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Leslie, a sweet-natured young woman with the mental age of an 8-year-old, just wanted to be friends with the high school football stars. When they invited her down into the basement rec room of a suburban home, she jumped with joy at being included. The young men raped her--with a baseball bat and a broomstick. In this vividly detailed book, Bernard Lefkowitz brings us into the daily life of Glen Ridge, New Jersey, the hometown of Tom Cruise. It's an affluent white community that values propriety, order, discretion, continuity, and a fantasy of the gentleman-athlete. Lefkowitz writes of the boys who raped Leslie: "'These Glen Ridge kids, they were pure gold, every mother's dream, every father's pride. They were not only Glen Ridge's finest, but in their perfection they belonged to all of us. They were Our Guys." What's ultimately most shocking about this crime is how ordinary it was, how predictable--how in one way or another it's happening now, all across America.
Book Description
In March 1989 a group of teenage boys lured a retarded girl into a basement in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, and gang-raped her. Glen Ridge was the kind of peaceful, affluent suburb many Americans dream about. The rapists were its most popular high school athletes. And although rumors of the crime quickly spread through the town, weeks passed before anyone saw fit to report it to the police. What made these boys capable of brutalizing a girl that some of them had known since childhood? Why did so many of their elders deny the rape and rally around its perpetrators? To solve this riddle, the Edgar award-winning author Bernard Lefkowitz conducted years of research and more than two hundred interviews. The result is not just a wrenching story of crime and punishment, but a hauntingly nuanced portrait of America's jock culture and the hidden world of unrestrained adolescent sexuality.
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
A Los Angeles Times Prize Finalist
An Edgar Finalist
Customer Reviews:
Brutal encounter in Glen Ridge........2007-01-27
I live less than a block away from Glen Ridge, NJ, so naturally, I was very interested to read this disturbing account describing high school jocks sexually assaulting, in a brutal manner, a retarded girl in the basement of the house where two of the perpetrators lived. I still recall reading about the incident in the news (at the time I lived in NYC), and wondering how kids could be so cruel.
In "Our Guys," Bernard Lefkowitz does an admirable job at covering some central themes surrounding the harrowing incident: i.e. the so-called alleged "consent" issue of the victim; the culpability of those who witnessed the event but did nothing to try to stop it; the ostracism of the one student who revealed what happened; the "jock culture" encouraged by Glen Ridge; the town's propensity to look the other way, and give every benefit of the doubt (and even support) "our guys," even when it was clear that something very ugly happened in that basement; the breaks that the perpetrators received from police and the Courts; the defense lawyers who attempted to portray the victim as a Lolita who was in control of the circumstances (one lawyer bizarrely repeatedly referred to boys being "magnetized" to her, and visa versa, when she developed breasts) and portray their clients as basically good kids, but "boys will be boys."
The book reads like a train wreck -- ugly and disturbing, but you can't look away. Lefkowitz, who completely convinces the reader that a crime certainly took place, isn't shy about making very definitive conclusions, which, at times, I took issue with. First, I can certainly understand the school's position in waiting until all the facts were known before taking any steps against the students in question. Let's not forget that Duke University recently came under fire for jumping to conclusions in the ongoing case involving the Lacrosse players and a stripper who initially accused three of them of rape. In the Duke case, of course, the "victims" appear to be the accused, and the perpetrator both the stripper and an overzealous, unethical prosecutor (it often just depends on what the facts eventually reveal).
Second, I don't think that Lefkowitz's attack on the "values" of the town of Glen Ridge, or the so-called "jock culture" in general, are entirely fair. The Scherzer twins and Archer Brothers, were, pure and simple, bad kids. You take away this one incident, and you would still say that. The fact that they were decent athletes and good looking may have contributed to their ability to get away what they did, but those qualities certainly don't cause one to be bad.
Third, some of things Lefkowitz describes are questionable in my mind. For instance there's a three day party at a classmate's house, where the drinking is rampant, and the students basically destroy the house. No neighbor calls the police for an entire weekend in a quiet suburb? How is that possible? A boy who repeatedly exposes himself during class and no disciplinary actions are taken? Most of the girls mentioned in the book seem to have weak characters and are completely under the spell of these boys. Where are those girls who despise these guys, as I'm sure their must have been?
Any parent of children of high school or pre-high school children will be frightened and horrified by "Our Guys." However, knowing a number of people in Glen Ridge, I can tell you that when they discuss the high school, they're proud of the academics, and athletics rarely comes up. Maybe things have changed. Or maybe Lefkowitz tended to over-exaggerate one of his central themes: that the Glen Ridge "culture" somehow created these bad kids who committed this, and other terrible acts.
A condemnation of bullying and playing favoritism.......2007-01-03
Horrific tale of the brutal 1989 gang rape of a mentally disabled teen committed by a group of New Jersey high school star athletes and a condemnation of the bullying and jock culture that spawned it.
This true story tells how the local community, the school board and the police sought to cover up and minimize their actions by demonizing the victim.
Read this one and wonder how certain people can ever sleep at night.
Gripping .......2006-11-02
A disturbing journalistic account of a gang rape of a mentally retarded girl by athletes in an upper-class New Jersey town. Bernard Lefkowitz doesn't just report the "facts" of the crime, as in many books in the "true crime" genre. He also analyzes the culture of an upper-class community to illustrate the masculine norms that fuel such crimes and hamper reporting and prosecution. Indeed, one of the most astonishing aspects of this case was that the elite circle of teenagers at the local high school all knew about the crime for many months before it was finally reported - by an African American boy who became a paraiah as a result. The book is incredibly well researched; Lefkowitz (a journalism professor at Columbia University) obviously immersed himself in the case and the community. [...]
Suburban horror.......2006-08-17
Beyond being an utterly gripping read, Bernard Lefkowitz's 'Our Guys' is an incredibly powerful indictment of the perverse cultural values that permeated Glen Ridge, New Jersey, in the late 1980s--and that continue to be America's dominant values. The bored, pampered, arrogant, sociopathic jocks (from affluent families) who gang-raped a mentally retarded schoolgirl for their amusement didn't just fall out of the sky. These evil young men were the pure products of a deranged culture that sanctifies (white) male violence, domination, winning, and hedonistic pleasures as some sort of birthright.
A shocking look at what norming sexism does.......2006-07-13
One of the boys in this case never went to trial because the victim's family and the victim herself were worn out by the process of trial and the community harassment that went with it. You see, the community sided with the good boys in the case, not with the victim---she was 'different' after all. Richie Corcoran went on to join the Army, despite his record, with the full understanding of the military. When he came home from a tour in Afghanistan to his estranged wife, he tried to kill her and her new boyfriend, and then himself. In the latter he succeeded. He was a wife beater and a rapist, and he was the product of his town and his father, who was a cop. Wonder what that guy's view of rape victims was?
"Our Guys" peels back the layers and layers of privilege that enabled these boys to abuse girls with impunity while the town said 'boys will be boys' and girls were given a choice of either submitting or desperately pretending it wasn't happened. The boys got bolder and bolder, and finally they were charged with rape. One has to wonder if there were other victims at other times. Much like the case of Greg Haidl, the sheriff's son who gang-raped an unconscious girl, this case revealed how dangerous privilege really is to women and girls.
Average customer rating:
- When She Was Good is very, very good
- 'Portnoy's Complaint' is the book Roth will live by
- Redundant for true fans; baffling for his enemies
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Philip Roth: Novels 1967-1972: When She Was Good / Portnoy's Complaint / Our Gang / The Breast (Library of America)
Philip Roth
Manufacturer: Library of America
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Philip Roth: Novels and Stories 1959-1962: Goodbye, Columbus & Five Short Stories / Letting Go (Library of America)
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Philip Roth: Novels 1973-1977, The Great American Novel, My Life as a Man, The Professor of Desire (Library of America)
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Saul Bellow: Novels 1956-1964: Seize the Day, Henderson the Rain King, Herzog (Library of America)
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Zuckerman Bound: A Trilogy and Epilogue 1979-1985: The Ghost Writer / Zuckerman Unbound / The Anatomy Lesson / The Prague Orgy (Library of America #175)
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James Agee: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, A Death in the Family, Shorter Fiction (Library of America)
ASIN: 1931082804 |
Book Description
For the last half century, the novels of Philip Roth have re-energized American fiction and redefined its possibilities. Roth's comic genius, his imaginative daring, his courage in exploring uncomfortable truths, and his assaults on political, cultural, and sexual orthodoxies have made him one of the essential writers of our time. By special arrangement with the author, The Library of America now inaugurates the definitive edition of Roth's collected works. This second volume presents four extraordinarily diverse works displaying the range and originality of his fictional art.
When She Was Good (1967) is the trenchant portrait of Lucy Nelson, a young midwestern woman whose perception of her own suffering turns her into a ferocious force, "enemy-ridden and unforgivingly defiant," as Roth would later describe her. A small-town 1940s America of restrictive social pressures and foreclosed opportunities provides the novel's background.
The publication of the hilarious Portnoy's Complaint (1969) was a cultural event that turned Roth into a reluctant celebrity. The confession of a bewildered psychoanalytic patient thrust through life by his unappeasable sexuality yet held back by the iron grip of his unforgettable childhood, Portnoy unleashed Roth's comic virtuosity and opened new avenues for American fiction.
In Our Gang (1971), described by Anthony Burgess as a "brilliant satire in the real Swift tradition," Roth effects a savage takedown of the administration of Richard Nixon (who figures here as Trick E. Dixon). Written before the revelations of the Watergate scandal, Our Gang continues to resonate as a broad and outraged response to the clownish hypocrisy and moral theatrics of the American political scene.
The Kafkaesque excursion The Breast (1972) introduces David Kepesh in the first volume of a trilogy that continues with The Professor of Desire (1977) and The Dying Animal (2001). The Breast prompted Cynthia Ozick to remark, "One knows when one is reading something that will permanently enter the culture."
Customer Reviews:
When She Was Good is very, very good.......2007-06-12
If I remember correctly, this book was trashed on the front page of the NY Times Book Review section forty years ago because the reviewer thought a young Jew should not or could not write about small town WASP America. I could not disagree more, both in principle and after reading the novel several years later. I was relieved to find the writer (a man!) would take the trouble to write about a young woman who had marched in her high school band and worked at the Dairy Queen. The book jacket described her as the all-American bitch but I doubt this was Roth's full intention. The ending was beautifully written and so believable it affected my own behavior. Some of the most memorable pages in Roth's prizewinning American Pastoral reminded me of When She Was Good, a book even Roth usually overlooks in talking about his work. Too bad the review may have had a searing effect for a long time.
'Portnoy's Complaint' is the book Roth will live by .......2005-09-05
'When She was Good' is not very good.
'The Breast' is a bad- taste joke which cannot approach the Kafka or Gogol that are its inspiration.
'Portnoy's Complaint' is Roth's masterpiece. And even if he has shown through subsequent years great staying power, and considerable seriousness, and truly outstanding work ( Parts of 'American Pastoral' and 'Patrimony' for example) this is the one work in which he reveals what he best has to give.
It is arguably one of the funniest books ever written, and deeply poignant one.
It is an American classic and justifies Roth's place in this series.
Redundant for true fans; baffling for his enemies.......2005-08-31
This would make a great gift. It's an honor for Philip Roth
to be included in this series. He has never written a bad book. Just give him the Noble prize for literature and be done with it. Thanks for a lifetime of serious laughs and the playful insights,Phil.
Average customer rating:
- A Nostalgic Treasure
- Brought back many old memories.
- Highly Recommended
- Sweet Book [ Sweet both Ways!]
- The best biographical book on The Little Rascals!
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The Little Rascals: The Life and Times of Our Gang
Leonard Maltin , and
Richard W. Bann
Manufacturer: Three Rivers Press
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The Our Gang Story
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LITTLE RASCALS -11 DVD BOXED SET- MEGA COLLECTION-88 EPISODES
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ASIN: 0517583259
Release Date: 1992-11-24 |
Book Description
When originally published in 1977 as
Our Gang, this book sold more than 52,000 copies. This new edition, with an extensive amount of fresh material, will prove irresistible to all fans of the most popular TV series of all time.
Illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
A Nostalgic Treasure.......2006-09-27
Revised in 1992, Leonard Maltin and Richard W. Bann's "The Little Rascals" is a must for anyone who has enjoyed the antics of Spanky and the gang. The authors' exhaustive research and warm-hearted nostalgia is evident as they chronicle the history of these enduring comedy shorts. Along with biographies of the ever-changing cast and crew, the book offers a detailed critical analysis from the golden Hal Roach period (1922-38) to the sad decline at MGM (1938-44). It's the ultimate Our Gang celebration, with a treasure trove of rare photographs and publicity material.
Brought back many old memories........2006-08-30
I have been looking for this book for ages.Answers so many questions about all the Little Rascals.Some didn`t live long and very few are still with us.Being from Long Island I watched them on CH.11 on the Officer Joe Bolton Show every day after school.Kids today have nothing like them on TV.The facts in this book are fantastic and the pictures are great.If you love the Little Rascals buy this book.
Highly Recommended.......2005-10-01
The Little Rascals: The Life and Times of Our Gang is the most comprehensive book available about the popular short series. Leonard Maltin, longtime fan of both Hal Roach comedies and the Our Gang series itself, writes both intelligently and lovingly about the series with the help of Richard W. Bann.
This book opens with a short history of the Hal Roach film company and the Our Gang series.
Then, it leads to a collection of all of the shorts made for the series including the cast, release date, and highly effective synopses and analyses of each short. These are listed chronologically and noted according to ownership and distributor and silent and sound. Some of the silent have been lost, but they are not neglected. Instead, Maltin has used reviews from the time period to give the reader a sense of the short and an idea of its quality. Opinions are used, but they are obviously separate from the factual information and are supported by facts. They add to the effectiveness of the synopses and paint a more vivid picture of the shorts that are unavailable. What is also unique about this book is the listing of the MGM shorts that are often regarded as the worst quality episodes of the series. Skipping these films, although understandable, would have made this book far less complete.
Next, the spin-offs and pop culture effects of the series are addressed, including the Saturday Night Live spoofs of Buckwheat and the cartoon versions of the show.
Last, the book includes a brief history of all of the major stars of the series and a few sentences about the more minor players. Sadly, this section needs to be updated because of the deaths of the cast members after this second publication. However, the information that is included is accurate and valuable, as much of it cannot be easily found anywhere else, especially interviews.
One must also comment on the abundant photographs utilized in the book including rare publicity stills.
Overall, this is a high quality history of The Little Rascals.
Sweet Book [ Sweet both Ways!].......2005-05-02
Seriously, this book has all you would ever want to know about Our Gang, and some stuff you don't want to know! Complete write ups on all the movies and even some extra bits, a complete biographical section and SO MUCH MORE!! Completly indispensible! If you love Our Gang as much as I do, you definitly want this.The pictures are so CUTE, and there are a lot of them! I loved it!
The best biographical book on The Little Rascals!.......2004-08-29
This has to be the best book I've ever seen on the history of The Little Rascals.Everything you ever want to know about the Rascals,their careers,and their films.Every single film from the 1920s all the way up to the 40s is so remarkabley detailed.No major fan of The Little Rascals should be without this precious gem!
Book Description
This is the autobiography of one of the original Our Gang-Little Rascals featuring Spanky, Buckwheat, Alfalfa, and of course Butch. Tommy Butch Bond takes us on a nostalgic trip to Hollywoods Golden Age. Bond played with many luminaries of that time of glitter and imagination including Eddie Cantor, Laural and Hardy, and Herbert Marshall. He takes us behind the scenes and tells us about movie magic with candor and humor that is both fascinating and heartwarming. From his adventures with Our Gang, to his role Jimmy Olsen in the first Superman Serials, and on through his 64 films, Tommys story will entertain and delight you.
Customer Reviews:
Conversational Memoirs.......2005-11-28
Tommy Bond, otherwise known as Butch from The Little Rascals, has written his memoirs. Here he discusses his life mostly in the entertainment industry in film, radio, and early television. He also describes the life of his wife Polly and his son Tommy Jr.
The book is written conversationally, so it is not scholarly but it is easy to read. It is detailed enough for those with no knowledge about early Hollywood could understand it. However, this makes it so those who do know a lot about it feel a little bored. Bond jumps around a bit chronologically but always finds his way back to where he began.
Bond does a good job of using expert sources to back up his information, especially Leonard Maltin and Richard W. Bann's book about The Little Rascals, but he does not use a bibliography. He does, however, include a filmography of his own appearances in the back of the book.
This book is interesting to Our Gang fans but it is not entirely devoted to information about the series. The beginning deals with it, a little later on talks about it, and the end chapter called Memory Lane talks about the Sons of the Desert reunions and such. The rest is about Bond's life and experiences.
Life Doesn't End When Your Contract's Up.......2000-10-14
I was charmed and enthralled by Tommy "Butch" Bond's life story. Frankly, my expectations of show biz autobiographies is not high: Everyone seems to be so intent on blowing his or her own horn. Bond is a refreshing exception.
First of all, I think the Little Rascals walk on water. Hundreds of years from now, some extraterrestial on the Moons of Jupiter with all z's and x's in his (its?) name will enjoy these short films as much as I did when I was growing up. They are universal in their appeal. We still haven't got to the point in our society that a Stymie, a Farina, or a Buckwheat can live next door to a Spanky, an Alfalfa, or a Butch. Hal Roach's Little Rascals were way ahead of their time.
Of course, we all know what happened. MGM bought Our Gang from Roach and trashed the whole concept. It was time to move on and -- like so many child stars -- turn to booze, drugs, or crime. But wait a minute! Butch escapes the cliche and turns to radio, film, and even TV. And he marries the Texas beauty queen and lives happily ever after. Bond has this talent for reinventing himself and going from one positive experience to the other.
Now who would have thought that the one member of the Little Rascals you should have grown up emulating was Butch the bully?
This is a book that is not only well written: It will make you feel good about life.
Excellent- Entertaining.......1999-12-28
Tommy does an excellent job of telling the adventures of his life! Recommended reading for every fan of this fine man!
The best autobiography of the Little Rascals.......1999-05-19
The book of Tommy Bond has great insight into the Little Rascals and old Hollywood. It gives you the sense of being there, and gives info that you could get nowhere else for a inside account.
Excellent book. Provides great insight into Our Gang!.......1998-11-14
This is an excellent source of information for any fan of the Our Gang/Little Rascals comedies of the 1920's and 30's. Plus, I have been in contact with Tommy "Butch" Bond, who informed me that there will be a limited quantity re-issue of this book.
Average customer rating:
- The Gang's all here - and gone
- Stale Roth
- On The Comeback Trail, Or Tricky In Hell
- okay
- Scalding Satire
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Our Gang
Philip Roth
Manufacturer: Vintage
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Binding: Paperback
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When She Was Good
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ASIN: 0375726845
Release Date: 2001-05-29 |
Book Description
A ferocious political satire in the great tradition,
Our Gang is Philip Roth’s brilliantly indignant response to the phenomenon of Richard M. Nixon.
In the character of Trick E. Dixon, Roth shows us a man who outdoes the severest cynic, a peace-loving Quaker and believer in the sanctity of human life who doesn’t have a problem with killing unarmed women and children in self-defense. A master politician with an honest sneer, he finds himself battling the Boy Scouts, declaring war on Pro-Pornography Denmark, all the time trusting in the basic indifference of the voting public.
Customer Reviews:
The Gang's all here - and gone.......2006-12-04
Thirty-five years after the initial publication of Philip Roth's scathing satire on Richard Nixon (Trick E. Dixon in the book), one wonders how the book is received and perceived today. Is Nixon, the man and his presidency, still lodged enough in the public consciousness for Roth's hilarious bashings to make sense anymore? Other presidents, including Lincoln and Andrew Jackson among others, have been satirized, but those works have not lasted. My guess is that will probably be the fate of Roth's book, too. It's not a great book and goes on too long to remain potent to the end, but it is funny, and for anyone who's lived through the Nixon years, biting and right on. And it's not just Nixon who gets shafted; there are also John and Robert Charisma (Kennedy), Hubert Hollow (Humphrey), Lyin' B. Johnson, and Rev. Billy Cupcake (Graham), to name just a few, who also are satirized. Perhaps the funniest (and most clever) thing is the Preface that Roth added to editions published starting in 1973 (the so-called Watergate editions) where he apologizes to Nixon for writing the book before "evidence" of Nixon's downfall could possibly be known; Roth's tongue is so deeply lodged in his cheek that it must have been painful. A mere blip on the radar screen of Roth's works, the book is still a rollicking pie-in-the-face to Richard Nixon and his skewed take on the political scene.
Stale Roth .......2006-04-14
This satire on the Nixon Administration was flat when it was written, and is even flatter today.
The extraordinary talent and inventiveness of Roth on occaision lose themselves in formula- projects like this one
As there are so many rich and good Roth books I would not even waste my time with this one.
On The Comeback Trail, Or Tricky In Hell.......2005-01-31
I picked up this book at a library sale for ten cents. It was amazing! The satire is about much more than Richard Nixon's personal crimes. It's about how politicians use stock phrases and ideas to sell just about any form of cowardice and corruption. Make no mistake, Richard Nixon is not the only target here. Roth slashes the fatuous pieties of network news with tremendous effectiveness -- he really skewers the mock gravitas of talking heads like Tom and Dan and all the rest. His take on the media's "all is well" mentality has never been more timely. "Yet corruption there has been before, and the nation survives."
The book does have weak passages, like the whole Curt Flood abortion and Boy Scout murder routine, which drags on and on. And a lot of Roth's gibes at Tricky for being a "closet queer" are painfully homophobic and shallow.
But the final chapter, "On The Comeback Trail, or Tricky In Hell" is really a stand alone masterpiece. Tricky gives a speech which is utterly demonic and yet filled with Cold War rhetoric that would have been absolutely appropriate for any politician from Eisenhower to Reagan. "We cannot be triumphant over goodness with a strategy of simply holding the line."
Brilliant stuff!
okay.......2002-10-03
Yes, this is very dated, but that makes it an interesting historical artifact. Yes, this is over-the-top, but it's over-the-top in an entertaining way. It's a light piece of comic fluff you'll finish easily in one sitting. I disagree, by the way, that one could in this manner satirize convincingly any American president. There has to be some core truth to exaggerate. In particular, I don't think Bill Clinton could be successfully subjected to this kind of treatment. There are only so many yucks you can squeeze out of Monica, and nobody ever REALLY cared about the affair anyway except (presumably) the principals and those vicious Republican corporate stooges (worthy of Nixon's Watergate henchmen) out to get Clinton by hook or by crook. It would also be difficult to subject Bush II to this kind of treatment, but for a different reason. Nearly everything Bush II does and says is ALREADY an exaggeration. The satirical Madison, Wisconsin weekly, The Onion, for example, ran a piece about Bush II immediately after he had...um...secured, let's say, the presidency with this headline: "Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over". Okay, nice try, but, where's the exaggeration? The economy is in a tailspin; the surplus was handed over to the very, very wealthy and large corporations; pretty much all environmental protections are being systematically dismantled; and we are perpetually and permanently, it seems, at war. That's just not funny. In any case, read this book, but don't assume it typical of Philip Roth. It's very much a "one-off", as they say.
Scalding Satire.......2002-06-16
This is wild, satirical look at the Nixon administration and it is hilarious. Roth scalds Nixon and his felonious cronies with absurd scenarios and commentary. Ultimately every presidential adminstration could receive similar literary treatment for their vapid pronouncements and high and mighty attitude, but the Nixon persona lends itself perfectly to such an exercise. Clinton is a likely candidate for a future effort. If you are a political junky you particularly should enjoy this presidential farce.
Book Description
The Little Rascals as written and drawn by Pogo's Walt Kelly!
Of the handful of comics' bona fide geniuses, few could match the versatility of artist/writer Walt Kelly. Trained as an animator at Walt Disney Studios (he worked on cartoon shorts and Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Dumbo), Kelly left during a labor dispute in 1941. He immediately began a new career in the burgeoning field of comic books, contributing heavily to various Disney titles for Dell and single-handedly producing its classic fantasy books, Fairy Tale Parade, Mother Goose, and Santa Claus Funnies. Along with fellow Disney alumnus Carl Barks, Kelly is now considered one of the two classic "funny animal" artists from the golden age of comics.
Surprisingly, Kelly's longest-running continuing series was based on actual people—the "real-life" characters of MGM's durable short-film series, Our Gang (a.k.a. The Little Rascals). Spirited and engaging, Kelly's Our Gang harks back to the days before television, when kids spent most of their time playing outdoors, limited only by each other's creativity and ingenuity. Kelly contributed nearly 100 Our Gang stories by the end of its 59-issue run in 1949, the year he quit comic books to switch careers a final time—as creator of the immortal syndicated newspaper strip, Pogo.
In Our Gang's second volume, Walt Kelly starts relying more on his original ideas rather than follow the MGM scripts, keeping alive the imagination and charm which had been absent from the film series since the departure of producer Hal Roach in 1938. Suitable for both adults and children, Fantagraphics Books has lovingly restored the work from the original comic books, giving Kelly's art a renewed four-color splendor.
Customer Reviews:
A compilation of the strip as it appeared in 1994 and 1945. .......2007-07-09
The late cartoonist and political satirist Walt Kelly was best known and remembered for his 'Pogo' newspaper comic strip. What is not so well known is that from beginning in October of 1942 he wrote and drew another comic strip called 'Our Gang' which is now in the process of being rescued from an undeserved obscurity by Fantagraphics Books. The second and latest volume (which includes a new and informative introduction by Steve Thompson) is a compilation of the strip as it appeared in 1994 and 1945. The kids once again find themselves on a movie set as invited guests, but events transpire to launch them into another series of colorful adventures -- this time aboard a sailing ship, a Japanese held island, and a submarine. After this thrilling adventure comes another one closer to home for the kids where they must deal with saboteurs and spies. Reflecting a war-time America, this superb, full-color reproduction is impressively meticulous and a 'must read' for all Walt Kelly fans. Visit the Fantagraphics Books website to see all the currently available volumes of this outstanding and highly recommended series, as well as the many other professionally reproduced 'yesteryear' comics and graphic novels they have available for readers and collectors.
Book Description
The Little Rascals as written and drawn by Pogo's Walt Kelly!
Of the handful of comics' bona fide geniuses, few could match the versatility of Walt Kelly (1913-1973). Trained as an animator at Walt Disney Studios (he worked on cartoon shorts and Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Dumbo), Kelly left during a labor dispute in 1941. He immediately began a new career in the burgeoning field of comic books, contributing heavily to various Disney titles and single-handedly producing its classic fantasy books, Fairy Tale Parade, Mother Goose, and Santa Claus Funnies. Along with fellow Disney alumnus Carl Barks, Kelly is now considered one of the two classic "funny animal" artists from the Golden Age of comics.
Surprisingly, Kelly's longest-running continuing series was based on actual people—the "real-life" characters of MGM's durable short-film series, Our Gang (a.k.a. "The Little Rascals"). Spirited and engaging, Kelly's Our Gang harks back to the days before television, when kids spent most of their time playing outdoors, limited only by each other's imagination and ingenuity. Kelly created nearly 100 Our Gang stories by the end of its 59-issue run in 1949, the year he quit comic books to switch careers a final time—as syndicated artist/writer on the immortal newspaper strip, Pogo.
This is the first in a series of books reprinting Walt Kelly's Our Gang stories. Suitable for both adults and children, Fantagraphics Books has lovingly restored the work from their comic book appearance, which will be printed in their original four-color splendor.
Customer Reviews:
Hello kids!!!.......2007-03-17
In 1942, Our Gang got it's own comic book. Of course, Our Gang is better know nowadays as The Little Rascals. By 1942, the Our Gang comedies were on their last legs; the shorts stopped being produced in 1944, although the comic book continued until 1949. This book reprints the Our Gang stories from the first eight issues of the comic book. The comics are are by the great Walt Kelly, with the exception of issue #7. Kelly is best known as the creator of the legendary Pogo comic strip. The comics in this book aren't as great as Pogo, but they are still very good. Good book, but it would be nice if it was a little longer.
Book Description
A comprehensive look at this classic work of popular fiction and its hold on the American imagination.
Customer Reviews:
Not Just The How & Who But More Importantly......Why.......2000-12-06
Except for Albert Frieds - The Rise & Fall Of The Jewish Gangster In America this is up there in my top three. Ms Joselit has written a comprehensive historical account of the Jewish mobster from 'birth to death'. It was fascinating to read how the Jewish community in New York faced up to, coped & in some cases ignored the reasons for the rise of these immigrant gangsters. If you can find it in the auctions I recommend you buy it.....a little historical treasure.
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