Bøker av David Mikics

Celebrate America's zaniest and most subversive magazine in 26 essays and comix from all-star contributors, including Roz Chast, Jonathan Lethem, and Grady Hendrix. Before SNL and the wise-guy sarcasm of Letterman and Colbert, before The Simpsons and online memes, there was . . .  MAD. A mainstay of countless American childhoods, MAD magazine exploded onto the scene in the 1950s and gleefully thumbed its nose at all the postwar pieties. MAD became the zaniest, most subversive satire magazine ever to be sold on America's newsstands, anticipating the spirit of underground comix and 'zines and influencing humor writing in movies, television, and the internet to this day. Edited by David Mikics, The MAD Files celebrates the magazine's impact and the legacy of the Usual Gang of Idiots who transformed puerile punchlines and merciless mockery into an art form. 26 essays and comics present a varied, perceptive, and often very funny account of MAD's significance, ranging from the cultural to the aesthetic to the personal. Art Spiegelman reflects on how he "couldn't learn much about America from my refugee immigrant parents--but I learned all about it from MAD"Roz Chast remembers how the magazine was "love at first sight. . . . It was one of my first inklings that there were other people out there who found the world as ridiculous as I did."David Hajdu and Grady Hendrix zero in on MAD's hilarious movie spoofsLiel Leibovitz delves into the Jewishness behind the magazine's humorand Rachel Shteir amplifies the often unsung contributions of MAD's women artists.Several essays are admiring profiles of the individual creators that made MAD what it was: Mort Drucker, Harvey Kurtzman, Al Jaffee, Antonio Prohias, and Will Elder. For longtime fans and new readers alike, The MAD Files is an indispensable guide to America's greatest satire magazine.

Who Was Jacques Derrida? is the first intellectual biography of Derrida, the first full-scale appraisal of his career, his influence, and his philosophical roots. It is also the first attempt to define his crucial importance as the ambassador of "e;theory,"e; the phenomenon that has had a profound influence on academic life in the humanities. Mikics lucidly and sensitively describes for the general reader Derrida's deep connection to his Jewish roots. He succinctly defines his vision of philosophy as a discipline that resists psychology.While pointing out the flaws of that vision and Derridas betrayal of his most adamantly expounded beliefs, Mikics ultimately concludes that Derrida was neither so brilliantly right nor so badly wrong as his enthusiasts and critics, respectively, claimed."e;

Reading, David Mikics says, should not be drudgery, and not mere information-gathering or escape either, but a way to live life at a higher pitch. Slow Reading in a Hurried Age is a practical guide for anyone who yearns for a more meaningful, satisfying reading experience, as well as sharper reading skills and improved concentration.

"Stanley Kubrick revolutionized Hollywood with movies like Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange, and electrified audiences with The Shining and Full Metal Jacket. David Mikics takes readers on a deep dive into Kubrick's life and work, illustrating his intense commitment to each of his films."--Provided by publisher.

A leading literary critic's innovative study of how the Nobel Prize-winning author turned life into art.

The great American thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson and the influential German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, though writing in different eras and ultimately developing significantly different philosophies, both praised the individual's wish to be transformed, to be fully created for the first time.