French comic book legend Jean Giraud, also known as Moebius, died today in Paris at 73.
Although Giraud’s work is more famous in Europe, and particularly France and Belgium, where comics tend to get more of the artistic esteem they deserve, his influence on contemporary American comics and sci-fi film design should not be underestimated.
His take on Wild West culture is exemplified in what is likely his largest body of work Blueberry, but folks new to Giraud might wish to start with The Airtight Garage (or just check out this cool gallery).
Giraud/Moebius was never simply a genre artist; instead, his work taps into the mythological, exploring themes that seem at once both strangely familiar but also wildly divergent from our expectations. His imaginative disruptions made him a key partner for film directors like Alejandro Jodorowsky; he also worked on the art team behind Alien, among other films, like The Abyss, Willow, and Tron. Giraud was also close friends with Hayao Miyazaki.
Giraud leaves a rich, vibrant legacy. The imaginative spaces of his worlds will undoubtedly captivate generations to come.
(More/via).
I found this one at random in my favorite used bookshop last week. Had never heard of it before, but it’s really neato—Cage’s lectures, notes, letters, etc. on a range of subjects, including Charles Ives, Marcel Duchamp, and making the world better. Cover’s in rough shape, but it’s a first edition paperback, so all’s well &c.
A few pics from the strange interior (no worries, I will be plundering the book for posts in the months to come):
From a 1961 letter by Flannery O’Connor to an English professor, who wrote her asking for an interpretation of her story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” In his letter, the professor concludes that the second half of the story is imaginary, an interpretation that seems to give Ms. O’Connor the vapors:
The interpretation of your ninety students and three teachers is fantastic and about as far from my intentions as it could get to be. If it were a legitimate interpretation, the story would be little more than a trick and its interest would be simply for abnormal psychology. I am not interested in abnormal psychology.
There is a change of tension from the first part of the story to the second where the Misfit enters, but this is no lessening of reality. This story is, of course, not meant to be realistic in the sense that it portrays the everyday doings of people in Georgia. It is stylized and its conventions are comic even though its meaning is serious.
Bailey’s only importance is as the Grandmother’s boy and the driver of the car. It is the Grandmother who first recognized the Misfit and who is most concerned with him throughout. The story is a duel of sorts between the Grandmother and her superficial beliefs and the Misfit’s more profoundly felt involvement with Christ’s action which set the world off balance for him.
The meaning of a story should go on expanding for the reader the more he thinks about it, but meaning cannot be captured in an interpretation. If teachers are in the habit of approaching a story as if it were a research problem for which any answer is believable so long as it is not obvious, then I think students will never learn to enjoy fiction. Too much interpretation is certainly worse than too little, and where feeling for a story is absent, theory will not supply it.
My tone is not meant to be obnoxious. I am in a state of shock.
From Richard Ellman’s great big bio James Joyce.
Biblioklept 