Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Price: $26.00
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DAVID HAJDU presents The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America$5 tickets on sale now.
Harvard Book Store is pleased to welcome New Repubilc music critic DAVID HAJDU for a discussion of one of the twentieth century’s most controversial and innovative developments in artistic culture. In the years between World War II and the emergence of television as a mass medium, American popular culture as we know it was first created—in the pulpy, boldly illustrated pages of comic books. No sooner had this new culture emerged than it was beaten down by church groups, community bluestockings, and a McCarthyish Congress—only to resurface with a crooked smile on its face in Mad magazine. Created by outsiders from the tenements, garish, shameless, and often shocking, comics spoke to young people and provided the guardians of mainstream culture with a big target. Parents, teachers, and complicit kids burned comics in public bonfires. Cities passed laws to outlaw comics. Congress took action with televised hearings that nearly destroyed the careers of hundreds of artists and writers. As he did with the lives of Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington (in Lush Life) and Bob Dylan and his circle (in Positively 4th Street), Hajdu brings a place, a time, and a milieu unforgettably back to life.
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CONTACT:
General Info:
617.661.1515
Media:
617.661.1424 ex.1
Email:
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| DATE: |
Thursday, April 3rd |
| TIME: |
6:00 PM |
| LOCATION: |
Brattle Theatre
40 Brattle Street
Cambridge |
| TICKETS: |
Tickets for this event are $5 and may be purchased at Harvard Book Store or over the phone with a credit card (617-661-1515). Please note that your $5 ticket may be redeemed for $5 off a single item at the event or at Harvard Book Store for one month following the event. |
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David Hajdu is the author of Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn and Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina. He is the music critic for The New Republic, and he teaches at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.
Photo credit: Eric Ogden.
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