What Are You Reading

[LizzieMaine]

There's a spontaneous quality to Joe Shuster's early art that went away when the pressure of turning out so much material, his deteriorating vision, and his carpal-tunnel syndrome forced him to turn most of it over to assistants. When you've got a roomful of artists required to stick to a model sheet there's no room for any of the oddball quirkiness that sometimes shows up in the finished product.

Shuster was exactly the type of artist -- deceptively crude but extremely vigorous -- that a strip like Superman demanded. Some of his individual panels were absolutely gorgeous.

*The moment* when Lois meets Superman for the first time. The faces are simple, but get a load of the expressions. Lois is both terrified and fascinated, and that's a very difficult mix to draw, but he absolutely nails it here. He wasn't some hick kid from Cleveland who got lucky.

 

[2jakes]

The flying I can accept, being from another planet and all.

What I could never swallow was the fact that Lois never had a clue
that Clark and Superman were one and the same simply because
of the eyeglasses.
Not much of a reporter don’t you think?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Note what Superman says as he's carrying her off: "...where I'll be safe from you!" The whole Lois/Superman/Clark thing was a fascinating bit of psychodrama, in which the woman was clearly portrayed as the aggressor. Pretty grown-up stuff for a kids' funny book in 1938 -- and probably part of the reason why it was surprisingly popular with adults as well as kids.

The model who posed for Lois, a teenage girl from Siegel and Shuster's neighborhood in Cleveland, went on to marry Jerry -- although Joe was hopelessly in love with her too. Triangles within triangles.

 

[2jakes]

Yep, comic soap-drama.

Joanne Siegel, the model for Lois Lane.

 

[Fading Fast]

There's a spontaneous quality to Joe Shuster's early art that went away when the pressure of turning out so much material, his deteriorating vision, and his carpal-tunnel syndrome forced him to turn most of it over to assistants. When you've got a roomful of artists required to stick to a model sheet there's no room for any of the oddball quirkiness that sometimes shows up in the finished product.

Shuster was exactly the type of artist -- deceptively crude but extremely vigorous -- that a strip like Superman demanded. Some of his individual panels were absolutely gorgeous.

*The moment* when Lois meets Superman for the first time. The faces are simple, but get a load of the expressions. Lois is both terrified and fascinated, and that's a very difficult mix to draw, but he absolutely nails it here. He wasn't some hick kid from Cleveland who got lucky.

That is very, very impressive work. He's conveying a whole lot, not only wth the facial expressions, as you noted, but the body english is very thought out as well.

I believe I've said it before (since I've only ever had about five original thoughts in my lifetime), but ignoring remuneration as a factor, if I could have one artistic skill, it would be illustrating - not painting, not being the next Picasso, just illustration - the really good ones impress the heck out of me.

 

[2jakes]

That is very, very impressive work. He's conveying a whole lot, not only wth the facial expressions, as you noted, but the body english is very thought out as well.

I believe I've said it before (since I've only ever had about five original thoughts in my lifetime), but ignoring remuneration as a factor, if I could have one artistic skill, it would be illustrating - not painting, not being the next Picasso, just illustration - the really good ones impress the heck out of me.

What impresses me are sketch-artist.

I do oil-painting as a hobby. I also work at a TV news station
as a cameraman/reporter.
At the Waco trial federal court, no cameras were allowed.

My boss gets this brilliant idea that since I like to paint,
I would be fine to cover the trial. So she gave me an
account & I headed to a local art store to
purchase the sketching materials.

Sitting in the front row among artist from all over the globe
was very intimidating.
Within minutes, they had on paper the faces sketched.

At times it was very tense and quiet in the courtroom.
The only sound was the eraser from my pencil and my
exasperation.
How the heck can I draw the faces when they keep
moving????

To say it was a nightmare for me during the trial would
be putting it mildly.

But in the days to follow, I managed to come up with something
after looking at some of their sketches. I felt I could do it if
I kept at it.

At night, I would sketch several background court scenes, so that
I would concentrate on the faces which I would add to the already
prepared background.

I went to Time & Newsweek magazines and studied the faces
that were in the news regarding this trial.
I also studied sketches to see the techniques.
How they were able to draw the face without
using lines so that it would not look cartoonish.
In this manner, I managed to come up with something
that was good to be on the air.

I keep working until I feel satisfied with it.
But I am never quite satisfied so I keep at it.
Knowing that it’ll get better the more I stick with it.

That is the key.

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ That could be the introduction for many job training manuals - not just for sketch artists, but for most things. Observe the successful and experienced, drill in and study the details - the minutia, practice, be prepared, get the right materials and be proactive, don't wait for someone to "show or teach you -" a lot of wisdom those few lines of yours.

 

[2jakes]

⇧ That could be the introduction for many job training manuals - not just for sketch artists, but for most things. Observe the successful and experienced, drill in and study the details - the minutia, practice, be prepared, get the right materials and be proactive, don't wait for someone to "show or teach you -" a lot of wisdom those few line of yours.

Thanks.
That’s the nicest compliment I've read in a long time.
I never got it directly from my boss and I didn't expect it.
It was a job that had to be done.

But in other ways she did by showing confidence in me that
I was able to get it done no matter what it took.

 

[Fading Fast]

I just finished "My Beloved Infidel" by Sheilah Graham and Gerold Frank which is the autobiography of Sheilah Graham, F. Scott Fitzgerald's paramour in his final years in Hollywood. The quick and dirty is that the only reason to read this book is for the second half where she meets and has a several-years-long affair with Fitzgerald, the rest of her life, while mildly interesting, isn't something I'd have chosen to read about without the Fitzgerald connection.

That said, this comment in the book by Ms. Graham when she first saw Fitzgerald at a party - in 1937 - caught my attention:

"I thought, he's the writer of the gay twenties, of flaming youth, of bobbed hair and short skirts and crazy drinking - the jazz age. I have even made use of his name in SHEILA GRAHAM SAYS [she was a Hollywood gossip columnist], when I wanted to chide women for silly behavior, I described them as passe', as old-fashion F. Scott Fitzgerald types though I had never read anything he wrote."
​

Two things caught my attention, one, at the time she thought the above, it was not even a full decade since the end of the jazz age, but clearly, by the '30s, the view was that the jazz age was "your father's Oldsmobile." No doubt, the Great Depression had a lot to do with it - the juxtaposition of the ebullient '20s with the hardscrabble '30s probably made the '20s seem a hundred years away - but still, it would be like us, today, thinking that the entire zeitgeist of, say, '08 was very old, very "passe'."

Second, how generationally defining was Fitzgerald that she was comfortable using him as a jazz age totem, even though she admits to having never read him. The man obviously defined the decade and that's not based on our view today looking back, that was a 1937 view.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I remember Sheila Graham as a TV talk show host late in her life, and it never occured to me or ever would have occured to me, in this or any other life, that this dowdy old lady with the frosted hair could ever possibly have slept with F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The twenties went out of date *extremely* fast -- all the flapper/bathtub gin/vo-do-de-o jazzbo stereotypes were seen even by the early part of the thirties as embarassments. The Depression was by a great many viewed as payback for the sort of frivolous hedonism that had characterized the previous decade. The dance is over, and now the piper is demanding payment. You could even argue that the stereotypes of the twenties were stereotypes even while they were happening, due largely to the way they were depicted in popular culture, in the same way that beatniks were stereotypes before the end of the fifties, hippies by the middle of 1967, and disco habitues even before most people had ever even seen an actual disco. But there was also quite a bit of contempt to the way people in the thirties viewed the twenties -- which explains how calling someone an "F. Scott Fitzgerald type" would be considered a pretty strong insult. Those types were seen as having had as much to do with ruining the country in the twenties as dirty-flea-bitten-hippies were seen by a later generation as ruining the country in the sixties.

Literary types in the thirties saw Fitzgerald as a passe "twenties writer" who had defined the period in a literary sense in the same way that John Held or Russell Patterson had defined it visually, but who hadn't done much of anything of any consequence since, a Bright Young Man who frittered away his promise. Most Americans outside of literary circles, if they recognized him at all, knew him for his short stories in the ever-bourgeois Saturday Evening Post. He didn't really become F. SCOTT FITZGERALD as he's revered today until he was rediscovered during the nostalgia craze of the late sixties.

As ubiquitous as "Gatsby" seems today, it was completely out of print during the entire decade of the thirties. If you read it then, you picked up out of the slush pile at a second-hand bookstore. It didn't come back into print until 1941, in the wake of Fitzgerald's death, but must've seemed like something from a lost civilization given the mood of that particular moment in time.

 

[Fading Fast]

Well, if it helps you sleep, eat or just keep from throwing up, she did mention separate bedrooms when discussing their household. The book was written in '58, and while not as tame and censored as that time period's movies or TV, it has a reserve that we don't see today. That said, the impression I got was that while they had slept together, that was not a big part of their relationship as his health was failing and, given his choice, he'd save up whatever spare energy he had for drink.

Probably laying the ground for the late '60s nostalgia craze you reference, Graham does close by noting that in '58 Fitzgerald had become famous again - ironic in that he died in 1940 painfully aware that he was all but dismissed by both pop culture and the literary world. But by '58, he was not only required reading in many college courses, but students were reading him of their own free will and his stories had been dramatized and "seen by millions," as well as his work and career being the subject of critical reviews and biographies.

I was in middle school (7th and 8th grade in our school system) in the mid '70s when we started to read books in English class for discussion and analysis. This immediately felt like "cheating" to me as I enjoyed it and looked forward to the next book and class discussion. I have a vivid memory of being in 7th or 8th grade (okay, that part isn't vivid) and being really excited that our next book was going to be "The Great Gatsby," but I'm not sure why. I think the kids who had already read it must have raved or maybe I just picked up on its popularity or liked the the cover - I don't remember that reason, but I remember being very excited that it was our next book.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There was a lot of interest in Gatsby in the mid-70s spilling off the Redford movie version, and by the '80s quotes were turning up in, of all places, "Peanuts," where Snoopy would occasionally pose as "the world famous F. Scott Fitzgerald character." While Fitzgerald was being rediscovered in the literary sense years earlier, it took a while for him to really soak into popular culture again in the way that he eventually did.

I would have preferred "Gatsby" to what we read in high school lit class. Nuts to Flaubert.

 

[Fading Fast]

There was a lot of interest in Gatsby in the mid-70s spilling off the Redford movie version, and by the '80s quotes were turning up in, of all places, "Peanuts," where Snoopy would occasionally pose as "the world famous F. Scott Fitzgerald character." While Fitzgerald was being rediscovered in the literary sense years earlier, it took a while for him to really soak into popular culture again in the way that he eventually did.

I would have preferred "Gatsby" to what we read in high school lit class. Nuts to Flaubert.

Snoopy is one of the best cartoon characters ever. What a wonderful, crazy beagle. His insane imagination helped me as a kid feel comfortable that daydreaming was okay, as I've always daydreamed a lot, but it was not talked about nor would it have been encouraged in my house.

I took almost every high school literature class offered and the selections were all over the map. One teacher - who had moved to the Northeast from the deep south - had us reading all that sad, morose the "decay of the south / southern way of life" literature of Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner - which I still avoid to this day.

The liberal teacher had us reading Steinbeck and H.G. Wells and plays like "You Can't Take it With You," while, countering that, one teacher was big into Orwell and the evils of communism.

High school lit was all over the map, but Fitzgerald and Hemingway (I have thought about that old man in "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" ever since reading about him in 10th grade) were probably the two that made the biggest impression on me in high school.

 

[AmateisGal]

The third novel in the Clara Vine series, set in Berlin in the 1930s, The Scent of Secrets.

 

[Benzadmiral]

I just finished "My Beloved Infidel" by Sheilah Graham and Gerold Frank which is the autobiography of Sheilah Graham, F. Scott Fitzgerald's paramour in his final years in Hollywood. The quick and dirty is that the only reason to read this book is for the second half where she meets and has a several-years-long affair with Fitzgerald, the rest of her life, while mildly interesting, isn't something I'd have chosen to read about without the Fitzgerald connection.

. . .

I'll have to look for this. All I can recall about their relationship, and what pops into my mind when I hear Fitzgerald's name or Sheilah Graham's, is the '50s film I saw as a kid of Beloved Infidel with Gregory Peck and Deborah Kerr.

 

[Fading Fast]

I'll have to look for this. All I can recall about their relationship, and what pops into my mind when I hear Fitzgerald's name or Sheilah Graham's, is the '50s film I saw as a kid of Beloved Infidel with Gregory Peck and Deborah Kerr.

I saw the movie, probably, twenty plus years ago and my memory was it was pretty weak, so if interested, the book would be a better way to go.

 

[AmateisGal]

Snoopy is one of the best cartoon characters ever. What a wonderful, crazy beagle. His insane imagination helped me as a kid feel comfortable that daydreaming was okay, as I've always daydreamed a lot, but it was not talked about nor would it have been encouraged in my house.

I am a HUGE Snoopy fan. I collect Snoopy stuff and my collection is currently so massive that I don't have room to display it. When my daughter moves out of the house, THEN I'll have a spare bedroom! haha!

On another note, Charles Schulz served in World War II. He went in after Normandy. I wrote an article on it for AMERICA IN WWII magazine a few years ago. Great fun to research. And while he was alive, he always paid tribute to the Normandy Invasion and to Veteran's Day in his cartoons.

 

[Fading Fast]

I am a HUGE Snoopy fan. I collect Snoopy stuff and my collection is currently so massive that I don't have room to display it. When my daughter moves out of the house, THEN I'll have a spare bedroom! haha!

On another note, Charles Schulz served in World War II. He went in after Normandy. I wrote an article on it for AMERICA IN WWII magazine a few years ago. Great fun to research. And while he was alive, he always paid tribute to the Normandy Invasion and to Veteran's Day in his cartoons.

Outstanding. All are very good and the first one, in particular, shows so much about the brilliance of Shultz and the wonderfulness that is Snoopy.

Man could he bring emotion and simple details that tell you so much to his drawings.

P.S. I'd love to read your article.

P.P.S. What is your favorite Snoopy piece in your collection?

 

[AmateisGal]

Outstanding. All are very good and the first one, in particular, shows so much about the brilliance of Shultz and the wonderfulness that is Snoopy.

Man could he bring emotion and simple details that tell you so much to his drawings.

P.S. I'd love to read your article.

P.P.S. What is your favorite Snoopy piece in your collection?

FF, I will scan it in and send a PDF to you soon!

Oh wow, that's a tough one. I have so many great items. The Literary Ace is my favorite character, so I have a LOT of those types of pieces, including a lamp from the 1960s or early 70s. Here's what it looks like, though this isn't mine.

I also have a fantastic Peanuts water globe music box that I love. I'm trying now to only buy really nice items that I want; before, I tended to snatch anything off the shelf that was Snoopy. Every holiday, they have Snoopy Valentine stuffed animals and candy holders, etc., so I'm trying not to buy that stuff as much anymore.

I also have a Snoopy Christmas tree that I decorate in my office every year.

 

[Fading Fast]

FF, I will scan it in and send a PDF to you soon!

Oh wow, that's a tough one. I have so many great items. The Literary Ace is my favorite character, so I have a LOT of those types of pieces, including a lamp from the 1960s or early 70s. Here's what it looks like, though this isn't mine.

I also have a fantastic Peanuts water globe music box that I love. I'm trying now to only buy really nice items that I want; before, I tended to snatch anything off the shelf that was Snoopy. Every holiday, they have Snoopy Valentine stuffed animals and candy holders, etc., so I'm trying not to buy that stuff as much anymore.

I also have a Snoopy Christmas tree that I decorate in my office every year.

Thank you on the scan, but I know you haven't been feeling well - so no rush. The Literary Ace is awesome.