moments and flames The Sin of Youth is a contemporary novel with philosophical existentialist characteristics The book portrays a moment in the life of young Jamie in which he wakes up in a room in another world As he leaves the room he sees a group of people and notes that they are all the folks he once knew and loved in his life all together and gathered drinking and partying Impressed and extremely happy he approaches confronting Thomas and Luke They explain that the party was to honor the farewell of his youth It was the last moment to hang out with everybody and say goodbye Sad and frustrated he asks what he can do They then tell him about the Elder Wizard who would own the time and could help him maintain his youth However they warn the way to reach the old man is difficult and tortuous few have succeeded and mainly time is short Still Jamie insists following a path that makes him come across old memories old loves old I s wondering what his past selves would do if they knew the unfolding of such pure and delicate scenes If they only knew how some words would mean after a few years It is a mix of pain sensitivity frustration and happiness to review some momentsIn Absentia
By Morris Panych. 2012
Four seasons after her husband Tom's disappearance, Colette remains emotionally paralyzed, isolated in a country cottage. She waits in anguish,…
not knowing whether he is dead or alive, but clinging to hope. A young stranger in a jean jacket waves to her from the frozen lake - a sign? She emerges to give him her husband's parka - strangely, the boy has a likeness to Tom.What is the stranger's connection to her geologist husband, kidnapped more than a year before by leftist guerrillas in Colombia? How does this slyly seductive young stranger happen to show up at her home in rural Ontario, thousands of miles away? He seems to know more about Colette than he should, and as he slowly insinuates himself into her life, Colette's attentive sister, Evelyn, and her helpful neighbor Bill become increasingly alarmed.Part mystery, part moving story of vanished love, In Absentia explores the notion of disappearance, articulated in very personal terms. Through the tough, time-shifting action of the play, Colette reflects on her marriage and past love, offering rich associative memories while also uncovering the hidden and inaccessible - that which is made to disappear from view.Guilt and grief, infidelity and infertility, loss and longing are the deeper subjects Panych explores here. At the same time, the play examines the desire to make connections in life - thoughts to deeds, intentions to outcomes - in scenes often enlivened by the playwright's trademark humor.Cast of 3 men and 2 women.The Archbishop's Ceiling
By Arthur Miller. 1985
A masterful mix of art, sex, and politics behind the Iron Curtain, by America's greatest dramatist In an unnamed Eastern…
European capital, four writers gather in what was once an archbishop's palace. There is Adrian, a successful American author struggling with questions about a novel he has set in the city, and Marcus, a once-imprisoned radical who has become a darling of the current regime. Finally, there is Sigmund, perhaps the country's greatest living writer, who refuses to compromise his artistic integrity to appease the regime. Between them all is Maya, a poet and actress who has been a mistress and muse to each man. The ornately decorated ceiling above them may or may not be bugged, and the group carefully watches their words as they discuss the play's central dilemma - should Sigmund stay and resist the oppressive state, or should he defect and pursue his art in freedom? Their conversation poses crucial questions about mass surveillance, morality, and the authenticity of art, and remains as relevant today as it was during the height of the Cold War.Considering Watchmen: Poetics, Property, Politics
By Andrew Hoberek. 2014
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen has been widely hailed as a landmark in the development of the graphic novel.…
It was not only aesthetically groundbreaking but also anticipated future developments in politics, literature, and intellectual property. Demonstrating a keen eye for historical detail, Considering Watchmen gives readers a new appreciation of just how radical Moore and Gibbons's blend of gritty realism and formal experimentation was back in 1986. The book also considers Watchmen's place in the history of the comics industry, reading the graphic novel's playful critique of superhero marketing alongside Alan Moore's public statements about the rights to the franchise. Andrew Hoberek examines how Moore and Gibbons engaged with the emerging discourses of neoconservatism and neoliberal capitalism, ideologies that have only become more prominent in subsequent years. Watchmen's influences on the superhero comic and graphic novel are undeniable, but Hoberek reveals how it has also had profound effects on literature as a whole. He suggests that Watchmen not only proved that superhero comics could rise to the status of literature--it also helped to inspire a generation of writers who are redefining the boundaries of the literary, from Jonathan Lethem to Junot Díaz. Hoberek delivers insight and analysis worthy of satisfying serious readers of the genre while shedding new light on Watchmen as both an artistic accomplishment and a book of ideas.Specchio rotto: Nebun
By Catalina Jacob. 2017
Salt Nessuno sent le urla precedenti ma solo l impatto del suo corpo contro…
il marciapiede Tutti guardarono il suo corpo inerte a terra Una pozza cremisi tinse i suoi vestiti Era cos buona dicevano tra le lacrime fresche Si meritava il cielo si lamentavano Ma avevano reso la sua vita un inferno Ignorando tutte le sue grida annullando la sua essenza e censurando le sue parole Ignorata in vita Non c nessun altra come Nebun infelice e tradita dalla vita accompagnata dall indifferenza e abbandonata da chi l ascoltava Cos inizia la sua avventura verso la libert ma la sfortuna la persegue e rimane intrappolata a met strada Da sola pi sola che mai O forse noThe American Clock
By Arthur Miller. 1992
A bold, vibrant panorama of the Great Depression by "the moral voice of the American stage" (The New York Times)…
Capturing a cross-section of American life in the throes of the Great Depression, The American Clock presents what Miller called "a mural for theatre," based loosely on Stud's Terkel's oral history, Hard Times. It is the story of a single family, Moe and Rose Baum and their son Lee, who lost everything in the crash of '29. When Lee leaves Brooklyn and travels west in search of work, he comes face to face with the true scope of the Depression's devastation and encounters a tapestry of interlocked stories unfolding across a nation in crisis. In a series of vignettes, a vast ensemble of characters sets the Baums' struggles in relief: a shoeshine man, a corporate tycoon, a dispossessed farmer, a struggling prostitute, a young songwriter, and a communist comic-strip artist, among many disparate American identities. All the while, the clock ticks towards a new era in history, and time is running out for the Baums and the America they know.Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero
By Grant Morrison. 2011
From one of the most acclaimed and profound writers in the world of comics comes a thrilling and provocative exploration…
of humankind's great modern myth: the superhero. The first superhero comic ever published, Action Comics no. 1 in 1938, introduced the world to something both unprecedented and timeless: Superman, a caped god for the modern age. In a matter of years, the skies of the imaginary world were filled with strange mutants, aliens, and vigilantes: Batman, Wonder Woman, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, and the X-Men--the list of names as familiar as our own. In less than a century, they've gone from not existing at all to being everywhere we look: on our movie and television screens, in our videogames and dreams. But what are they trying to tell us? For Grant Morrison, arguably the greatest of contemporary chroniclers of the "superworld," these heroes are powerful archetypes whose ongoing, decades-spanning story arcs reflect and predict the course of human existence: Through them we tell the story of ourselves, our troubled history, and our starry aspirations. In this exhilarating work of a lifetime, Morrison draws on art, science, mythology, and his own astonishing journeys through this shadow universe to provide the first true history of the superhero--why they matter, why they will always be with us, and what they tell us about who we are . . . and what we may yet become.Fugitive Kind
By Tennessee Williams, Allean Hale. 2001
Social outcasts, misfit survivors, dangerous passions—Tennessee Williams fleshed out the characters and themes that would dominate his later work in…
Fugitive Kind, one of his earliest plays. Fugitive Kind, one of Tennessee Williams's earliest plays, is one of his richest in dramatic material. Written in 1937 when the playwright was still Thomas Lanier Williams, Fugitive Kind introduces the character who will inhabit most of his later plays: the marginal man or woman who, through no personal fault, is a misfit in society but who demonstrates an admirable will to survive. Signature Tennessee Williams' characters, situations, and even the title (which was used as The Fugitive Kind for the 1960 film based on Orpheus Descending) have their genesis here. At age twenty-six, Williams was still learning his craft and this, his second full-length play, shows his debt to sources as diverse as thirties gangster films (The Petrified Forest, Winterset) and Romeo and Juliet. Fugitive Kind, with its star-crossed lovers and big city slum setting, takes place in a flophouse on the St. Louis waterfront in the shadow of Eads Bridge, where Williams spent Saturdays away from his shoe factory job and met his characters: jobless wayfarers on the dole, young writers and artists of the WPA, even gangsters and G-men. Fugitive Kind was also Williams's second play to be produced by The Mummers, a St. Louis theatre group devoted to drama of social protest. Called "vital and absorbing" by a contemporary review in The St. Louis Star-Times, this play reveals the young playwright's own struggle between his radical-socialist sympathies and his poetic inclinations, and signals his future reputation as our most compassionate lyric dramatist.Spring Storm
By Tennessee Williams, Dan Isaac. 1999
"A crucible of so many elements that would later shape and characterize Williams's work."--World Literature Today When Tennessee Williams read…
Spring Storm aloud to his playwriting class at the University of Iowa in 1938, he was met with silence and embarrassment. His professor, the renowned E. C. Mabie, remarked as he got up and dismissed the seminar, "Well, we all have to paint our nudes!" Tom's earlier comment in his journal that the play "is well-constructed, no social propaganda, and is suitable for the commercial stage" seems accurate enough in 1999, but woefully naive deep in the Depression when the play's sexual explicitness--particularly its matter-of-fact acceptance of a woman's right to her own sexuality--would have been seen as not only shocking but also politically radical. Spring Storm would later be disavowed by the author as "simply a study of Sex--a blind animal urge or force (like the regenerative force of April) gripping four lives and leading them into a tangle of cruel and ugly relations." But the solid and deft characterizations of the four young people whose lives intertwine--the sexually alive Heavenly Critchfield, her earthy lover Dick Miles, Heavenly's wealthy but tongue-tied admirer Arthur Shannon, and the repressed librarian Hertha Nielson who loves Arthur--are archetypes of characters we will meet again and again in the Williams canon. Epic in scope, a bit melodramatic in execution, tragic in outcome, Spring Storm created a wave of excitement among theatre insiders when it was given a staged reading at The Ensemble Studio Theatre's Octoberfest '96. This edition has been prepared, with an illuminating introduction, by Dan Isaac, who initiated the Octoberfest production.Clothes for a Summer Hotel: Play
By Tennessee Williams. 1983
This late play by Tennessee Williams explores the troubled relationship between F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. The late Tennessee Williams's…
Clothes for a Summer Hotelmade its New York debut in 1980. Here Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, often seen as symbols of the doomed youth of the jazz age, become two halves of a single creative psyche, each part alternately feeding and then devouring the other. Set in Highland Hospital near Asheville, North Carolina, where Zelda spent her last confinement, this "ghost play" begins several years after Scott's death of a heart attack in California. But the past is "still always present" in Zelda, and Williams's constant shifting of chronology and mixing of remembrance with ghostly re-enactment suggest that our real intimacy is with the shadow characters of our own minds. As Williams said in the Author's Note to the Broadway production: "Our reason for taking extraordinary license with time and place is that in an asylum and on its grounds liberties of this kind are quite prevalent: and also these liberties allow us to explore in more depth what we believe is truth of character." Williams poses the inevitable, unanswerable questions: Did Scott prevent Zelda from achieving an independent creativity? Did Zelda's demands force Scott to squander his talents and turn to alcohol? Whose betrayal--emotional, creative, sexual--destroyed the other? But he poses these questions in a new way: in the act of creation, Zelda and Scott are now aware of their eventual destruction, and the creative fire that consumed two artists combines symbolically with the fire that ended Zelda's life.Now the Cats With Jeweled Claws & Other One-Act Plays
By Tennessee Williams, Thomas Keith. 1982
"The peak of my virtuosity was in the one-act plays--like firecrackers in a rope." --Tennessee Williams This new collection of…
fantastic, lesser-known one-acts contains some of Williams's most potent, comical and disturbing short plays?Upper East Side ladies dine out during the apocalypse in Now the Cats With Jeweled Claws, while the poet Hart Crane is confronted by his mother at the bottom of the ocean in Steps Must Be Gentle. Five previously unpublished plays include A Recluse and His Guest, and The Strange Play, in which we witness a woman's entire life lived within a twenty-four-hour span. This volume is edited, with an introduction and notes, by the editor, acting teacher, and theater scholar Thomas Keith.Our Hero
By Tom De Haven. 2010
Since his first appearance in Action Comics Number One, published in late spring of 1938, Superman has represented the essence…
of American heroism. "Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound," the Man of Steel has thrilled audiences across the globe, yet as life-long "Superman Guy" Tom De Haven argues in this highly entertaining book, his story is uniquely American. Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in the midst of the Great Depression, Superman is both a transcendent figure and, when posing as his alter-ego, reporter Clark Kent, a humble working-class citizen. An orphan and an immigrant, he shares a personal history with the many Americans who came to this country in search of a better life, and his amazing feats represent the wildest realization of the American dream. As De Haven reveals through behind-the-scenes vignettes, personal anecdotes, and lively interpretations of more than 70 years of comic books, radio programs, TV shows, and Hollywood films, Superman's legacy seems, like the Man of Steel himself, to be utterly invincible.Specchio rotto: Nebun
By Catalina Jacob, Catia Polverini. 2017
“Saltò. Nessuno sentì le urla precedenti, ma solo l'impatto del suo corpo contro il marciapiede. Tutti guardarono il suo corpo…
inerte a terra. Una pozza cremisi tinse i suoi vestiti. «Era così buona» dicevano tra le lacrime fresche. «Si meritava il cielo», si lamentavano. Ma avevano reso la sua vita un inferno. Ignorando tutte le sue grida, annullando la sua essenza e censurando le sue parole. Ignorata in vita.” Non c'è nessun’altra come Nebun ... infelice e tradita dalla vita; accompagnata dall’indifferenza e abbandonata da chi l’ascoltava. Così inizia la sua avventura verso la libertà, ma la sfortuna la persegue e rimane intrappolata a metà strada. Da sola, più sola che mai. O forse no.La Casa de Playa
By Alec Silva, Denia McGrew. 2018
Dos amigos van a pasar unos días en una casa de playa. Pronto descubren que sólo uno puede entrar en…
la casa, mientras que el otro, impedido por una fuerza invisible, está obligado a dormir en la terraza. Mientras intentan entender el misterio del lugar, las interrogantes y las incertidumbres mostrarán que la respuesta a la pregunta principal es más simple de lo que imaginan.Belleville
By Amy Herzog. 2014
"A quietly devastating play... Both a perceptive drama depicting the sudden fraying of a young marriage and a nail-biting psychological…
thriller... Belleville is among the most suspenseful plays I've seen in years." - Charles Isherwood, New York Times"Masterly... Among the new crop of young American playwrights, Herzog is in a class by herself." - Richard Zoglin, TimeAbby and Zack, young American newlyweds, have abandoned a comfortable postgraduate life in the states for Belleville, a bustling, bohemian, multicultural Parisian neighborhood. But as secrets both minor and monumental are revealed, their fraught relationship begins to unravel. Belleville examines the limits of trust and dependency in a world where love can turn pathological and our most intimate relationships may not be what they seem.AMY HERZOG's plays include 4,000 Miles (Pulitzer Prize finalist), After the Revolution and The Great God Pan. Ms. Herzog is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Whiting Writers' Award, an Obie Award and the Helen Merrill Award for Aspiring Playwrights.Espelho quebrado: Nebun
By Catalina Jacob. 2018
"Pulou. Ninguém escutou os gritos prévios, apenas o impacto do seu corpo contra o pavimento. Ali, todos olhavam seu corpo…
desfigurado no chão. Uma poça carmesim tingiu sua roupa. «Era tão boa» diziam entre lágrimas frescas. «Merecia o céu», lamentavam-se. Porém, de sua vida, haviam feito umo inferno. Ignorando seus gritos prévios, anulando sua essência e censurando suas palavras. Ignorada em vida." Não existe outra como Nebun... infeliz e traída pela vida; acompanhada pela indiferença e abandonada por quem a escutava. Inicia assim a sua aventura até a liberdade, porém, a desgraça a persegue atrapalha boa parte do caminho. Sozinha, mais sozinha do que nunca antes. Ou quem sabe nem tanto.Empire of Wild: A Novel
By Cherie Dimaline. 2019
A #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLEROne of the most anticipated books of the summer for Time, Harper's Bazaar, Bustle and Publishers Weekly'Deftly…
written, gripping and informative. Empire of Wild is a rip-roaring read!' Margaret Atwood'Empire of Wild is doing everything I love in a contemporary novel and more. It is tough, funny, beautiful, honest and propulsive' Tommy Orange, author of There There 'Dimaline turns an old story into something newly haunting and resonant' New York Times'Close, tight, stark, beautiful - rich where richness is warranted, but spare where want and sorrow have sharpened every word. Dimaline has crafted something both current and timeless' NPR'Revelatory... Gritty and engaging, this story of a woman and her missing husband is one of candor, wit and tradition'Ms. Magazine Broken-hearted Joan has been searching for her husband, Victor, for almost a year - ever since he went missing on the night they had their first serious argument. One hung-over morning in a Walmart parking lot in a little town near Georgian Bay, she is drawn to a revival tent where the local Métis have been flocking to hear a charismatic preacher. By the time she staggers into the tent the service is over, but as she is about to leave, she hears an unmistakable voice.She turns, and there is Victor. Only he insists he is not Victor, but the Reverend Eugene Wolff, on a mission to bring his people to Jesus.With only two allies - her Johnny-Cash-loving, 12-year-old nephew Zeus, and Ajean, a foul-mouthed euchre shark with deep knowledge of the old Métis ways - Joan sets out to remind the Reverend Wolff of who he really is. If he really is Victor, his life and the life of everyone she loves, depends upon her success.Inspired by traditional Métis legends, Cherie Dimaline has created a propulsive, stunning and sensuous novel.