Surrealism, Bugs Bunny, and the Blues - Selected Writings on Popular Culture

Rediscover the most insightful and incendiary cultural commentaries from a leading figure in the revival of Surrealism.

Surrealism, Bugs Bunny, and the Blues is a collection of Franklin Rosemont’s writings on popular culture over a period of more than forty years. Rosemont, a self-taught scholar, poet, and artist, playfully uncovers the sometimes hidden-in-plain-sight writers and artists who managed to be both popular, vernacular, and in their own ways profoundly revolutionary.

Rosemont skillfully weaves together what most would regard as unlikely threads. The labor culture of the nineteenth-century anarchist movement gains new meaning when connected to the famed Chicago musicians of blues and jazz. His interests from childhood extended from his favorite animators and comic art—Mel Blanc and Tex Avery, Scrooge McDuck, Mighty Mouse, Krazy Kat, Smokey Stover, and Powerhouse Pepper—to nineteenth-century drug-taker Benjamin Paul Blood, or the barely remembered best-selling utopian writer Edward Bellamy. Palindromes and other wordplay counted along with radical environmentalism, modern dance alongside the “mad” self-taught writer-artist Henry Darger.

Find all these and much more, exploring the inventory of Franklin Rosemont’s discoveries and his luminous, unpredictable exploration of himself. An introductory essay by Abigail Susik and an afterword by Paul Buhle frame his work and life.

List of contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: ‘Long Live Krazy Kat! Long Live the Surrealist Revolution!’: Franklin Rosemont’s Search for Surrealist Affinities, by Abigail Susik

I. Americana and Chicagoana
1. The Seismograph of Subversion: Notes on Some American Precursors    000
2. Notes on the Legacy of Cthulhu
3. Frank Belknap Long
4. Free Play and No Limit: An Introduction to Edward Bellamy’s Utopia
5. A Bomb-Toting, Long-Haired, Wild-Eyed Fiend: The Image of the Anarchist in
Popular Culture
6. Writing on the Telephone
7. The Rise and Fall of the Dil Pickle

II. Comics, Animation, and Self-Taught Artists
8. Introduction to the Life and Times of the Incredible Hulk
9. Bugs Bunny and Dialectics
10. Homage to Henry Darger
11. Basil Wolverton (Powerhouse Pepper)
12. Bill Holman (Smoky Stover)
13. Carl Barks (Uncle Scrooge)
14. Chester Gould (Dick Tracy)
15. George Herriman (Krazy Kat)
16. Homage to Tex Avery
17. Mel Blanc, Wizard of Audio
18. Dream-Conscious Times: Surrealism and Early Cinema
19. A Short Treatise on Wobbly Cartoons (1988)

III. Music, Cinema, and Dance
20. Mods, Rockers, and the Revolution
21. The Jimi Hendrix Experience
22. A Revolutionary Poetic Tradition
23. Black Music, by Any Means Necessary
24. Black Music and the Surrealist Revolution
25. Buster Keaton
26. Modern Dance

IV. Labor History and Culture
27. T-Bone Slim and the Phonetic Cabala
28. Juice Is Stranger than Friction: T-Bone Slim
29. Joe Hill

V. Play and Humor
30. Rats Live on No Evil Star: A Selection of Palindromes
31. Humor: Here Today and Everywhere Tomorrow: A Short Introduction to the Next Revolution
32. Revolution as Play

VI. Ecology
33. Radical Environmentalism
VII. Autobiography and Reminiscences
34. Autobiographical Kaleidoscope
35. My Three San Francisco Renaissances

Afterword, by Paul Buhle

About the author

Franklin Rosemont (1943–2009) was the founder of the Chicago Surrealist circle of the 1960s–70s and later, the central figure in the rebirth of the Charles H. Kerr Company during the 1980s, and a prolific author on labor history and culture. He was the editor of renowned surrealist André Breton's collection What Is Surrealism?: Selected Writings.

Summary

Rediscover the most insightful and incendiary cultural commentaries from a leading figure in the revival of Surrealism.

Surrealism, Bugs Bunny, and the Blues is a collection of Franklin Rosemont’s writings on popular culture over a period of more than forty years. Rosemont, a self-taught scholar, poet, and artist, playfully uncovers the sometimes hidden-in-plain-sight writers and artists who managed to be both popular, vernacular, and in their own ways profoundly revolutionary.

Rosemont skillfully weaves together what most would regard as unlikely threads. The labor culture of the nineteenth-century anarchist movement gains new meaning when connected to the famed Chicago musicians of blues and jazz. His interests from childhood extended from his favorite animators and comic art—Mel Blanc and Tex Avery, Scrooge McDuck, Mighty Mouse, Krazy Kat, Smokey Stover, and Powerhouse Pepper—to nineteenth-century drug-taker Benjamin Paul Blood, or the barely remembered best-selling utopian writer Edward Bellamy. Palindromes and other wordplay counted along with radical environmentalism, modern dance alongside the “mad” self-taught writer-artist Henry Darger.

Find all these and much more, exploring the inventory of Franklin Rosemont’s discoveries and his luminous, unpredictable exploration of himself. An introductory essay by Abigail Susik and an afterword by Paul Buhle frame his work and life.

Product details

• Authors: Franklin Rosemont, Rosemont Franklin
• Assisted by: Paul Buhle (Editor), Buhle Paul (Editor), Abigail Susik (Editor)
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 11.02.2025
• EAN: 9798887440866
• ISBN: 979-8-88744-086-6
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Antiques; ART / Criticism & Theory, ART / Art & Politics, ART / Popular Culture