tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36286427709024939832024-03-19T15:33:57.141-04:00Book Jacket BiosTerence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-58105292190776685702023-10-31T06:00:00.001-04:002023-10-31T06:00:00.151-04:00Mahlon Blaine (1894-1969)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLCdo52xBbIaVgjLpoEAgsXky3aKQ7xo3Px2z76GPiKtYBib7Nr1uRqhFynfkSpBkt-EQhXw6vYulxkFdMYm2OJGEFZpwxH-tyQtcvrvZz1JeHASr6Sz4ZB78uTp9YyECRDM6BSH3RM60cHQBBANYlDBP919SYyKCFFNIJPD8zCOZ3uBrKCjgS71PX6rY/s2474/BJB-Blaine,%20Mahlon-Front%20cover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2474" data-original-width="1712" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLCdo52xBbIaVgjLpoEAgsXky3aKQ7xo3Px2z76GPiKtYBib7Nr1uRqhFynfkSpBkt-EQhXw6vYulxkFdMYm2OJGEFZpwxH-tyQtcvrvZz1JeHASr6Sz4ZB78uTp9YyECRDM6BSH3RM60cHQBBANYlDBP919SYyKCFFNIJPD8zCOZ3uBrKCjgS71PX6rY/w442-h640/BJB-Blaine,%20Mahlon-Front%20cover.png" width="442" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjzKb9gGzgE9qqEa3aQ-wYYFAl-sfJx28ypno2gtbk47Ip8wCQVHgRxpD7DHRWE_XuJQvzLM4JPUA5F4jkqzFncPalAVn3SMq8NlMHmUKpOpLiv3Gc8R1QbH9qytxwYy2c_-f2JPwPCVYUbw0PcT3TKazWWx9sy4oE5dGuzrLwd5sHTtEbm-LjAgEC_H0/s2400/BJB-Blaine,%20Mahlon-Inside%20flap.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2400" data-original-width="1044" height="1075" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjzKb9gGzgE9qqEa3aQ-wYYFAl-sfJx28ypno2gtbk47Ip8wCQVHgRxpD7DHRWE_XuJQvzLM4JPUA5F4jkqzFncPalAVn3SMq8NlMHmUKpOpLiv3Gc8R1QbH9qytxwYy2c_-f2JPwPCVYUbw0PcT3TKazWWx9sy4oE5dGuzrLwd5sHTtEbm-LjAgEC_H0/w467-h1075/BJB-Blaine,%20Mahlon-Inside%20flap.png" width="467" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div style="text-align: justify;">This book jacket biography is not of the author of the book shown above but of its illustrator. The book is <i>Black Majesty: The Life of Christophe, King of Haiti</i> by <b>John W. Vandercook </b>(1902-1963), published in 1928 by Harper & Brothers. I have the fourteenth edition, this particular book having come from the collection of <a href="https://tellersofweirdtales.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-lost-world-of-lemuria.html" target="_blank"><b>Margaret B. Nicholas</b> of Bartlett and Marietta, Ohio</a>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The illustrator of <i>Black Majesty</i> was the enigmatic <b>Mahlon Blaine</b>. Born Mahlon Blain on June 16, 1894, in Albany, Oregon, Blaine was a commercial artist, costume designer, muralist, illustrator, and fine artist, possibly also a stage actor. He worked in Albany and Portland, Oregon, and in San Francisco and Los Angeles. He began his career as an illustrator in the 1920s. In the early 1960s, he illustrated a number of reprints of the works of <b>Edgar Rice Burroughs</b> (1875-1950). On August 18, 1932, Blaine married <b>Fern Bowman</b> (dates unknown) in Los Angeles city or county, California, a fact missing from many biographical sketches of him. By 1942, when he filled out his World War II draft card, he did not list her as next of kin. I guess we can assume that their marriage had ended by then. Blaine is known to have exaggerated, if not to have fabricated the facts of his life. I'm not sure how much stock I would put in the book jacket bio shown here.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Like many artists, Mahlon Blaine struggled to pay the bills. He is supposed to have been impoverished late in life and to have died in obscurity. The end came in January 1969 in Los Angeles city or county.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There is an entry for Mahlon Blaine in the online <i>Encyclopedia of Science Fiction</i>, <a href="https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/blaine_mahlon" target="_blank">here</a>. You can also read about him on the website <i>Bill & Sue-On Hillman's ERBzine</i>, <a href="https://www.erbzine.com/mag8/0880.html" target="_blank">here</a>. Fortunately for fans of his work and for the art of fantasy in general, there are several recent books showing Blaine's artwork.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley</div></span>Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-54320760803821304852023-10-02T13:08:00.002-04:002023-10-02T13:08:36.871-04:00Ellen Turngren (1885-1964)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtIVvGDF3Rg-jqd9bokBjcEbJpDUmODCBkjFqhdedh_VXZlsS_QwM9j-BrqWyisZfSYj0z7fCHDMc_pn-KWK0LgWWK7W3NFVTFFP1gZnBVpAzPfiUP91nLyzCkqZVd4lZYLhIap7MRnZ-d-BoRsGOV6ndjcqPzqOYOc3DCvvPDdY2jkLYJ2OKsSx7jOmY/s2426/BJB-Turngren,%20Ellen-Front%20cover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2426" data-original-width="1672" height="514" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtIVvGDF3Rg-jqd9bokBjcEbJpDUmODCBkjFqhdedh_VXZlsS_QwM9j-BrqWyisZfSYj0z7fCHDMc_pn-KWK0LgWWK7W3NFVTFFP1gZnBVpAzPfiUP91nLyzCkqZVd4lZYLhIap7MRnZ-d-BoRsGOV6ndjcqPzqOYOc3DCvvPDdY2jkLYJ2OKsSx7jOmY/w355-h514/BJB-Turngren,%20Ellen-Front%20cover.png" width="355" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikZCPuk9xCqpB-_Sol0qoNfqXF8ft636_F4sUPaWcuUG5xmN69bO5l-vI9bYGxX3pDtlR3qHqP9imiMcL5m3qfVGZRPJYlB5eT14q-t-_j_Sj0T4v3AhTaedqbZHFNBY5GODXLGs1cqKDcVEyq0sG-gJ4frV8jJ79N4fPQx1Jb5uJ1huglI6v7uEvcGd4/s2422/BJB-Turngren,%20Ellen-Back%20cover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2422" data-original-width="1664" height="754" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikZCPuk9xCqpB-_Sol0qoNfqXF8ft636_F4sUPaWcuUG5xmN69bO5l-vI9bYGxX3pDtlR3qHqP9imiMcL5m3qfVGZRPJYlB5eT14q-t-_j_Sj0T4v3AhTaedqbZHFNBY5GODXLGs1cqKDcVEyq0sG-gJ4frV8jJ79N4fPQx1Jb5uJ1huglI6v7uEvcGd4/w518-h754/BJB-Turngren,%20Ellen-Back%20cover.png" width="518" /></a></div><div><br /></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Ellen May Turngren</b> was born on May 6, 1885, in Montrose, Minnesota. She was a teacher, newspaper editor, private secretary, bookkeeper, and the author of three novels, <i>Listen, My Heart</i> (1956), <i>Shadows into Mist</i> (1958), and the book shown above, <i>Hearts Are the Fields</i> (1961). The first and last have cover illustrations by <a href="https://indianaillustrators.blogspot.com/2012/09/katharine-gibson-1893-1960.html" target="_blank"><b>Vera Bock</b> (1905-2006)</a>. Ellen Turngren's sister was <b>Annette Turngren</b> (1902-1980). She was also an author and wrote mysteries and other kinds of books for children and young people. Ellen Turngren died on July 11, 1964, and was buried at Kreidler Cemetery in her hometown. Her papers are in the Children's Literature Research Collections at the University of Minnesota Libraries.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Original text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley</div></span>Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-36314568070957702162023-03-22T19:14:00.001-04:002023-03-22T19:14:44.648-04:00Mary Ellen Chase (1887-1973)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbYeJrajATldPiavmYXZXihs3_cGCKMa9iUeg7bwW1NEwB19IY-n5UuGLNPwJiPSzsd1NCnHxVzObKG8GwvSq7UVPxp0PWGBTR4Hjkv3uEC2jNstIy7HcKM8O9ty1p9T5IOdH9BC23z10v4fCuxzLCAWY8_U4oZznqOP3DExeSMjM6OgisdGFe2Kbv/s2341/Chase,%20Mary%20Ellen-The%20Plum%20Tree%20Cover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2341" data-original-width="1404" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbYeJrajATldPiavmYXZXihs3_cGCKMa9iUeg7bwW1NEwB19IY-n5UuGLNPwJiPSzsd1NCnHxVzObKG8GwvSq7UVPxp0PWGBTR4Hjkv3uEC2jNstIy7HcKM8O9ty1p9T5IOdH9BC23z10v4fCuxzLCAWY8_U4oZznqOP3DExeSMjM6OgisdGFe2Kbv/w240-h400/Chase,%20Mary%20Ellen-The%20Plum%20Tree%20Cover.png" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAzs-jR3m28uD_O39u_7hFZNoarB_q4iDJula9QyUbC2qMvG8a2eRzyNIx61qljH9wNVfHpPewEqxDhIACdJOROF9j9gMYyaKdWtYLCYUwQo0etI561C_zBmfKr0FnWkE7FFlerioDQxlLXYcXR5-cELzDuwjvBdRV26dKcIl_46AHdnnJHIAQCVjP/s1516/Chase,%20Mary%20Ellen-Book%20Jacket%20Bio.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1516" data-original-width="854" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAzs-jR3m28uD_O39u_7hFZNoarB_q4iDJula9QyUbC2qMvG8a2eRzyNIx61qljH9wNVfHpPewEqxDhIACdJOROF9j9gMYyaKdWtYLCYUwQo0etI561C_zBmfKr0FnWkE7FFlerioDQxlLXYcXR5-cELzDuwjvBdRV26dKcIl_46AHdnnJHIAQCVjP/w360-h640/Chase,%20Mary%20Ellen-Book%20Jacket%20Bio.png" width="360" /></a></div><div><br /></div><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Mary Ellen Chase</b> was born on February 28, 1887, in Blue Hill, Maine. As a ten-year-old, she met Maine author <b>Sarah Orne Jewett</b> (1849-1909), who proved an inspiration to her. She taught at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, from 1926 to 1956. Mary Ellen Chase was the author of more than two dozen books, as well as short stories in <i>Harper's Magazine</i>, <i>The Atlantic Monthly</i>, <i>Argosy All-Story Weekly</i>, <i>Collier's</i>, <i>McCall's</i>, and even <i>Detective Fiction Weekly</i>. The book jacket biography above is from <i>The Plum Tree</i>, a slender book published in 1949. She died on July 28, 1973, in Northampton.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Original text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley</div></span>Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-79741835091899642522021-05-01T19:00:00.003-04:002021-05-05T09:11:30.133-04:00Antonio Prohías (1921-1998)<p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDUqBPDhZt61MK88R5W_jIwgcYYwlnOE1jNtgroWrQPbQ-y7IokuFFXtCO-OTa6pYftQ45XJILsguKwIXXyy8oHlE-L9HLBtCelh5d8sATJ-GugV0viOui_3fcOC6p7itseZux50bdlTc/s969/Prohias-Spy+Vs.+Spy-Cover.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="969" data-original-width="559" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDUqBPDhZt61MK88R5W_jIwgcYYwlnOE1jNtgroWrQPbQ-y7IokuFFXtCO-OTa6pYftQ45XJILsguKwIXXyy8oHlE-L9HLBtCelh5d8sATJ-GugV0viOui_3fcOC6p7itseZux50bdlTc/w370-h640/Prohias-Spy+Vs.+Spy-Cover.png" width="370" /></a></div><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip2c4rKzyG6XJbett55kNqY1OfnRH4svcse-lW9i4120SzEpuwcf60D9XXzARkwMVAsz2n51-Nt85la0AjgNTxKDub3PRoP_Joy02QsFjtz2rMSx0ARN1P5rmAwzmg-y4iiUkkVx08QVY/s2048/Prohias-Book+Jacket+Bio.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1182" height="886" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip2c4rKzyG6XJbett55kNqY1OfnRH4svcse-lW9i4120SzEpuwcf60D9XXzARkwMVAsz2n51-Nt85la0AjgNTxKDub3PRoP_Joy02QsFjtz2rMSx0ARN1P5rmAwzmg-y4iiUkkVx08QVY/w512-h886/Prohias-Book+Jacket+Bio.png" width="512" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">The cover of <i>The All New Mad Secret File on Spy vs Spy</i> by Antonio Prohías, his first such collection, published by Signet in 1965, plus the inside biography of the cartoonist.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Today is May Day, for normal people a day to celebrate the coming of spring, but for communists, bolsheviks, Marxists, and other socialists one to celebrate murder, oppression, poverty, misery, mass incarceration, and mass starvation. Those things aren't really what socialists celebrate (maybe) but they are nonetheless the products of the socialists' efforts. Even Nazis, who peddled just one more brand of socialism, had an official May Day celebration. As the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On this day sixty-one years ago, Cuban cartoonist <b>Antonio Prohías</b> left his homeland for the United States. Born on January 17, 1921, <span style="text-align: left;">Prohías had been one of Cuba's leading cartoonists until he began criticizing the new Castro regime. On May 1, 1960, he went into exile from his native country. He never returned.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">Just two months later, on July 12, 1960, </span><span style="text-align: left;">Prohías walked into the New York offices of <i>Mad</i> with a portfolio he had developed since coming to America. Although he spoke no English, he walked out with $800 in payment for his first cartoons to appear in the magazine. In all, Prohías created 241 episodes showing the never-ending battle between a nameless black spy and his equally nameless white nemesis. <i>Spy vs. Spy</i> must surely be considered one of the great comic strips of the twentieth century.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">Although there isn't any overt political commentary in <i>Spy vs. Spy</i>, the cartoonist understood the machinery and imagery of oppression and of state-sponsored murder, and he depicted these things to perfection. With their comically grotesque faces, physiques, uniforms, and ornate decorations, his nameless spymasters/regime leaders are only barely exaggerated versions of the real thing. The socialist oppressor and murderer has since learned to be more subtle than that, so subtle in fact that he--and she--have wormed their way into the highest levels of Western government, academia, entertainment, media, and commerce. If he were still living and working today, </span><span style="text-align: left;">Antonio Prohías would have to learn equally more subtle ways of lampooning them.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">Antonio Prohías died on </span><span style="text-align: left;">February 24, 1998, at age seventy-seven in Miami, Florida. If he had lived, he would have turned one hundred years old in 2021. And if he had lived to this May Day, he would have seen not the end of communism in Cuba but at least the end of the Castro dynasty, a happy yet unhappy event that occurred on April 19, 2021.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">Antonio Prohías was born in the city of </span><span style="text-align: left;">Cienfuegos in Cuba. If we can stretch a metaphor, we can observe that </span><span style="text-align: left;"><i>Cienfuegos</i> means "one hundred fires" in Spanish, and we can say that in memory of </span><span style="text-align: left;">Prohías and his life's work we might light one hundred fires of freedom, one for each of the one hundred years since his birth. </span><span style="text-align: left;">May socialism be one day relegated not only to the dustbin of history but also to that of human thought, belief, and experience. May it soon perish and may the people of the not-very-distant future wonder why anyone would ever have believed in such utterly stupid, outlandish, and ultimately murderous things.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">Text copyright 2021 Terence E. Hanley</span></div></span>Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-53415636797578997922021-04-01T13:00:00.000-04:002021-05-01T19:07:20.651-04:00Ernest Kurt Barth (1929-2001)<p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyc8gQjxrtfRYytG7HdwmApLndNU3B1jgINGXNmbf3RWmahJZUcZzm-uhNmZuOhXsUcfXK14o5N0MXfskUKTNeWaeyf94ZeZvLl49W87FPIr1ZqRIdss-6llw7c1CS63z2pRK6uAsYDOM/s2273/Shumsky-BJB.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2273" data-original-width="1098" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyc8gQjxrtfRYytG7HdwmApLndNU3B1jgINGXNmbf3RWmahJZUcZzm-uhNmZuOhXsUcfXK14o5N0MXfskUKTNeWaeyf94ZeZvLl49W87FPIr1ZqRIdss-6llw7c1CS63z2pRK6uAsYDOM/w310-h640/Shumsky-BJB.png" width="310" /></a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Last time I wrote about <b>Lou and Zena Shumsky</b>, authors of the young person's novel <i>First Flight</i> (1962). (She was really the author. Her husband was more of a technical advisor.) This time I would like to write about the illustrator of their book, Ernest Kurt Barth.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Ernest Kurt "Ernie" Barth</b> was born on March 23, 1929, in Rockville Centre, New York, to Ernest and Paula K. (Meeh) Barth. His parents were born in Germany and arrived in America only shortly before his birth. The elder Ernest Barth was a painting contractor but also, as his son remembered, a hobbyist. Ernie Barth was thus well prepared for illustrating a book about boys who build and fly model airplanes.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ernest K. Barth graduated from Memorial High School in West New York, New Jersey, and served for two years in the U.S. Marine Corps. He applied his G.I. Bill benefits to his education in art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in fine arts in 1952. I suspect that he also met his future wife at Pratt.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ernest Barth had a varied career in art. He worked for a firm called Cellomatic in the early days of television animation. In 1954, he served as an assistant to <b>Al Capp</b> (1909-1979) on the syndicated comic strip <i>Li'l Abner</i>. (<b>Frank Frazetta</b> [1928-2010] was another of Capp's assistants at the time.) From 1953 to 1957, Barth created cover art and interior illustrations for science fiction magazines. Afterwards, he expanded into illustrating books for </span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Dell, Harper & Row, and Random House. Later in life, while living and working in Tuxedo Park, New York, he worked as a graphic artist and commercial artist.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Barth's first wife, <b>Eileen Ann Furlong Barth</b> (1931-1986), was also an artist and a teacher of art at Monroe-Woodbury High School in Woodbury, New York. She was the daughter of Raymond H. Furlong, a printer for the <i>New York Times</i>, and Anna (Ungerer) Furlong, a bank clerk. The Barths and their two daughters lived in San Miguel De Allende, Mexico, for a year in 1973-1974, where Eileen Barth received her master's degree in fine arts. Eileen Ann Furlong Barth died tragically young of cancer. Her husband remarried. He died on March 28, 2001, in Tuxedo Park. His remains were cremated and the ashes scattered, fittingly, by airplane over Orange County, New York.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">One of the reasons that I have wanted to write about Ernest Kurt Barth is to show his artwork in the fields of science fiction and fantasy. <i>The Internet Speculative Fiction Database </i>(<i>ISFDb</i>) has a list--</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia; text-align: left;">actually two lists--</span><span style="font-family: georgia; text-align: left;">of his credits in those fields. I would like to acknowledge that website and to expand on the available biographical information on him. (</span><i style="font-family: georgia; text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/196847331/ernest-kurt-barth" target="_blank">Find A Grave</a></i><span style="font-family: georgia; text-align: left;"> has a fuller biography than what I have written here, and so I would also like to acknowledge Von Rothenberger, who posted it, along with a photo of Barth, to that site.) There are two entries on the </span><i style="font-family: georgia; text-align: left;">ISFDb</i><span style="font-family: georgia; text-align: left;"> on Barth, one for </span><a href="http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?84021" style="font-family: georgia; text-align: left;" target="_blank"><b>Ernie Barth</b></a><span style="font-family: georgia; text-align: left;">, the other for </span><a href="http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?114985" style="font-family: georgia; text-align: left;" target="_blank"><b>Ernest K. Barth</b></a><span style="font-family: georgia; text-align: left;">. My hope is that those two entries will be combined and that Barth will receive his full due as an artist.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirGHXPZGeeokt9RjiX69nNe87CTeZ6JAYQ1AifkWwvEnzHsqhndbM6PcNM5oFsCl80cU5SrCbCG1ZRMxhRfibUyvk4PgoA7OF93zEJ4KSdOgWbfkl5ITo8nmgh2rrlEvgB5mK36yCJ-kM/s539/Barth%252C+Ernest+K.-Fantastic-1954-10.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="539" data-original-width="396" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirGHXPZGeeokt9RjiX69nNe87CTeZ6JAYQ1AifkWwvEnzHsqhndbM6PcNM5oFsCl80cU5SrCbCG1ZRMxhRfibUyvk4PgoA7OF93zEJ4KSdOgWbfkl5ITo8nmgh2rrlEvgB5mK36yCJ-kM/w470-h640/Barth%252C+Ernest+K.-Fantastic-1954-10.jpeg" width="470" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Ernie Barth's cover for <i>Fantastic</i>, October 1954. He was twenty-five when this picture was published. The cover story was "The Yellow Needle" by <b>Gerald Vance</b>.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzgrZdyqRbmW9ky9DICIxny5MBqQ5CxWn0NDEo-ufZG3iR4OvmjnLetyP_ZIkxGmozprkqItrhxKiTmWwhOriN-Dn4qt_cuOE6mwcAl5f3_WdGfJF1T2sh2FbKXFvGLxg1KHLvdHDIpyw/s1286/Barth%252C+Ernest+Karl+Barth-Illustration+for+%2522Loralei+of+Chaos%2522.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1115" data-original-width="1286" height="556" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzgrZdyqRbmW9ky9DICIxny5MBqQ5CxWn0NDEo-ufZG3iR4OvmjnLetyP_ZIkxGmozprkqItrhxKiTmWwhOriN-Dn4qt_cuOE6mwcAl5f3_WdGfJF1T2sh2FbKXFvGLxg1KHLvdHDIpyw/w640-h556/Barth%252C+Ernest+Karl+Barth-Illustration+for+%2522Loralei+of+Chaos%2522.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">If you pull back the curtain and show how artwork is really made, submitted, and used in publication, you will see images like this one, Barth's illustrations for Russ Winterbotham's short story "Loralei of Chaos," from <i>Amazing Stories</i>, November 1954. Note the editor's or engraver's marks in blue pencil. Note also the name "H. Rogoff." That was <b>Herb Rogoff</b> (1927-2018), art editor of Ziff-Davis Fiction Group and himself an artist.</span></td></tr></tbody></table></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY2WtUFae7xbOfXdu5ddtB3S1nrodZgSYRVZW7hnJx7enc4qLGJ4vDMsLlFixl8slGXOJfnjCu5vfj2dqMbtGZc65GSLOjlW90COiv69zfEAcArnVIj762Rll0PXXJq_gROq-b_m7sklo/s1352/Barth%252C+Ernest+Kurt-Illustration+for+%2522Forced+Move%2522.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1352" data-original-width="472" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjY2WtUFae7xbOfXdu5ddtB3S1nrodZgSYRVZW7hnJx7enc4qLGJ4vDMsLlFixl8slGXOJfnjCu5vfj2dqMbtGZc65GSLOjlW90COiv69zfEAcArnVIj762Rll0PXXJq_gROq-b_m7sklo/w223-h640/Barth%252C+Ernest+Kurt-Illustration+for+%2522Forced+Move%2522.jpg" width="223" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Finally, Barth's illustration for "Forced Move," a short story by <b>Henry Lee</b>, published in <i>Worlds of If</i>, June 1955.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia; text-align: left;">Text copyright 2021 Terence E. Hanley</span></p>Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-8428574764068586282021-02-17T19:15:00.000-05:002021-02-17T19:15:04.400-05:00Lou & Zena Shumsky<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiReQuKnHtv0n5sLVdhGMsiVALAFoLL2Pz94bKb8py2hDLKy9rCVTJ_CCvVd_CR2aC_9hlNhhOdiYqVzA-_6hrMwUb97Ky3hyphenhyphenltp85Aa6TvDIa3YXUCY8WX1HG7ZIvaDffumCw7xbQJhWU/s2048/Shumsky-Cover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1375" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiReQuKnHtv0n5sLVdhGMsiVALAFoLL2Pz94bKb8py2hDLKy9rCVTJ_CCvVd_CR2aC_9hlNhhOdiYqVzA-_6hrMwUb97Ky3hyphenhyphenltp85Aa6TvDIa3YXUCY8WX1HG7ZIvaDffumCw7xbQJhWU/w269-h400/Shumsky-Cover.png" width="269" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGAaH7XaajHy8cWx_bZCHpIUrXePjD-X_e1VB0EREFEzNM2JIKbtGVn17Zhyphenhyphen966TjCDcTdWCsvWFbSuk7tlkBuJAAC4p2EQzdDQVlQs2SrMbHXFDsjA8NNBBbJYJoGwaLo9OCCmXY2Mbc/s2273/Shumsky-BJB.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2273" data-original-width="1098" height="895" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGAaH7XaajHy8cWx_bZCHpIUrXePjD-X_e1VB0EREFEzNM2JIKbtGVn17Zhyphenhyphen966TjCDcTdWCsvWFbSuk7tlkBuJAAC4p2EQzdDQVlQs2SrMbHXFDsjA8NNBBbJYJoGwaLo9OCCmXY2Mbc/w432-h895/Shumsky-BJB.png" width="432" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Louis Shumsky</b> was born into a large family on January 9, 1919, in Norma, New Jersey. His parents, Joseph and Esther Shumsky, were Russian-Jewish immigrants. At age twenty-one, Lou Shumsky was already at work as a photographer, and that's the job he did in the U.S. Army during World War II. He enlisted on November 26, 1940, more than a year before his country entered the war.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Lou Shumsky served at least part of his tour of duty in London, England, and that's where he met his future wife. Her name was <b>Zena Feldman</b>, and she was born in Hackney, Greater London, on January 21, 1926. Zena had an unsettled family life. Her parents, Barnet Feldman and Rebecca Karpinski, divorced in 1937. Zena attended a girls' school in London on a scholarship but had to end her studies and go to work when her father left. She first worked in a law office. Recognizing her talent, her employers offered to pay her way through law school if she would return after graduating to work for the firm. But Zena wanted to be a writer, and so she declined. Instead she went to work for Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in London. On May 3, 1945, Zena Feldman and Louis Shumsky were married in London. The war in Europe ended just five days later.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Shumskys returned to the United States in the late 1940s and settled in New Jersey. They had two sons together and moved to Rochester, New York, in 1954. They collaborated on two books, <i>First Flight</i>, illustrated by Ernest Kurt Barth and published in 1962, and <i>Shutterbug</i>, illustrated by Vic Donahue and published in 1963. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Zena Shumsky also wrote books on her own, under her own name and two pen names, Jane Collier and Zena Collier. These include:</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><ul><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>The Year of the Dream</i> (young adult fiction, 1962), illustrated by <a href="https://bookjacketbios.blogspot.com/search/label/E.%20Harper%20Johnson" target="_blank"><b>Harper Johnson</b></a></span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>A Tangled Web</i> (young adult fiction, 1967)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Seven for the People</i> (young adult nonfiction, 1979)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Next Time I'll Know</i> (young adult fiction, 1981)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>A Cooler Climate</i> (adult novel, 1990)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Ghost Note</i> (adult novel, 1992)</span></li></ul><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">She also wrote short stories for popular magazines, including:</span></div><div><ul><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Family Affair," <i>Canadian Home Journal</i> (Nov. 1957)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">"The Innocents," <i>McCall's</i> (Aug. 1964)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Trial by Night," <i>Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine</i> (Jan. 1974)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Accomplices," <i>Alaska Quarterly Review</i> (Fall/Winter 1985)</span></li></ul></div></div><p></p><p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Louis Shumsky died on May 6, 1968, in New Jersey. Zena remarried in 1970 and was also known by her second married name, Zena Hampson. She lived a writing life and was a member of writers' groups and participated in writers' events. Described as a "small, pretty woman with a soft voice and a delightful English accent,"* Zena Feldman Shumsky Hampson died on October 5, 2016, in Rochester, New York. She was ninety years old.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">*From the <i>Democrat and Chronicle</i> (Rochester, NY), September 22, 1962, page 8.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I will write a Book Jacket Bio on the illustrator of Lou and Zena Shumky's book, Ernest Kurt Barth, in the next installment of this blog.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Original text copyright 2021 Terence E. Hanley</span></div><p></p>Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-21235366831883583902021-01-20T15:20:00.013-05:002023-10-19T21:35:33.497-04:00Iris Owens (1929-2008)<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMmAqSweQuZSvyCNEkEWiIM6cqdEl1LyUtCSTnaF_k73bWAgtK82Hl0ea_zXZh5VMORV_Mm7LoBYF7jdp15KVj91GIHzpAkk_KKDZe_hdXMqDRYLQmcvKiJyHBQ4DejQrG-LZIXm7sJxU/s2048/Owens%252C+Iris-After+Claude-Cover.png"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1216" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMmAqSweQuZSvyCNEkEWiIM6cqdEl1LyUtCSTnaF_k73bWAgtK82Hl0ea_zXZh5VMORV_Mm7LoBYF7jdp15KVj91GIHzpAkk_KKDZe_hdXMqDRYLQmcvKiJyHBQ4DejQrG-LZIXm7sJxU/w381-h640/Owens%252C+Iris-After+Claude-Cover.png" width="381" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhziuOAwwk8PRpK0Qug7Jl1f9-8V4sp_3BLVuLT0S1u5U4c3IhVKs9BtCGDqUm-_loa7rksu_EmS_nblySQMs8Nvui_rmKnTrUvDDvNC47KHos_QpCgGHXnN_yp_-FKrJhpVArcdYK54zQ/s841/Owens%252C+Iris-After+Claude-BJB.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="493" data-original-width="841" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhziuOAwwk8PRpK0Qug7Jl1f9-8V4sp_3BLVuLT0S1u5U4c3IhVKs9BtCGDqUm-_loa7rksu_EmS_nblySQMs8Nvui_rmKnTrUvDDvNC47KHos_QpCgGHXnN_yp_-FKrJhpVArcdYK54zQ/w400-h235/Owens%252C+Iris-After+Claude-BJB.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: justify;"><b>Iris Owens</b> was born <b>Iris Klein</b> on November 25, 1929, in Brooklyn, New York. Her father, <b>Max Klein</b>, was born in Austria. Klein was a professional gambler and his family's life unsettled as a result. In 1940, when the census enumerator found him, he was driving a fruit delivery truck. Iris' mother, named <b>Rose</b>, was a native of Russia and bore three children, of whom Iris was the youngest.</span></div></span><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Iris Klein attended Barnard College and is supposed to have graduated from Brooklyn College. She was married twice before age thirty and divorced in pretty short order. She never again married and died without having any children of her own.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Iris moved to Paris in the 1950s and wrote or co-wrote five pornographic novels for Olympia Press under the name <b>Harriet Daimler</b>, what reviewer and novelist <b>Herbert Gold</b> called her </span><span><i>nom de cochon</i> ("pig name")</span><span>. She returned to the United States in 1970 and took up residence again in New York City. Just two more books flowed from her pen, </span><span><i>After Claude</i>, from 1973, and </span><span><i>Hope Diamond Refuses</i>, from 1984. In 1975 she </span><span>taught a creative writing workshop at Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, New York. As the years went by, Iris Owens made fewer and fewer forays from her apartment. Late in life (or maybe not so late) she was, according to accounts, a shut-in. Even the <i>New York Times</i> failed to take note of her death, which came on May 20, 2008. Described during her life and afterwards as ageless, timelessly beautiful, even Junoesque in her stature and appearance, she was seventy-eight years old when the end came.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>The narrator of <i>After Claude</i> is a young woman writer who has returned to New York after having lived in Paris. Her name--or maybe we can call it a meta-name--is Harriet Daimler. Herbert Gold (who is still with us) reviewed <i>After Claude</i> for the <i>San Francisco Examiner</i> (July 1, 1973, p. 188), writing: "</span><span>Owens Qua Daimler [has] proved one of the most important triple-headed theses of modern times: That at one and the same time a woman writer can be (1) funny, (2) pornographic and (3) ladylike." </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">The book is indeed funny--hilarious might be a better word for it--until it isn't anymore. Like </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">Portnoy's Complaint</i><span style="font-family: georgia;"> by <b>Philip Roth</b> (1969), it is a funny book about serious things and ends in a kind of sadness and loss. Mr. Gold wrote: </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">"This book dissolves finally in hysteria, the satire troubled by real pain, and the curious abandon at the end of the book adds a dimension of pathos which is against the principles of your standard black humorist."</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I snapped this book up when I saw it because of the blurbs on the cover, because it is a fairly short novel (only 219 pages), but mostly because of the cover with its classic 1970s photo illustration and typography, more so because of the classic 1970s look of the cover model. The photographer is <b>Neal Slavin</b>, who is also still with us. I wonder if we'll ever know the name of his subject (although she looks a little or a lot like the actress <b>Jenny O'Hara</b>).</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you would like to read more about Iris Owens, try "Iris Owens: Wit of the Bitch," by <b>Izabella Scott</b>, by clicking <a href="http://izabellascott.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/sig.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">A list of books by Iris Owens, from the website </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">Wikipedia</i><span style="font-family: georgia;">:</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">As Harriet Daimler:</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><ul><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Darling</i> (1956)</span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>The Pleasure Thieves</i>, with <b>Marilyn Meeske</b>, who wrote under the pseudonym <b>Henry Crannach</b> (1956)*</span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Innocence</i> (1957)</span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>The Organization</i> (1957)</span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Woman</i> (reissued as <i>The Woman Thing</i>) (1958)</span></li></ul><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">As Iris Owens:</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><ul><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>After Claude</i> (1973)</span></li><li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Hope Diamond Refuses</i> (1984)</span></li></ul><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">*To read about Marilyn Meeske, see <a href="https://classic.esquire.com/article/1965/4/1/memoirs-of-a-female-pornographer" target="_blank">"Memoirs of a Female Pornographer" in <i>Esquire</i>, April 1, 1965</a>.</span></div><br /></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgwxWE89X52jrcm8gYUvnl_ocd8fYPI8TPjfHm7XyIt9trNmJDo9JJhyphenhyphenq_9akISUfABpPtEnSd0OeKDg83rfQ8lZIr17OQnFbuyFx9JnHQ7qK_U92Mi0n7Q3RxOiSdVYcj76KvvfM4MC0/s586/Owens%252C+Iris-Photograph.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="586" data-original-width="409" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgwxWE89X52jrcm8gYUvnl_ocd8fYPI8TPjfHm7XyIt9trNmJDo9JJhyphenhyphenq_9akISUfABpPtEnSd0OeKDg83rfQ8lZIr17OQnFbuyFx9JnHQ7qK_U92Mi0n7Q3RxOiSdVYcj76KvvfM4MC0/w279-h400/Owens%252C+Iris-Photograph.png" width="279" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Iris Owens (1929-2008)</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Original text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley</span></div><p></p>Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-26607647962785802152020-12-01T06:00:00.011-05:002023-10-19T21:38:09.508-04:00Jane Werner (1915-2004) & Eloise Wilkin (1904-1987)<p style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGtSoYsHUyA2xNbfXSIOyNcHrxqQ-9a9kSzV_8_BZdhc4b0E5d_Ps2uaDLrHGFuETHuKPQ2J0eCNxvUN0OK2Z2-0U67vkrAvcxSbs4HE26d48SrwryVGiFc8ag0guhuq3RPgeTGSsk3G4/s2048/1-Christmas+Story-Cover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1693" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGtSoYsHUyA2xNbfXSIOyNcHrxqQ-9a9kSzV_8_BZdhc4b0E5d_Ps2uaDLrHGFuETHuKPQ2J0eCNxvUN0OK2Z2-0U67vkrAvcxSbs4HE26d48SrwryVGiFc8ag0guhuq3RPgeTGSsk3G4/w530-h640/1-Christmas+Story-Cover.jpg" width="530" /></a></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYgwjeevN7SpgMtX00NblKI5EXXhAxrYWV-O6EM9jsqa3C_21Kw87ZUUok2zaWGznTz4gdef2fA2H2WUrXxOomcJThvZOORqyz7FDxQdh5IXrCEiUGJD6me4OXVnxxmv-l-lrbdOnLMgE/s2048/2-Christmas+Story-Bios.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1329" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYgwjeevN7SpgMtX00NblKI5EXXhAxrYWV-O6EM9jsqa3C_21Kw87ZUUok2zaWGznTz4gdef2fA2H2WUrXxOomcJThvZOORqyz7FDxQdh5IXrCEiUGJD6me4OXVnxxmv-l-lrbdOnLMgE/w416-h640/2-Christmas+Story-Bios.jpg" width="416" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg67xQOOE4C00UbiG-izGSaE8rhnFSBfbv9j9_B5dxNs_0B0EgxspodgipVlF7pDafWYs-wAf79yM3W28n0H7J8rjVKNUrmckzN49SXS6Y43upgjZzuAjHgfB7eeCK75ZjWGeszV5fILt0/s2048/3-Christmas+Story-Mary.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1488" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg67xQOOE4C00UbiG-izGSaE8rhnFSBfbv9j9_B5dxNs_0B0EgxspodgipVlF7pDafWYs-wAf79yM3W28n0H7J8rjVKNUrmckzN49SXS6Y43upgjZzuAjHgfB7eeCK75ZjWGeszV5fILt0/w464-h640/3-Christmas+Story-Mary.jpg" width="464" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-_txLjC15r9hPsXhAp1XDHzYipLjDThQ5dIYsaMOy0mHz2s3NgHDbyYd8A-5_N4-9CPCMn9W0ufG-oIHHwzUS7ThpA_Imm1PlbtV7hxxMbSrlJ_IF7sN9VjsNV_yGg8AKIqMWbxQ3Ias/s2048/4-Christmas+Story-Mary+%2526+Joseph.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1379" data-original-width="2048" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-_txLjC15r9hPsXhAp1XDHzYipLjDThQ5dIYsaMOy0mHz2s3NgHDbyYd8A-5_N4-9CPCMn9W0ufG-oIHHwzUS7ThpA_Imm1PlbtV7hxxMbSrlJ_IF7sN9VjsNV_yGg8AKIqMWbxQ3Ias/w640-h430/4-Christmas+Story-Mary+%2526+Joseph.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlUGJDJqE98cqfKwrbzegAj99kEF0pc84WKiRCi_N5lVz0t3ivf2cF1rn-PKq-OWNn_HEgU6whGvWDD9trnPnQiXJmLk9dvADnvw4vCW8fK621x3lum8XoqkJQ3YNY_o6HH0Me94VsIds/s2048/5-Christmas+Story-Manger+Scene.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1366" data-original-width="2048" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlUGJDJqE98cqfKwrbzegAj99kEF0pc84WKiRCi_N5lVz0t3ivf2cF1rn-PKq-OWNn_HEgU6whGvWDD9trnPnQiXJmLk9dvADnvw4vCW8fK621x3lum8XoqkJQ3YNY_o6HH0Me94VsIds/w640-h426/5-Christmas+Story-Manger+Scene.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEnu4Nwg-E9684u_fsQzxr0VmgElh3kkBrtjYd5xPtrXCfSGoZYIXtvH-q0NULzx5jNnt5IUQbT9QTnE5GYyVO4KQg80pVoI6aNpQi7K4dNF3Wy2-KI8gr656OZcA5jW_LKmqeZxOYQtQ/s2048/6-Christmas+Story-Jesus.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1576" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEnu4Nwg-E9684u_fsQzxr0VmgElh3kkBrtjYd5xPtrXCfSGoZYIXtvH-q0NULzx5jNnt5IUQbT9QTnE5GYyVO4KQg80pVoI6aNpQi7K4dNF3Wy2-KI8gr656OZcA5jW_LKmqeZxOYQtQ/w492-h640/6-Christmas+Story-Jesus.jpg" width="492" /></a></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Nearly every American child from the 1940s to today knows and remembers Little Golden Books, a series that began as a joint venture between Simon and Schuster and Western Printing and Lithographing Company. The books in this series are and were loved and treasured, and they have sold millions of copies since their beginning in 1942.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ten years later, Simon and Schuster published <i>The Christmas Story</i>, written by Jane Werner and illustrated by Eloise Wilkin. Jane Werner's prose and Eloise Wilkin's pictures are tender and sensitive and well suited to children. An example appears on the first page of <i>The Christmas Story</i>:</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><blockquote><span style="font-family: georgia;">This is Mary, a girl of Galilee.</span></blockquote><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><blockquote style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"> She lived long years ago, but such a wonderful thing happened to her that we remember and love her still.</span></blockquote><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">". . .we remember and love her still." </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">The book and the story behind it are stories of love, joy, and devotion. The Christmas story, one of love, is also one that will never end.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Elsa Jane Werner</b> was born on </span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">July 11, 1915, in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin High School as salutatorian in 1931 and the University of Wisconsin in 1936. (One of her classmates was writer and biographer <b>Maurice Zolotow</b>.) Elsa Jane Werner taught English and social science in Sheboygan for a year. By 1939, she was working for Western Printing in Racine, Wisconsin, where she would go on to write scores of Little Golden Books, beginning with <i>Noah's Ark</i> in 1943. She was also an editor, and as her brief biography in <i>The Christmas Story</i> reads, she supervised the line of Golden Books from the Walt Disney Studio. In 1954, she married <b>Earnest C. Watson</b> (1892-1970), a very prominent physicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The couple lived in Santa Barbara and in India. Jane Werner Watson survived her husband by more than a quarter of a century. She died on April 9, 2004, in Santa Barbara.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Eloise Wilkin</b> was born <b>Eloise Margaret Burns</b> on March 30, 1904, in Rochester, New York. When she was toddler, her family moved to New York City. They moved back to Rochester when she was fifteen, and she graduated from </span></span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Rochester Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute in 1923. She supported herself as a freelance artist in New York City for four years before marrying <b>Sidney J. Wilkin</b> (1899-1964) in 1930. "I was never driven to have a career," she said. "Family life was always my first interest," and so she stopped working full time as an artist in order to raise a family, which would eventually number four children and many grandchildren. (1)</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In 1938, Eloise Wilkin's sister, Esther (sometimes spelled <i>Ester</i>) asked her to draw the pictures for a book she had written called <i>Mrs. Peregrine and the Yak</i>. It was Eloise's first children's book and the start of a new career that would carry her through to the end of her life. In 1944, she began illustrating books for Western Printing and had forty-seven titles in all for the company. Jane Werner Watson called her </span></span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"the soul of Little Golden Books." (2) Eloise also designed dolls and counted <b>Nikita Khrushchev</b> among her fans. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="text-align: left;">Eloise M. Burns Wilkin, a devout Christian, died on October 4, 1987, in Brighton, New York. </span><span style="text-align: left;">Incidentally, her sister, author <b>Esther M. Burns</b> (1902-1985), married the brother of Sidney Wilkin, <b>George A. Wilkin</b> (1901-1987).</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Notes</b></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">(1) Quoted in "Eloise Wilkin: A Portrait" in the <i>Lancaster Eagle-Gazette</i> (Lancaster, Ohio), December 15, 1979, page 9.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="text-align: left;">(2) Quoted by Eloise Wilkin's daughter, </span><span style="text-align: left;"><b>Deborah Wilkin Springett</b>, in her introduction for <i>Eloise Wilkin Stories</i> (2005).</span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The fourth and fifth images shown above include depictions of Joseph, the patron saint of fathers. I show it here in the year that my own father has died. This will be our first Christmas without him. St. Joseph is also the patron of happy deaths. I can't say that my father's death was happy, but he died in his sleep, apparently at peace and without pain, and to join my mother, his wife, who went before him and perhaps prepared his way.</span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-large;"><b><span style="color: red;">Merry</span> <span style="color: #274e13;">Christmas</span></b></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-large;"><b>&</b></span></p><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-large;"><b><span style="color: #3d85c6;">Happy New Year to All!</span></b></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Copyright 2020, 2023 Terence E. Hanley</span></p>Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-478048435461583342020-07-25T11:42:00.003-04:002021-05-01T19:07:59.557-04:00Al Price (1924-1994)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Alvin Mefford Price</b> was born on July 19, 1924, near Georgetown, Kentucky. His parents were Emerson Mefford (1882-1929), a sharecropping farmer, and Nellie B. (Johnson) Mefford (dates unknown). Alvin was the third of their seven children.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Alvin's father died when he was four years old. His mother tried to keep the family together, "[b]ut it was more than she could do," Alvin remembered. "My oldest brother was big enough to work on the land, so she kept him. Four of us were sent to the orphanage in Louisville. My name was Alvin Mefford when I went to the orphanage."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When he was in the fourth grade, Alvin was adopted by Mrs. Carrie Price, a school dietician, and her husband, a hotel janitor. He took their surname and became Alvin Mefford Price. He later shortened it to just Al Price.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Price first went to Louisville Central High School, then, when his family moved, to Northwestern High School in Detroit. He played tennis and basketball and served on the student council. He also won a National Scholastic award for a picture he had painted in his junior year. Price attended summer school every summer and graduated from high school in just three years.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">World war came and in September 1943 Price enlisted in the U.S. Army. Recognizing his artistic talent, the army sent him to art school at McDill Field in Florida, then to Greenville Army Air Field in Greenville, Mississippi, where he and two other artists designed posters. Price was transferred to Hawaii, then to Guam, where he spent thirteen months before returning home to be separated in 1946. Price served another year in the army from July 1952 to July 1953.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As his biography in <i>Haunted by a Paintbrush</i> (above) says, Al Price studied at Wayne University (now Wayne State University) in Detroit, also at several art schools. He was an illustrator, painter, and muralist. In addition to appearing in many magazines, his paintings and drawings were and are in <i>Illinois Negro History Makers</i> (1969), at the Coleman Branch of the Chicago Public Library, and possibly also in the DuSable</span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> Museum of African American History in Chicago, co-founded by his friend and associate <b>Margaret Burroughs</b> (1915-2010).</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Price lived in Chicago for many years. In addition to his work as a commercial artist and fine artist, he was also a teacher, and he was deeply involved in the art scene in his adopted hometown, more specifically the art scene that included black artists <b>Bernard Goss</b> (1913-1966), <b>Anna McCullough Tyler</b> (1930-2009), <b>Alfred J. "Al" Tyler</b> (1933-2011), <b>Vincent Saunders, Jr.</b> (1916-2005), <b>Benny Horton</b> (dates unknown), and <b>Sylvester Britton</b> (1926-2009).</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Al Price died on January 15, 1994, probably in Chicago. He was sixty-nine years old.</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I found Al Price's autobiography <i>Haunted by a Paintbrush: A True Story</i> (1968) at a local secondhand store yesterday, and what a treasure it is--a treasure not only because of its smallness and its several pen-and-ink illustrations but also because it is a story for children about overcoming adversity and persevering in pursuit of one's dreams.</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The images above are from that book. From top to bottom they are:</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1. The front cover, which shows the artist in a double self-portrait, as an adult and as a child, with themes and motifs that reappear in the interior, the handmade hobby horse and the artist's easel.</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">2. An illustration showing Al Price in childhood with one of his sisters, possibly his older sister Sallie. The names on the wall are of his other siblings, Ella and Billy. Note the hobby horse and other homemade toys.</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">3. A biography of Al Price, prepared, I presume, by <b>Margaret Friskey</b> (1901-1995), editor of Childrens Press of Chicago and the person responsible for the publication of <i>Haunted by a Paintbrush</i>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">4. A photograph by <b>Robert Vandiver</b> of Al Price in his studio with one of his paintings. The painting is unidentified, but it has an obvious heroic quality. The man's slight dress, the manacle on his left wrist, and the shackle on his left ankle suggest that he is a slave now freed. It looks like he is casting down a round object, but what is it?</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The self-portrait on the cover and the photograph both show Price with brushes in his right hand, but after badly injuring that hand in a fall from a scaffold, he had to learn to paint with his left hand, and that's what he did for more than half of his life.</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I'm afraid I couldn't find any images of Al Price's paintings or murals on the Internet, and that's a shame. We shouldn't forget artists and their works. I'm happy to have this chance to remember Al Price and to show once again a little of his very fine artwork.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Original text copyright 2020 Terence E. Hanley</span></div>
Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-67003029963302845842018-11-14T18:23:00.002-05:002021-04-01T12:58:01.232-04:00Carolyn Haywood (1898-1990)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Carolyn Haywood lived a very long life and wrote dozens of books beloved by children. She was born Mary Carolyn Haywood on January 3, 1898, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Charles and Mary Emma (Cook) Haywood. Her brother George Biddle Haywood, with whom she lived later in life, came along after her on October 2, 1901. (He also served in the U.S. Army during World War II.) Carolyn was an artist before she was a published author. She studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and, as the book jacket bio above tells us, under three pupils of Howard Pyle, who was called the father of illustration in America. Her first book was <i>B is for Betsy</i>, published by Harcourt Brace in 1939. The book jacket bio here is from <i>Back to School with Betsy</i>, dedicated to her brother George and published in 1943. Late in life, Carolyn wrote several books about Christmas, including <i>Merry Christmas from Betsy</i> (1970), <i>Merry Christmas from Eddie</i> (1986), <i>Santa Claus Forever!</i> (1982), and <i>How the Reindeer Saved Santa </i>(1986). Carolyn Haywood died on January 11, 1990, a little more than a week after her ninety-second birthday.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Text copyright 2018 Terence E. Hanley</span></div>
Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-89372067145555195532017-11-11T18:30:00.004-05:002021-04-01T12:59:01.190-04:00N. Roy Clifton (1909-1985)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Norman Roy Clifton was born on September 17, 1909, in Sheerness, Kent, England. His parents were Irish-born but lived in England. They emigrated in the census year of 1911 and were in Winnipeg, in the Province of Manitoba, in the Canadian census year of 1921. Mr. Clifton was on the move again during a census year in 1930, when he crossed from Canada into the United States. He was enumerated that year in Manhattan but was without employment in the first full year of the Great Depression. The book jacket biography above, from Mr. Clifton's book <i>The Figure in Film</i> (1983), gives the facts regarding his career. Educated in England, Winnipeg, and Auckland, New Zealand, N. Roy Clifton worked as a lawyer, educator, and librarian. He was also keenly interested in theater, film, and square dancing. According to a source on the Internet, Clifton taught geography at Richmond Hill High School, presumably in Richmond Hill, Ontario, in the 1950s and '60s. According to that same source, he died in 1985</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In addition to being a poet and an author of non-fiction, Mr. Clifton wrote a children's novel called <i>The City Beyond the Gates</i>, illustrated by Tibor Kovalik and published by Scholastic-TAB Publications in 1977. It's an odd book and written in an odd way. The language, imagery, and themes are are a mix of the poetic, allegorical, dreamy, fabulous, absurdist, and surrealistic. It is in fact a dystopian novel, an unusual genre for children. It must surely be one of the earliest books of its kind written specifically for children. By the way, the illustrator, Tibor Kovalik, was born in 1935 in what was then Czechoslovakia. He emigrated to Canada in 1968 and has worked as an artist, art director, and art teacher. You can find his self-titled website at this link: <a href="http://www.tiborkovalik.com/personal.en.php">http://www.tiborkovalik.com/personal.en.php</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Updated November 13, 2018</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Original text copyright 2017 Terence E. Hanley</span></div>
Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-80994217349093948892016-12-11T00:00:00.000-05:002017-11-11T18:36:40.177-05:00Ross Lockridge, Jr. (1914-1948)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Today, December 11, 2016, is the two-hundredth birthday of the State of Indiana. I had hoped to be within the bounds of my home state for the occasion. Instead I will observe it from a distance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">There was once a Golden Age of Literature in Indiana. The bulk of that age came closer to the beginning of the Hoosier State than to our own time. Its luminaries--<b>Booth Tarkington</b>, <b>Maurice Thompson</b>, <b>George Barr McCutcheon</b>, <b>Edward Eggleston</b>, <b>Meredith Nicholson</b>, <b>James Whitcomb Riley</b>, <b>Gene Stratton Porter</b>--are now largely forgotten to readers outside the state. Indiana's prominent writers since the Golden Age can hardly be called a group. Rather, they are scattershot and include men and women as disparate as <b>Jessamyn West</b> (1902-1984) and <b>Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. </b>(1922-2007) or <b>Philip José Farmer</b> (1918-2009) and <b>James Alexander Thom</b> (b. 1933).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">No one can say what the Great Indiana Novel might be, if there has ever been one. One candidate--in fact, one candidate for the larger honorific of Great <i>American</i> Novel--is <i>Raintree County</i> by <b>Ross Lockridge, Jr.</b>, published in 1948 by Houghton Mifflin. Born on April 25, 1914, in Bloomington, Indiana, Lockridge was prodigious in his powers as a student, scholar, and writer. Before <i>Raintree County</i>, he pounded out a 400-page poem called <i>The Dream of the Flesh of Iron</i> and a 2,000-page fragment of a novel with the working title <i>American Lives</i>, neither of which has since been published. In starting over with a new novel--what would become <i>Raintree County</i>--he simply turned over the pages of <i>American Lives</i> and began typing on the reverse side.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In the making for half a decade and originally extending to 600,000 words, <i>Raintree County</i> was generally well received in its time. The <i>New York Times</i> liked it. <i>The New Yorker</i>, on the other hand, did not. There is reason to believe that the unfavorable opinion of that magazine precipitated Lockridge's suicide on the same day that it appeared in his hometown Bloomington newspaper, on March 6, 1948. Lockridge's novel had been in print only two months when he asphyxiated himself with the exhaust from his car. He left behind a wife and four children, among other family members. He also left behind his lone novel, running, in the Book-of-the-Month Club edition shown here, to 1,066 pages. In that he joined Harper Lee and others whose fame rests almost entirely on one book.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Raintree County</i> was adapted to the silver screen in 1957. Of the principal actors, which included Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Eva Marie Saint, Nigel Patrick, Lee Marvin, Rod Taylor, and Agnes Moorehead, only <b>Russell Collins</b> (1897-1965) hailed from Indiana. Despite being set in the Hoosier State, the movie was filmed in the South, in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi. Like many of the works of Mississippi's own </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">William Faulkner, </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Raintree County</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> is set in a fictional locale. Both Faulkner and Lockridge provided maps of their respective fictional counties in their respective novels. In his prodigious output, Lockridge bore some resemblance, too, to Thomas Wolfe, another Southern author. I might add that I have been to the homes of both Faulkner and Wolfe. (Both were closed for repairs or renovations when I was there.) As for Ross Lockridge, Jr., I can't say that I have been to his home. However, I very often drive through Straughn, situated on beautiful flat ground along U.S. Highway 40, the National Road, in Henry County, Indiana, and the basis for Lockridge's fictional town of Waycross. I can't say, either, that I have seen the mythical golden raintree supposed to have been planted near there by <b>Johnny Appleseed</b>, who has his own final connection to Indiana by having been buried in Fort Wayne. Lastly, I would like to mention Lockridge's cousin, the author <b>Mary Jane Ward</b> (1905-1981) of Fairmount, Indiana, who wrote <i>The Snake Pit</i> (1946) and other novels. That book, too, was adapted to film, in 1948, and it, too, featured a Hoosier, actress <b>Beulah Bondi</b> (1889-1981) of Valparaiso.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So, Happy Birthday, Indiana, the Land of Indians, the Hoosier State, my home state, and a place of which Hoosiers are and can be justly proud.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Original text copyright 2016 Terence E. Hanley</span></div>
Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-83486080760674095262016-07-03T09:49:00.002-04:002021-04-01T12:59:40.794-04:00E. Harper Johnson (1920s-2016)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I have written before about E. Harper Johnson, but at the time I knew only a little about him. The book-jacket biography above tells a little more than that, but more of what I know now comes from Mr. Johnson's granddaughter Kisha, who has generously provided more information on him in her comments on my <a href="http://bookjacketbios.blogspot.com/2012/11/e-harper-johnson-burl-ives.html#comment-form" target="_blank">original article</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">E. Harper Johnson was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1920s. He was a painter, muralist, cartoonist, and illustrator who lived and worked in New York, Africa, and I believe the Arabian Peninsula. His art training came at the American Academy, the National Academy, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Mr. Johnson's illustrations and cartoons appeared in newspapers, magazines, and more than 100 books. The illustrations and book-jacket biography above are from <i>The Story of George Washington Carver</i> by Arna Bontemps (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1954). Like the subject and the illustrator of his book, Arna Bontemps (1902-1973) was a black southerner and a man of great accomplishment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Harper Johnson was married to Mildred Anita Johnson and to Salma Tahira Malik (1928-1979). He died on March 24, 2016. I hope to find more on E. Harper Johnson, his life, and his work. I invite and welcome comments and email messages.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Original text copyright 2016 Terence E. Hanley</span></div>
Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-91765087691882744512016-03-10T21:09:00.001-05:002021-05-01T19:06:02.911-04:00Morrie Turner (1923-2014)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Morris Nolton "Morrie" Turner was born on December 11, 1923, in Oakland, California. He served as a mechanic with the Tuskegee Airman during World War II and contributed to <i>Stars and Stripes</i>, the newspaper of the Armed Forces. In the 1960s, he traveled with other cartoonists to entertain the troops in Vietnam.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Turner began drawing cartoons and comic strips in the mid 1960s, mostly for the <i>Chicago Defender</i>, a black newspaper. Titles included <i>Dinky Fellas</i> (1964-1965), <i>Press Gremlins</i> (1964-1965), <i>Reverend Smiley</i> (1964-1965), <i>Sepia Smiles</i> (1964-1965), <i>Dogbert</i> (1965-1969), and <i>Classified Chuckles</i> (1966-1969). In 1965, Turner's syndicate rebranded <i>Dinky Fellas</i> as <i>Wee Pals</i>, the comic strip for which he will always be known. <i>Wee Pals</i> began on February 15, 1965, and is still running today, two years after the cartoonist's death.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Morrie Turner was a friend of Charles Schulz and Bil Keane, two other cartoonists of childhood. His <i>Wee Pals</i> is very much like <i>Peanuts</i>, with a large cast of kids who have their own distinct personalities, backgrounds, dress, and interests. It was and is a great strip. By the way, Nipper, the boy with the soul food stand on the cover of <i>Doing Their Thing</i>, wore a <i>Confederate</i> cap, though without the crossed swords. When asked why, he replies,"'Cause I'm non-violent!"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Morrie Turner died on January 25, 2014, in Sacramento, California.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Text copyright 2016 Terence E. Hanley</span></div>
Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-55752374003189039142015-12-15T06:00:00.000-05:002016-03-10T21:11:47.467-05:00Jack Matthews (1925-2013)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">It's Christmastime, but here in the Midwest it's more like spring. I have seen snowdrops, dandelions, violets, and forsythia in bloom. Robins are still hanging together in flocks, but they have been singing their spring songs, though only a few notes. I doubt they have mistaken the season or feel any embarrassment for it. Robins, in their boldness, seem incapable of that. It may be that they hold their songs at the ready and are simply trying out for a debut that is still three months away.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">It was a colder season forty-eight years ago today when the Silver Bridge came down. Forty-six people died that day, on the bridge and in the waters of the Ohio River. Even now, in the area of Point Pleasant and across the river in Gallipolis, Ohio, there are people who remember the disaster or knew or are related to someone who died there. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Jack Matthews was born in Columbus, Ohio, but had roots in Gallia County, of which Gallipolis is the seat of government. Matthews' father came into the world on a Gallia County farm. I don't know that Jack Matthews knew or was related to anyone who died in the Silver Bridge disaster, but he took on the identity of a fictional survivor in his novel <i>Beyond the Bridge</i>, from 1970. The book jacket biography above is from that novel.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Beyond the Bridge</i> is brief but dense and complex, a much different book than Matthews' first novel, <i>Hanger Stout, Awake!</i> (1967), which is more a song of innocence than of experience. <i>Beyond the Bridge</i> takes the form of a diary of a man who has put his old life behind him and assumed a new one on the other side of the river--beyond the bridge--in West Virginia. The book ends with an entry for July 18, 1968--four days before Jack Matthews' forty-third birthday--as the protagonist sets out to cross another bridge and begin another diary.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">In <i>Beyond the Bridge</i>, Matthews' diarist is friends with a fallen preacher named Harlan and becomes the lover of a local woman, Billie Sue, who knows all the superstitions of Appalachia. The diarist, Neil, writes of himself and Billie Sue:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> Only before we went to sleep, I myself wondered why I should be so interested in these silly superstitions and Harlan's insane theology.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"> I couldn't figure it out, except for the possibility that I could feel human breath in them. And I can't help feeling close to people who have long been dead, and have no other voice left. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">(p. 138)</span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">I like to think that those who are gone still have a voice, even if it's one we can no longer hear. But if Jack Matthews' only remaining voice for us--whether we are vast seas or merely islands of readership--is in his books, then I must share the feeling of his diarist, that of being "close to people who have long been dead, and have no other voice left." His books speak, have the breath of life in them, and, though their author has been gone two years now, still live.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Original text copyright 2015 Terence E. Hanley</span></div>
Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-37290097525046637322015-12-04T17:22:00.003-05:002021-05-01T19:08:13.705-04:00Steele Savage (1898-1970)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Harry Steele Savage was born on December 21, 1898, in Central Lake, Michigan. According to his biography in <i>The Rainbow Book of Bible Stories</i> (The World Publishing Company, 1956, shown above), he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Slade School in London, and in Vienna and Paris. He designed the sets and costumes for <i>Caviar</i>, a musical comedy than ran for twenty performances at the Forrest Theatre in New York in 1934. Savage was also a designer of furniture, and he created at least one poster design during World War II.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Steele Savage is most well known as an illustrator of books, especially on mythology, history, and the Bible. He also created the covers for many science fiction novels of the 1960s and '70s. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">The illustrations above, from <i>The Rainbow Book of Bible Stories</i> by J. Harold Gwynne (1956), show Savage's style, which can be described as a kind of magical realism. Savage's other credits include:</span></div>
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<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>The Decameron of Boccaccio</i> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">(Blue Ribbon Books, 1931)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>The Arabian Nights</i> edited by Bennett Cerf (Triangle Books, 1932)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>The Droll Stories of Honoré de Balzac</i> (1932)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>No Other Man</i> by Alfred Noyes (1940)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Stories of the Gods and Heroes</i> by Sally Benson (1940)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes</i> by Edith Hamilton (1942)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Throne of the World</i> by Louis de Wohl (1949)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>The Wild Party</i> by Joseph Moncure March (1949)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Adventures with the Giants</i> by Catherine F. Sellew (1950)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Adventures with the Heroes</i> by Catherine F. Sellew (1954)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>The Life of Christ</i> by the Abbé Constant Fouard (1954)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>The Token</i> by Samuel Shellabarger (1955)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>The Golden Library Book of Bible Stories</i> by Jonathan Braddock (1956)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Martin Luther</i> by Henry Emerson Fosdick (1956)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>The Adventures of Ulysses</i> by Gerald Gottlieb (1959)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Little Golden Book of Airplanes</i> by Ruth Mabee Lachman (1959) </span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Life in the Ancient World</i> by Bart Winer (1961)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>The Virginian</i> by Owen Wister (Scholastic, 1964)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Golden Blood</i> by Jack Williamson (1967)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>The Well of the Unicorn</i> by Fletcher Pratt (1967)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Breakthrough</i> by Richard Cowper (1969)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Between Planets</i> by Robert A. Heinlein (1970)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Have Spacesuit, Will Travel</i> by Robert A. Heinlein (1970)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Rocket Ship Galileo</i> by Robert A. Heinlein (1970)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>The Long Result</i> by John Brunner (1970)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>The Rolling Stones</i> by Robert A. Heinlein (1970)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>The Sorcerer's Skull</i> by David Mason (1970)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>The Squares of the City</i> by John Brunner (1970)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>The Star Beast</i> by Robert A. Heinlein (1970)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Time for the Stars</i> by Robert A. Heinlein (1970)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Starbreed</i> by Martha deMey Clow (1970)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>The Whole Man</i> by John Brunner (1970)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Anti-Man</i> by Dean R. Koontz (1970)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>The Citadel of Fear</i> by <a href="http://tellersofweirdtales.blogspot.com/2015/03/francis-stevens-1883-1948.html">Francis Stevens</a> (1970)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Black in Time</i> by John Jakes (1970)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Report on Probability A</i> by Brian W. Aldiss (1970)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Tunnel in the Sky</i> by Robert A. Heinlein (1970)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Barrier World</i> by Louis Charbonneau (1970)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>World's Bible Story Library</i> by J. Harold Gwynne (a multi-volume reissue of <i>The Rainbow Book of Bible Stories</i>, 1970)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Red Planet</i> by Robert A. Heinlein (1971)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Stand on Zanzibar</i> by John Brunner (1972)</span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"><i>Hurlbut's Story of the Bible</i> (revised edition) by Jesse Lyman Hurlburt (1974)</span></li>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">This list is not necessarily complete.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Steele Savage lived in New York for much of his career. He died on December 5, 1970, at age seventy-one. You can read a little more about him on my blog, <i>Tellers of Weird Tales</i>, <a href="http://tellersofweirdtales.blogspot.com/2014/04/john-giunta-update.html">here</a>. Part of the book list above is from the <i>Internet Speculative Fiction Database</i>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">Original text copyright 2015 Terence E. Hanley</span></div>
Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-85098661858617813662015-05-06T21:34:00.000-04:002017-11-11T18:37:31.890-05:00Robert J. Serling (1918-2010)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigXcaZyS8Zi_tWieS9WewEYMTnMOm7ZeCuwB6Itkj47BP3uWPRnx0wPArGEfIrOyZ_5Yn9OUTBEFqVrglwH5vT8NttYpQsOr0rQXyWh3LEYJDDqjM6l8_v2-MnYkXOMOo4addfPiTa3bk/s1600/BJB-Serling-Front.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigXcaZyS8Zi_tWieS9WewEYMTnMOm7ZeCuwB6Itkj47BP3uWPRnx0wPArGEfIrOyZ_5Yn9OUTBEFqVrglwH5vT8NttYpQsOr0rQXyWh3LEYJDDqjM6l8_v2-MnYkXOMOo4addfPiTa3bk/s1600/BJB-Serling-Front.jpeg" width="210" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghkWoNJ7-Jwx_kPbUVrbbj2Av7QYciUJIzT395GbLnt86LT5fhAiwwmUY5PS2cuFDHH8lp21TNmmq4r_CPvfkHdHgIAJdcgd_65ya5pItfVR9rp5To8n54bexGyWQCcvqC1xo0l9biz_M/s1600/BJB-Serling-Back.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghkWoNJ7-Jwx_kPbUVrbbj2Av7QYciUJIzT395GbLnt86LT5fhAiwwmUY5PS2cuFDHH8lp21TNmmq4r_CPvfkHdHgIAJdcgd_65ya5pItfVR9rp5To8n54bexGyWQCcvqC1xo0l9biz_M/s1600/BJB-Serling-Back.jpeg" width="416" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Robert J. Serling was born Jerome Robert Serling on March 28, 1918, in Cortland, New York, and grew up in Binghamton with his younger brother, Rod Serling of <i>Twilight Zone</i> fame. Both men served in the U.S. Army during World War II, and both attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Robert Serling spent twenty-three years covering the airline industry for the United Press International. <i>The Probable Cause: The Truth about Air Travel Today</i>, published in 1960, was the first of his twenty-five books. Most were non-fiction involving aviation, but Serling also wrote five published novels including <i>The President's Plane Is Missing</i> from 1967. The mystery of a missing airliner is nothing new to readers of 2015. Robert J. Serling died five years ago today, on May 6, 2010. He was ninety-two years old.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Photo by Alex Gotfryd</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Jacket design by Al Nagy</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Text copyright 2015 Terence E. Hanley</span>Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-27755593297096676132014-11-11T13:25:00.000-05:002017-11-11T18:38:11.556-05:00Jack Matthews (1925-2013)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLgV1J_O8tFjepibMw8OJPwfU7fXKOqklwz44-gh2nghRJBqNNNLJEusISFvoUluYkhRiIObBIIeFjGzy7pkZuZ9klLyj6fotr6upwS4As9IesEFWWWggUXl3iqhD5QmBEAS5OEtzX3ls/s1600/BJB-Matthews,+Jack-Charisma+Campaigns+Cover.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLgV1J_O8tFjepibMw8OJPwfU7fXKOqklwz44-gh2nghRJBqNNNLJEusISFvoUluYkhRiIObBIIeFjGzy7pkZuZ9klLyj6fotr6upwS4As9IesEFWWWggUXl3iqhD5QmBEAS5OEtzX3ls/s640/BJB-Matthews,+Jack-Charisma+Campaigns+Cover.jpeg" width="435" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRuQSBAW-qQx5d8IzlY8cQFichrcZzqD9uEqbLRVWUx1XRKYkTCYYrahae5sLlqiPU6rMZ8BXd0eM676kkJQj6-StdZGSn8JCxAua-kym-DUqFI9_v0PSu0Nxd0pZeF0S5YuXw7sO5bhk/s1600/BJB-Matthews,+Jack-Charisma+Campaigns+Back+Flap.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRuQSBAW-qQx5d8IzlY8cQFichrcZzqD9uEqbLRVWUx1XRKYkTCYYrahae5sLlqiPU6rMZ8BXd0eM676kkJQj6-StdZGSn8JCxAua-kym-DUqFI9_v0PSu0Nxd0pZeF0S5YuXw7sO5bhk/s640/BJB-Matthews,+Jack-Charisma+Campaigns+Back+Flap.jpeg" width="283" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Jack Matthews has been gone for almost a year now and the world is a diminished place. This past weekend, I went to the book sale at the Athens County Public Library, a place he frequented, and found one of his books, <i>The Charisma Campaigns</i> from 1972. I read the book straight through last night. I must say what a pleasure it is to read the work of Jack Matthews. On every page, you will find a gem of a sentence, scene, insight, or line of dialogue or description. <i>The Charisma Campaigns</i> is one of the funniest books I have ever read, but you would be wrong to think that because it's funny, it's also a bit of fluff. The book reminds me a little of <i>Portnoy's Complaint</i>, another very funny book that turns out to be serious in its intent. It comes as no surprise to me that Walker Percy nominated <i>The Charisma Campaigns</i> for a National Book Award. Like Jack Matthews, Walker Percy was a writer who was at once funny and serious. <i>The Charisma Campaigns</i> reminds me of a Percy novel (or one by Saul Bellow) in which a man in his middle years finds himself in crisis. There is even a bit of one of Percy's favorite topics, semiotics, in Mr. Matthews' book. Oddly enough--and of interest to the Appalachian Ohio reader--there is also mention of Ambrose Bierce (a native of Meigs County) and the collapse of the Silver Bridge. Odder still, for me, there is a kind of coincidence in reading about the protagonist's eccentric brother, who keeps his collection in a number of railroad cars on his property, and of the death last week of former U.S. Representative Phillip Crane, whose father, George Crane, moved a railroad car onto his family farm in Hillsboro, Indiana, where it remains.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The photograph above is from before Jack Matthews' fiftieth birthday and shows him smoking a cigar--perhaps a Dutch Masters panatella--and sporting a string tie like his <i>Charisma Campaigns</i> protagonist, Regius "Rex" McCoy.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The events in the book come to an end in October, a month just passed and one of nostalgia and bittersweetness. Jack Matthews died in November 2013, nearly a year ago as I write this. He inscribed the copy of his book that I found this weekend in December 1975, almost forty years ago now. As Mattie Ross in <i>True Grit</i> says, "Time just gets away from us." You might say also that it does away with us, but Jack Matthews will go on living in the memories of the people who knew him (or like me, knew of him), and when we are all gone, in his books, which are so full of life and living.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Original text copyright 2014 Terence E. Hanley</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Photograph by Max Schaible</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Jacket design by Lawrence Ratzkin</span></div>
Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-38670342547789115842014-10-06T19:42:00.000-04:002017-11-11T18:38:25.412-05:00Armstrong Sperry (1897-1976)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw2eL1CY2-Hd-wP43rvkKyTSXcIqmBH-5cA6L6awXi0v4Vv25MAuynYzoHvfqN-8dZhk487VKftBAtDK6-Zxx6St5RYt6AFskoJT7k4i69O5-NHV2xZ3CFFfhTlzm0WbBSp3jzmoKJ6-c/s1600/BJB-Sperry,+Armstrong-Front+Cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw2eL1CY2-Hd-wP43rvkKyTSXcIqmBH-5cA6L6awXi0v4Vv25MAuynYzoHvfqN-8dZhk487VKftBAtDK6-Zxx6St5RYt6AFskoJT7k4i69O5-NHV2xZ3CFFfhTlzm0WbBSp3jzmoKJ6-c/s1600/BJB-Sperry,+Armstrong-Front+Cover.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDD0RMkHE7fKJ4fMO0GRiaATfFuYDkGr_mUuPxFxecWhlWqyf_6cblocrztlpOonocIooKuaPe7_EubXBuSVqfv0bSS-Pmc4RDLkK_Bhz5pekZj-Jv8d0r3maeX0dG8G8x1v9kWysvosQ/s1600/BJB-Sperry,+Armstrong-Back+Flap.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDD0RMkHE7fKJ4fMO0GRiaATfFuYDkGr_mUuPxFxecWhlWqyf_6cblocrztlpOonocIooKuaPe7_EubXBuSVqfv0bSS-Pmc4RDLkK_Bhz5pekZj-Jv8d0r3maeX0dG8G8x1v9kWysvosQ/s1600/BJB-Sperry,+Armstrong-Back+Flap.jpg" width="250" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Armstrong Wells Sperry was born on November 7, 1897, in New Haven, Connecticut, and attended the Yale School of Art and the Art Students League. During World War I he served in the U.S. Navy, and in the 1920s he traveled in the South Seas. Returning to New York City, Sperry found work as a commercial artist and illustrator. His first book for children was published in 1933. <i>Call It Courage</i> was awarded the Newbery Medal in 1941.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The book shown here, <i>The Amazon: River Sea of Brazil</i>, is from 1961 and a series called "Rivers of the World Books." It is illustrated with photographs and with maps by Sam Galy. The jacket design is by Ernest Kurt Barth.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Armstrong Sperry died on April 26, 1976, at age seventy-eight.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Original text copyright 2014 Terence E. Hanley</span></div>
Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-81511973517190474742014-07-07T22:25:00.001-04:002021-05-01T19:08:27.621-04:00Anne Marie Jauss (1902-1991)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkTtrkkBBkyFoXN2qKTFsmOGHBYie3rkuj5PVvrTLfKD9uXhhUWr1_9mMpNjfw2z8bBWIsQe15N6xE9_0HzuMXCDEB6FMOuo5gP-cG_BHAwaRXDuk_4i1Euk2iF96Lw5d5KkBs4DcFbH8/s1600/BJB-Jauss,+Anne+Marie-Front+Cover.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkTtrkkBBkyFoXN2qKTFsmOGHBYie3rkuj5PVvrTLfKD9uXhhUWr1_9mMpNjfw2z8bBWIsQe15N6xE9_0HzuMXCDEB6FMOuo5gP-cG_BHAwaRXDuk_4i1Euk2iF96Lw5d5KkBs4DcFbH8/s1600/BJB-Jauss,+Anne+Marie-Front+Cover.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh80q2Bpm1uqsPLJdomdmxvESW7cEUDv8-lpdzz9GDi_JSZvpA9XanVvmsblSmm78LdLlicd5bCe1wBaNWBFNavFsSPlnfE-qoDDrIdZeANzzlA_RpLO7cNBeVk-x4O5zxKFSrcL5P9QQY/s1600/BJB-Jauss,+Anne+Marie-Bio+and+Photo.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh80q2Bpm1uqsPLJdomdmxvESW7cEUDv8-lpdzz9GDi_JSZvpA9XanVvmsblSmm78LdLlicd5bCe1wBaNWBFNavFsSPlnfE-qoDDrIdZeANzzlA_RpLO7cNBeVk-x4O5zxKFSrcL5P9QQY/s1600/BJB-Jauss,+Anne+Marie-Bio+and+Photo.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Anne Marie Jauss, daughter of two painters, Georg Jauss and Caroline Jauss, was born in Munich on February 3, 1902. She studied in Munich, Merano, and Stuttgart, then at the State School of Applied Arts in Munich. Anne Marie became a painter and was noticed in her home city and in Berlin, but in 1932, fearing the coming Nazi regime, she emigrated to Portugal, where she remained for fourteen years. Living in and around Lisbon, she made her living as a painter, illustrator, interior architect, designer, and ceramic artist. In 1946, she removed to New York, afterwards to New Jersey, where she built a house in 1962 and where she lived out the rest of her days. Anne Marie illustrated more than seventy books, mostly children's books. One, <i>The Pasture</i>, was her own, and she won a prize for it. Anne Marie Jauss died on September 13, 1991, in Milford, New Jersey, at age eighty-nine.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Original text copyright 2014 Terence E. Hanley</span></div>
Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-82886676160286942852014-02-09T11:34:00.000-05:002017-11-11T18:38:47.695-05:00Jack Matthews (1925-2013)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I learned yesterday that Jack Matthews died last year. I regret that I didn't know about his death until yesterday. I regret more that I never knew him, although I saw him often for several years. John Harold Matthews was born on July 22, 1925, in Columbus, Ohio. His <i>r</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>é</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>sumé</i> alone makes interesting reading, but you can find that on your own. Mr. Matthews was a novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, essayist, professor of English, and book collector. He was a regular at the local library book sale. Always in good humor, he spoke to everyone he knew and some he didn't. Invariably he wore a sport coat and a bolo tie. Jack Matthews died on Thanksgiving morning, November 28, 2013. I was away and didn't learn of his passing until yesterday when I picked up one of his books at the library. It is called <i>Hanger Stout, Awake!</i>, and it was Jack Matthews' first novel, published in 1967. I have read the first chapter and I am hooked--or maybe I should say I'm hanging on each word.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Jacket design by Robin Sherwood</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Original text copyright 2014 Terence E. Hanley</span></div>
Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-83521401617711825072013-12-10T16:23:00.001-05:002021-05-01T19:06:58.376-04:00Carl Fallberg (1915-1996)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Cartoonist, writer, and railroad enthusiast Carl Fallberg (1915-1996) and his book <i>Fiddletown & Copperopolis</i> (River Forest, IL: Heimburger House Publishing Co., 1985), collecting his cartoons from <i>Railroad</i> magazine. I know the book-jacket biography of Fallberg is hard to read here, but give it a try.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Text copyright 2031 Terence E. Hanley</span></div>Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-8000443915383613022013-07-03T16:27:00.000-04:002021-05-01T19:08:39.193-04:00Simon Greco (1917-2005)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Simon Greco was born on April 9, 1917, in Italy to an Italian-American father and an Italian mother. Greco arrived in the United States near the end of 1921. The passenger manifest for his ship (propitiously named <i>S.S. Providence</i>) gave his birthplace as "Spesano." I suspect that he came from Spezzano, located in the southern part of the country. The Greco family settled in St. Louis where his father, Giuseppe Greco, worked for a gas company. Greco's mother was named Maria. By the 1940s, Simon Greco had relocated to New York and Connecticut, haven for artists. He was married to Eleen Williams (1920-2008).</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">You can read the high points of Simon Greco's life in the book jacket biography I have posted here. It's from a large paperbound book called <i>The Art of Perspective Drawing</i>, published by M. Grumbacher, Inc., in 1968. Grumbacher put out a lot of really fine instruction books in art, but this one is especially good. The highlights of course are Mr. Greco's illustrations. He was an artist hard to categorize, but that makes him that much more interesting. His work is partly realistic, almost in a photographic way. (He painted a number of <i>trompe l'oeil</i> pictures.) He can also be considered a surrealist and a magical realist in a style that was very common at mid-century, especially in advertising and other commercial art. Simon Greco also painted covers for magazines, including men's magazines of the 1950s and '60s.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Simon Greco was an extraordinary artist. His work is mesmerizing. Fortunately for us, he lived a long life. He died on January 20, 2005, in Westborough, Massachusetts, at age eighty-seven.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Text copyright 2013 Terence E. Hanley</span></div>
Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-9177382738906616472013-06-15T09:19:00.000-04:002021-05-01T19:06:37.189-04:00F.O. Alexander (1897-1993)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizQAYOR28KOWL9IYqpmhWB3Hk4BbQfznQOU-gAGCKDW0jP18v_vhYW1WSx8svPKhidLI4_XYLQqULPnH0BF_x3Kf9Y-4KTn7aj0kqc2lNLVpER5M5Km6PxTGbGogK7-5dJIXz_CiY_RtU/s1600/Alexander-Front+Cover.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizQAYOR28KOWL9IYqpmhWB3Hk4BbQfznQOU-gAGCKDW0jP18v_vhYW1WSx8svPKhidLI4_XYLQqULPnH0BF_x3Kf9Y-4KTn7aj0kqc2lNLVpER5M5Km6PxTGbGogK7-5dJIXz_CiY_RtU/s640/Alexander-Front+Cover.jpeg" width="435" /></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Here is an unusual book called <i>Joe Doakes' Great Quest</i>, written and drawn by F.O. Alexander and published in his retirement. Franklin Osborne Alexander was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on November 3, 1897. He attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and Northwestern University. During World War I, Alexander served with the Camouflage Engineers in Europe. (I think that outfit was more properly called the American Camouflage Corps.) In so doing he would have followed a path laid down by another artist, Abbott Thayer (1849-1921).</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Alexander drew three newspaper comic strips between 1925 and 1939, the most well known of which was the cliffhanger <i>Hairbreadth Harry</i>. In 1941, he signed on with the <i>Philadelphia Bulletin</i> and enjoyed a second career as an editorial cartoonist. F.O. Alexander retired in 1967. The following year, John Knox Press of Richmond, Virginia, published his book <i>Joe Doakes' Great Quest</i>, a cartoon odyssey in which the title character tries to discover his purpose in life. The model is Bunyan's <i>Pilgrim's Progress</i>, but it looks like a sequential editorial cartoon. I suppose you could make something of a connection between editorial cartooning and literary allegory.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">F.O. Alexander died on January 17, 1993, in Philadelphia at age ninety-five. His papers are at Syracuse University.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The cover design of <i>Joe Doakes' Great Quest</i> is by Doyle Robinson. The photo of the author is by William Conn.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Text copyright 2013 by Terence E. Hanley</span></div>Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3628642770902493983.post-49414806642515697052013-04-20T13:40:00.002-04:002023-10-02T12:45:09.572-04:00Terence Barrow & Ray Lanterman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Terence Barrow (ca. 1932-2001) and Ray Lanterman (1916-1994) co-authored two books, <i>Incredible Hawaii</i> (1974) and <i>More Incredible Hawaii</i> (1986). Both men were residents of Hawaii. The Hoosier Lanterman had been present at the attack on Pearl Harbor and lived in Hawaii from the 1940s onward. Barrow, a native New Zealander, came to Hawaii in 1964 and worked there as a museum curator, author, and representative for Charles E. Tuttle Publishing Company. Their books are compilations of Hawaiian folklore and history. Lanterman's illustrations are reminiscent of those in the newspaper comic feature <i>Ripley's Believe It or Not!</i></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Terence Barrow died on August 31, 2010, at age seventy-eight. His <a href="http://archives.starbulletin.com/2001/09/10/news/story11.html">obituary</a> appeared in the <i>Honolulu Star-Bulletin</i> on September 10, 2001, the day before disaster struck. You can read more about Ray Lanterman on my blog, <i><a href="http://indianaillustrators.blogspot.com/2013/04/raymond-e-lanterman-1916-1994.html">Indiana Illustrators</a></i>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Text copyright 2013 Terence E. Hanley</span></div>Terence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.com0