Derby Dugan`s Depression Funnies
by Tom De Haven | Literature & Fiction | This book has not been rated.
ISBN: 0805053565 Global Overview for this book
ISBN: 0805053565 Global Overview for this book
2 journalers for this copy...
1996 Owl Books trade paperback (first edition) bought at the thrift store to release.
From Publishers Weekly
Beneath the raffish surface charm of De Haven's comic-strip-like novel is a potent meditation on death, violence, broken hearts, friendships betrayed and life's other inconveniences. This sequel to Funny Papers is kinetically illustrated by Art Spiegelman (Maus), whose cover painting and comic-strip running heads mesh perfectly with a wickedly amusing romp that marvelously captures Depression-era Manhattan's tempo, lingo and places, from Harlem jazz clubs to chop-suey joints. It's 1936. Walter Geebus, the grouchy, five-times-married creator of the syndicated comic strip "Derby Dugan," mysteriously collapses and is hospitalized. His constantly feuding collaborator, prolific hack writer Al Bready, suspects that a disgruntled former partner, who went to jail for poisoning Walter in 1934, may somehow be involved. Through the cheerfully cynical voice of the smart-mouthed Al, De Haven conjures a world that has more moxie than ours. While evoking the romance of a bygone era, the story, filled with wry observations, depicts the birth pangs of the cutthroat, exploitive comic-strip industry with historical fidelity. Far from being two-dimensional, De Haven's off-kilter characters--an ex-bootlegger who's now a comic-book mogul; a flirtatious schoolteacher who is the swooning Al's confidante; her jealous husband, a lunchroom owner who always smells of chlorine from swimming twice a day at the Y-leap off the page into your face.
From School Library Journal
YA
Orphaned Derby and sidekick Fuzzy, his talking dog, conquer near-death obstacles in a 1930s daily comic strip, Derby Dugan. Al Bready scripts the comic strip that the originator, Walter Geebus, illustrates. Both men, orphaned in their youth, devote their lives to the strip like loving fathers. Differing vastly personally, they disagree professionally only on whether Derby is 10 or 14 years old (the ages they were orphaned). Al narrates and loosely links professional and personal events into a bittersweet tale. He and his cohorts speak in a lively, upbeat dialogue that oozes with Depression years' slang. Interspersed are fascinating tidbits about the comic-book industry. Many teens will enjoy the novel's quick pace and characters who transform their dysfunctional family backgrounds into productive adult lives.
From Booklist
A colorful, mid-1930s Manhattan-that-never-was of nightclubs, seedy hotels, lunch counters, and brothels is the backdrop for this novel set in the heyday of the newspaper comic strip. The narrator is sardonic Al Bready, who ghostwrites the "Orphan Annie"-like "Derby Dugan" for misanthropic artist Walter Geebus. What plot there is deals with Geebus' failing health (he never recovered from being poisoned by an assistant scheming to take over the strip), the search for his replacement, and Bready confronting the dual loss of father figure Geebus and the married woman, Jewel Rodgers, with whom he is futilely smitten. These main figures are well drawn, but what brings the bittersweet story to life is a quirky supporting cast and the Depression-era milieu that, rather than seeming authentic, appears to be derived--appropriately--from period pop culture. Also, Bready's cynicism and tough-guy patois perfectly express the outlook of his fellow cartoonists, whose pride in their unappreciated art form belies their dismissive comments about it and whose sad lives poignantly contrast with the romantic, larger-than-life figures that populate "Derby."
From Kirkus Reviews
A good-natured romp through the New York newspaper world of the 1930s, by the whimsical author of such unconventional comic fiction as Freaks' Amour (1979)--and a previous novel about the joys and sorrows of the cartoonist's life, Funny Papers (1985). De Haven's narrator, Al Bready, looks backward from the vantage point of cranky old age to the palmy if conflicted days when "strip'' cartoonists were media kings and when Al, a self-taught hustler steeped in the works of Jack London and Booth Tarkington, wrote scripts for irascible Walter Geebus's popular Derby Dugan strip, which portrayed the adventures of a resourceful street kid and his faithful talking dog. Everybody loved Derby--even John Dillinger wrote Walter a fan letter from prison. But, as Al recalls it here, those were dangerous days as well: When his boss's inexplicable illness raises fears of a plot by a rival, Al is drawn into the unsettling lives of such broadly drawn individuals as lunchroom owner Jimmie Rodgers, who says everything twice, Jimmie's beauteous (and perhaps faithful) wife Jewel, an enigmatic man-about-town known only as Mysterious Jones, and several other Damon Runyonesque personalities. Walter Geebus is a wonderful creation, an inspired amalgam of curmudgeon, tyrant, bigot, and hypochondriac--and how can you not like a disheveled romantic who confesses, "I fall in love at the drop of my pants''? Yet despite its stab at a melodramatic plot, the story moves slowly, and is further deadened by Al's shuttling back and forth between his battles with Geebus and his (unsuccessfully repressed) memories of a blighted childhood. Despite its raucous particulars, a lot of clever name-dropping, and some enchanting illustrations (that seem to blend the styles of Little Orphan Annie and The Katzenjammer Kids) by Art Spiegelman, the novel is both static and redundant. A real disappointment. Not nearly as much fun as it promised to be, and should have been.
From Publishers Weekly
Beneath the raffish surface charm of De Haven's comic-strip-like novel is a potent meditation on death, violence, broken hearts, friendships betrayed and life's other inconveniences. This sequel to Funny Papers is kinetically illustrated by Art Spiegelman (Maus), whose cover painting and comic-strip running heads mesh perfectly with a wickedly amusing romp that marvelously captures Depression-era Manhattan's tempo, lingo and places, from Harlem jazz clubs to chop-suey joints. It's 1936. Walter Geebus, the grouchy, five-times-married creator of the syndicated comic strip "Derby Dugan," mysteriously collapses and is hospitalized. His constantly feuding collaborator, prolific hack writer Al Bready, suspects that a disgruntled former partner, who went to jail for poisoning Walter in 1934, may somehow be involved. Through the cheerfully cynical voice of the smart-mouthed Al, De Haven conjures a world that has more moxie than ours. While evoking the romance of a bygone era, the story, filled with wry observations, depicts the birth pangs of the cutthroat, exploitive comic-strip industry with historical fidelity. Far from being two-dimensional, De Haven's off-kilter characters--an ex-bootlegger who's now a comic-book mogul; a flirtatious schoolteacher who is the swooning Al's confidante; her jealous husband, a lunchroom owner who always smells of chlorine from swimming twice a day at the Y-leap off the page into your face.
From School Library Journal
YA
Orphaned Derby and sidekick Fuzzy, his talking dog, conquer near-death obstacles in a 1930s daily comic strip, Derby Dugan. Al Bready scripts the comic strip that the originator, Walter Geebus, illustrates. Both men, orphaned in their youth, devote their lives to the strip like loving fathers. Differing vastly personally, they disagree professionally only on whether Derby is 10 or 14 years old (the ages they were orphaned). Al narrates and loosely links professional and personal events into a bittersweet tale. He and his cohorts speak in a lively, upbeat dialogue that oozes with Depression years' slang. Interspersed are fascinating tidbits about the comic-book industry. Many teens will enjoy the novel's quick pace and characters who transform their dysfunctional family backgrounds into productive adult lives.
From Booklist
A colorful, mid-1930s Manhattan-that-never-was of nightclubs, seedy hotels, lunch counters, and brothels is the backdrop for this novel set in the heyday of the newspaper comic strip. The narrator is sardonic Al Bready, who ghostwrites the "Orphan Annie"-like "Derby Dugan" for misanthropic artist Walter Geebus. What plot there is deals with Geebus' failing health (he never recovered from being poisoned by an assistant scheming to take over the strip), the search for his replacement, and Bready confronting the dual loss of father figure Geebus and the married woman, Jewel Rodgers, with whom he is futilely smitten. These main figures are well drawn, but what brings the bittersweet story to life is a quirky supporting cast and the Depression-era milieu that, rather than seeming authentic, appears to be derived--appropriately--from period pop culture. Also, Bready's cynicism and tough-guy patois perfectly express the outlook of his fellow cartoonists, whose pride in their unappreciated art form belies their dismissive comments about it and whose sad lives poignantly contrast with the romantic, larger-than-life figures that populate "Derby."
From Kirkus Reviews
A good-natured romp through the New York newspaper world of the 1930s, by the whimsical author of such unconventional comic fiction as Freaks' Amour (1979)--and a previous novel about the joys and sorrows of the cartoonist's life, Funny Papers (1985). De Haven's narrator, Al Bready, looks backward from the vantage point of cranky old age to the palmy if conflicted days when "strip'' cartoonists were media kings and when Al, a self-taught hustler steeped in the works of Jack London and Booth Tarkington, wrote scripts for irascible Walter Geebus's popular Derby Dugan strip, which portrayed the adventures of a resourceful street kid and his faithful talking dog. Everybody loved Derby--even John Dillinger wrote Walter a fan letter from prison. But, as Al recalls it here, those were dangerous days as well: When his boss's inexplicable illness raises fears of a plot by a rival, Al is drawn into the unsettling lives of such broadly drawn individuals as lunchroom owner Jimmie Rodgers, who says everything twice, Jimmie's beauteous (and perhaps faithful) wife Jewel, an enigmatic man-about-town known only as Mysterious Jones, and several other Damon Runyonesque personalities. Walter Geebus is a wonderful creation, an inspired amalgam of curmudgeon, tyrant, bigot, and hypochondriac--and how can you not like a disheveled romantic who confesses, "I fall in love at the drop of my pants''? Yet despite its stab at a melodramatic plot, the story moves slowly, and is further deadened by Al's shuttling back and forth between his battles with Geebus and his (unsuccessfully repressed) memories of a blighted childhood. Despite its raucous particulars, a lot of clever name-dropping, and some enchanting illustrations (that seem to blend the styles of Little Orphan Annie and The Katzenjammer Kids) by Art Spiegelman, the novel is both static and redundant. A real disappointment. Not nearly as much fun as it promised to be, and should have been.
This is one of many Bookcrossing books on a table in the second floor hallway at 149 York Street. It's a Yale building with restricted access, which is why I only make release notes for a few books (to keep the UBCZ on the Go Hunting page without flooding inboxes with alerts for unhuntable releases). If you have a Yale ID (or know someone who does), you may be able to get in. Use the door to the right; the door on the left goes to the basement.
Thanks for finding this book
Please write a journal entry letting all its past and future readers know that this book was found. (It's anonymous, and you don't have to join Bookcrossing to do it.) Then read and keep this book, give it to a friend, or even release it for someone else to find--just like you did. Happy reading!
Thanks for finding this book
Please write a journal entry letting all its past and future readers know that this book was found. (It's anonymous, and you don't have to join Bookcrossing to do it.) Then read and keep this book, give it to a friend, or even release it for someone else to find--just like you did. Happy reading!
I like the cover.
CAUGHT IN NEW HAVEN CT USA
CAUGHT IN NEW HAVEN CT USA
