i have started with living history and making sure that our best people are working on at. >> publishing hard choices on june 10th. her fourth book with us, and i was the editor of the book. i was involved from the very beginning. overseeing all aspects of it, working very closely with all the people at the company. >> as the editor on there a lot of the melt back and forth? is that how it is done? >> every case is different. in this case i tried to give just as much attention to secretary clinton as i have to all of the others. i should mention in the same breath that we are also publishing james webb, a terrific united states senator and his book is out right now. i don't want to era favor one author over another. >> when we acquired that book,

asked if there was anything that we could do for the e-book specifically. we brainstorms some ideas and talked about when the right time to act on those ideas might be. thinking of that also from the very beginning. >> my role is to liaise with national media and partnership with the communications team. >> what is an effective media campaigns? ..

>> we twirl away here and make a lt of videos of writers, but we don't have many that go up on the home page of aol the day we hand it over: so that part's been really fun. >> watch for hillary clinton to appear on booktv soon to discuss her latest book, "hard choices." >> c-span's new book, "sundays at eight," includes gretchen morganson. >> what role should the government play in housing opinions? if you want to subsidize housing in this country and we want to talk about it and the populace agrees that it's something we should subsidize, then put it on the balance sheet and make it clear and make it evident and

make everybody aware of how much it's costing. but when you deliver it through these third party enterprises -- fannie mae and freddie mac -- when you deliver the subsidy through a public company with private shareholders and executives who can extract a lot of that subsidy for themselves, that is not a very good way of subsidizing home ownership. >> read more of our conversation with gretchen morganson and other featured interviews in c-span's "sundays at eight." from public affairs books, now available for a father's day gift at your favorite bookseller. >> booktv covers hundreds of author programs throughout the country all year long. here's a look at some of the events we'll be attending this week. look for these programs to air in the near future on booktv on c-span2. tuesday we're at the harvard bookstore in cambridge, massachusetts, for constitutional law professor lawrence tribe and his thoughts

on the roberts court from his new book, "uncertain justice." that same evening, history professor christy mcrackis looks at the use of invisible ink. the international club of atlanta. then on thursday in new york city, claudio assant recounts what occurred outside of the british colonies in 1776 from his recent book, "west of the revolution." and on friday, hillary clinton discusses her new memoir, "hard choices," at george washington university in washington d.c. that's a look at some of the author programs booktv will be covering this upcoming week. for more, go to our web site, booktv.org, and visit upcoming programs. >> our final author presentation of the day is with paul buhle.

the author is next live from the printers row lit fest. [inaudible conversations] >> okay, everyone. welcome to the 30th annual chicago tribune printers row lit fest. this is our last discussion of the day. thank you all for sticking around. before we start, i'd like to give a special thank you to all the festival sponsors. mr. buhle's book is being sold in the main lobby, and he's going to be doing a book signing right outside this auditorium immediately after this discussion concludes. today's program is being broadcast live on c-span2's booktv. we're going to do a short q&a session at the end of the discussion, so when the time comes, we'll have you guys line up at the microphones to your right for the benefit of our tv viewers so they can hear your questions. if you would like to watch this program again, leads note that

we're going to be -- please note that we're going to be broadcasting, reairing this discussion and all of our discussions at 11 p.m. on c-span2 both this evening and tomorrow evening. please keep the spirit of the lit fest going year round with the subscription to the printers row journal, that's the tribune's premium book section, fiction series and membership program. and this year the tribune is also rolling out the trib books app, and you've received one of our little promo cards which gives you information about the app and access to special book deals. before we begin today's program, just a reminder to, please, silence all of your cell phones and turn the flashes off of your cameras. although i will say you are allowed to take photographs. we encourage it, and we encourage you to post your photographs on twitter, instagram and facebook with the hashtag printersrow. that being said, i'll throw this over to rick, our moderator,

rick perlstein, and he will take it from here. >> thank you. it's a pleasure to be here, and it's a pleasure to be able to present to a wider audience this marvelous book by paul buhle, "bohemians." just for those who are in the television audience, this is a comic book, one of serious import not without great fun and joy. and first of all, i've been charged with the responsibility of introducing paul. this is the part where i tell you who he is and where he comes from, but i'd rather have him do that. you were a history professor. american studies professor, host recently at brown university. and in your author description on the back, you now describe yourself as a full-time editor of comic books. why don't you tell us how you got from the first job and then

to this new -- i think you have your own microphone, paul. >> very good. [laughter] >> here in chicago we treat you right. >> very good, and thanks, rick. i actually published a magazine for the new left in the late 1960s -- >> why don't you start with where you come from and -- >> ah, yes, i'm from down state i'll which means anything 10 miles south of chicago downward, actually champagne urbana. by the time i got to madison, which was in 1967, the rising generation of social movements desperately need a little bit of intellectual conversation. so i started a magazine titled "radical america" with emphasis on finding things in the home lambed that were worth uplifting and remembering and so on. mostly the circle of historians. but among the scholarly things we did, i managed to find a wonderful young artist who was doing comics in austin, texas,

named gilbert shelton and get him to edit and draw radical american comics. it was a one shot, but it was an appearance within that world of so-called underground comics that was very much a part of the counterculture. more so in tabloids than in comic book form, but also in comic book form. and it lasted until the end of the 1970s when the head shops were closed by the police or otherwise along with the rest of the counterculture dissolved into -- >> paul, some of the young people in the audience might not know what a head shop is. >> yes, indeed. i can barely for myself. i'm hoping for the best reasons and not for the worst. head shops were light drug paraphernalia places that sold bongs and other such things for marijuana, but also and more productively you might say, sold psychedelic and political posters of that era and sold underground comic books. they were a sort of curious free

space usually around a campus, sometimes in big cities. they had homemade jewelry, they had all kind of handicraft stuff forecasting the years ahead, but mainly visual things and things that would make you more visual. >> yeah. and that really brings us quite nicely to the theme of today's presentation, "bohemians," right? >> yes, indeed. let me backtrack and say how i made this transition from being a history professor to a comics maven. i already started doing both of those together in the later '60s, but as i was teaching my last decade i would say at brown university, and especially teaching a surveys course called "the '60s without apology," and most especially playing a cd of alan ginsburg reading howell to my 19-year-old students and finding out they were howling in delight year after year at

hearing alan ginsburg, i thought to myself that there's a current within american and global society that can't be pinned down as being particularly totally political. and it doesn't fit within existing literary categories or artistic categories easily. and yet there's this floating phenomenon that has been described by the participants themselves as a sort of bohemianism. and since these very advanced and bright students read fewer and fewer books every year like students everywhere, i thought it was time to make a transition toward something that people under 30 read a lot which is to say comic books. but comic books have been undergoing a very large change since the middle 1990s at least, they gained a degree of respect from "the new york times." but they also are considered art.

really important books. it all begins with "mouse" by artie spiegelman. very, very important book and has reeded until today -- proceeded until today defining a space of young people who wanted to become painters but realized they didn't want to produce things for the walls of private patrons. or people who just have a fascination with comics would find for themselves a field of art comics -- i call them art comics -- which is frivolous, delightful but also the way i do it, which is to say a little niche of nonfiction within the comic art world, fairly serious. >> yeah. >> and "bohemians" as a book certainly follows in the trail of "the beats" which i edited. >> fantastic. yeah. allison bechtel's work is remarkable. her most recent book is called "are you my mother," and you read that book, and it's incredibly dense and interesting

and intellectually satisfying. you learn a lot about the british psychoanalyst d.w. winochot. there's a lot of references to people like james joyce and people like that. let me quote from your introduction then and get into the topic of bohemianism. you say bohemians have occupied a status in society without being politically minded or even organized. the danger that they pose for the fretful of every generation is also the secret of their lasting appeal. and then in a chapter, an amazing dual biography of billy holliday and a gentleman named abe mirapol who wrote the great song "strange fruit," a writer named sharon rudolph writes: for a hundred years or so, bohemia was a safe meeting place for

artists, deviants, revolutionaries, dilettantes and outcasts. perhaps this smoothed the path for change. can care to elaborate on that? >> well, art comics as i produce them are in some cases scripted, written as if i were talking about a film script or a theatrical script by me. sometimes by the artist himself or herself, in this case sharon rudolph, one of those survivors from the underground comics, in this case feminist underground comics of the 1970s. and very often somewhere in between. sharon is speaking of herself in her own life. i believe she wrote a couple of pornography novels under another name in order to fund herself through art school -- >> a couple of characters do that. >> yes. yes, right. but she's also channeling me, the editorial voice, in asking the young generation -- readers

under 30 mainly, not entirely -- why is it that bohemians seem to violate social, sexual and other norms? and going back to paris in the 1850s and corbet which is sort of how we start the book, the great artist and revolutionary, what is the relationship between the artist who puts aside career aspirations as insufficiently important for any serious artist to engage in and attaches himself to other people, mostly young people who in the case of paris in the 1850s started getting their clothes from used clothing stores and having affairs, making art and oatly and otherwise ignoring -- poetry and otherwise ignoring social values. but also, like the denizens of greenwich village in 1910, attracting a large audience of tourists to themselves. so we have a neat little

contradiction here. bohemians, by definition, are violating various social norms, but they're fascinating to many parts of society, people who live in idaho who don't see any bohemianism, but people who live anyplace else and are drawn to this milieu as i at age 19 was drawn to city lights bookstore in san francisco. >> right. >> to me, coming from the middle of illinois, city of lights seemed like the mecca of beat poetry and idea of living a different life. and the writings, poems of lawrence frolengeti and diane deprima and a whole range of others including alan ginsburg -- >> yes. >> -- who seemed to speak from a very, very different place from middle america. >> yes. and as you hint, it's a very sexy book. one of the things you write in the introduction also is that bohemians, quote: disregard existing laws, especially those connecting love and marriage.ccñ

and i should also say the laws connecting love between people of different genders. just an absolutely gorgeous chapter on walt whitman by someone named sabrina jones. this really stunning, kind of formal touches. she hasç this one panel about walt whitman writing in his brooklyn ferry poem about a sea of humanity going down the street this manhattan, and it's almost like a sea of humanity going down the page and the panel. and then there's the last image of the book is him meditating about what it's like being on the ferry and all these strangers who have this kind of psychic kinship with one another. and she transforms that into the f train, the brooklyn subway train. but, and it all looks like rockwell almost. it's absolutely gorgeous stuff. >> yeah. i think one of the important things is that the artists are able to experiment on the

printed page with comics in ways that other artists choose to do on canvass or physical forms or whatever they do in the variety of modern art forms today. but on the page with comic arts, they can borrow from every phase of modern and premodern art and create something which is distinctively their own. and i should add parts of the book include the oldest bohemian of the underground comic sven rodriguez. he died a year ago december, and the book is dedicated to him. to a wonderful 22-year-old artist named hillary allison who did a great piece on the very famous gay novelist and photographer of manhattan in the 1920s to 1940s. so in topic, in style and in generation the artists really represent a very broad spectrum, and i should add that sabrina

jones is a stage technician at "saturday night live" and has been one for 15 years. and that's sort of average for comic artists. they have this straight job. nobody can make a living from drawing these comics. but, and there are probably half a dozen artists who are so famous they can hit the lecture tour and get great audiences and get prizes and so on and so forth. i always think i know the names of all these artists because there are so few of them. and then there's the 99% of the others who don't make a living out of it but find in it a meaningful use of expression which is rebellious and political without ever being didactic. >> that's great. well, let's delve into a little bit of the history going back to the 19th century. a couple chapters later you have oscar wilde writing of a friend how i have the kiss of walt whitman still on my lips. [laughter] while we're on the subject, tell me about the second chapter in the book by lisa lyons and

louisa sette, the unitary household. >> louisa's an italian professor, and she, like a number of other young italian radicals of the 1970s, they took on american studies. it was a great subject for them because america was the land where utopianism and not hard-line marxism had been a major form of political expression. so for this writer and lisa lyons, an experienced illustrator, the idea was recapturing those utopian colonies not only outside the big cities in the 1840 and 1850s, but actually those that were within new york and spoke very freely about the subject called free love. it was a subject of much discussion and a sort of love without marriage that was at the same time a fight against the growth of the prostitution trade. rich men can always find young

women. and that's not what we call free love. >> well, what was the unitary household? >> well, several really sexual utopians in the 1840s and 1850s got this idea that if they could set up what appears to us to be a cooperative; a household where everyone shared the work. admittedly, these were middle class thyers who had some -- new yorkers who had some servants. then they would be able to meet and talk, intellectual discussion, the kinds of levels of equality between men and women that did not exist elsewhere in american society and scarcely elsewhere anyway even in the higher social classes. and they would socialize, talk, and as victoria woodhall would say 20 years later, i can make love to anyone i want to, i could change any day that i want to. i could go on like this as long as i want to, and no one says that i can't. another chapter is devoted to

victoria woodhall. she published the first edition of the communist manifesto in the united states by karl marx. she was also president of the american spiritualists association. and she and her group were representatives of the first international; that is, of karl marx's organization, until his lieutenants were thrown out of the organization for being too wild and crazy. but she's representative of a different type of american radical who didn't think they could build colonies anywhere outside the city -- cities or create perfect societies. but, instead, propagated the ideas of free association, birth control and other kinds of cooperative mechanisms to avoid labor exploitation. and our precursive to the greenwich village scene with one very large addition, in the early years of the 20th century urban illustrators in the

commercial press began drawing pictures of cities, and they made a living doing this. and they sort of flowed into this young radical magazine called "the masses," published between 1912 and its suppression in 1917, which were a combination of radical politics but also of ash can art. the invented ash can art on the printed page, that is. drawings about perfectly ordinary people from the slums to the upper classes walking around in central park. they were the biggest and most radical development in american art up until that time really x they ran con -- and they ran concurrent or parallel, in some ways contradictory with the opening of the armory show in 1913 in new york which brings for the first time abstract art to united states and is in its form quite radical and quite amazing. >> so many of their radical presentations are taken for granted by that.

so that's what you mean by the social changes that liberate even ordinary folks. >> yes, that's right. there's no separating the politics. the artists around "the masses" from their singlemost pressing, immediate new york demand which was for birth control devices and knowledge to be made widely available. emma goldman, among these people, was among the most famous and charismatic. but all of them shared that commitment, that the availability of birth control meds would change -- methods would change social relations between men and women, and i think it is the case. >> so moving forward in the book from the unitary household, next comes the queen of bohemia, a woman named ada claire. who was shesome. >> ada claire is one of a wide

spectrum of types who spent most of her time in this one club in new york city which was a real bohemian spot in the 1850s. and then ada claire, having independent wealth from a family that died, was able to go on the stage to present herself as a bohemian, free woman from new york all the way to hon lieu loo -- hon honolulu, most astonishingly. >> a single mother. >> and a single mother and go through a series of lovers and write a series of unsuccessful novels and live this sort of astonishing way that seems to us unbelievable for the 1850s. but spoke to the openness of american society which in some ways, some terribly sad ways for me as the great, great grandson of an abolitionist and union army soldier, shut down with the civil war and left behind it a very lessened, weakened society

with a bohemia that took 20 or 30 years to give itself sort of a rebirth. >> ada introduces a paradox. she was the sole heiress of plantation other thans. and we also meet natalie barney who kind of also had more money than god and used it to build a lesbian spa. but i want to talk about that theme. the introduction of rich folks who are kind of the mety chis of some of these communities, the interesting relationship between kind of wealth and bohemia. >> well, it certainly is there in the history of radical art. and the radical art scene historically has been dependent upon a financial angel here and there. and those financial angels often very badly wanted to participate in this art scene themselves.

so without them, it would be very difficult to manage these things. with them, it's wonderfully contradictory. >> yeah. often the patrons of the bohemians are the government that try to bring in the creative class neighborhoods that they hope will develop with a beachhead of artists. >> i would say that's a recent development, at least in the united states. there's a great contradiction, the fostering of modern art in the 1950s with, in some cases, money behind it from the central intelligence agency -- >> yeah. >> -- was a cold war plan. henry luce of time magazine called abstract art free enterprise art -- >> yes. >> which is a terrible insult, but financially speaking it's a little bit true. but it's also true that the creation of the national endowment for the arts, the national endowment for the humanities were important developments. i guess if you want to look for a really hopeful sign, you would

go instead back to the new deal. the works progress administration, the wonderful documentation of american ordinary life, but also the murals that it sponsored, the astonishing photography that the wpa and other new deal agencies sponsored. all of that government support comes to a rude end in 1942 thanks to congress. and maybe is reborn in the 1970s and 1980s despite reaganism, but has played an important part. >> well, there's also this rich contradictory theme, a group of bohemian intellectuals of my generation coming here from chicago, the baffler magazine, called it commodifying dissent. and when i was reading a certain chapter, i thought about the baffler guys. and this was the chapter which was really kind of suggested that the idea of selling out is as old as bohemia itself, and this is the one on trillby

mania. [laughter] >> very funny. this was sharon's discovery more than my own. when a novel appears in britain, i think, and is an instant bestseller, it's dived into by the middle classes of the united states with great energy, and suddenly there are trillby shoes, hats, everything. but also inspires thousands of middle class matrons to wish to be painted nude, something which had never happened in the united states until that time. so there's a sort of genteel bohemianism or a desire to go someplace else culturally speaking and discover something that isn't in the -- >> and you could go to the store and buy shoe laces, cocktails, cigars, tril lby cigars, stockings, and yet the author of the piece also suggests that this really, despite itself, gave an opening for a lot of women to enter careers in the

creative professions. she cites julie morgan, the architect who built the hearst castle. >> that's right. and also for women to ride bicycles which was a very, very big deal by the 1890s because you couldn't wear a 19th century girdle and -- >> i'm always scandalized when i see ladies on a bicycle. >> indeed. >> so, well, and i can't believe you're from illinois, and you have nothing in here about the dill pickle club. >> two previous comic books of mine, wobblies about the iww and the beats, treat the dill pickle club and its leading figure at great length. >> okay. just for those who don't know, the dill pickle club with one l was a radical bohemian outpost on state street by the new berry library right next to buckhouse square in which all manner of goings-on took place. i wanted to single out an artist

i didn't know about, and looking up his biography online, he seems like a really interesting guy, and he does some of the most stunning stuff. including a chapter on katherine dunham and pearl pry miss, the dancers and choreographers who were also students of earth nothing my and african culture. this is lance tooks? >> lance tooks. now, lance tooks and milton knight, two of the three african-american or artists in this book, are interesting because they were trained to work in animation, trained and self-trained to work in the animation industry, and were very successful in the 1980s. and then the animation industry sent all the jobs overseas, and they were out of a job. so they retrained themselves to draw comics. lance, who exiled himself to spain -- he's from manhattan -- is now doing another book for me, a graphic biography of felonious monk. >> oh, wow.

>> and that chapter didn't get were placed in the e-book edition. you'll find lots more in the e-book edition than is in the printed edition ofñr "bohemians" >> i wish we had slides, man. i wish people could see this stuff. go online. pull out your phones and google it. >> yeah. yeah, yeah. i think there's also, there may be a look inside on amazon, or there may not be. but if you look at the individual artists, each artist -- without exception -- has his or her own web site because that's how they make some bucks. >> yeah. >> and you'll find some really fascinating art by lance and milton thieght. a wonderful young policewoman woman artist -- black woman in her 20s. ..

katherine dunham and josephine baker lived on and on long enough to be critics of the vietnam war and in the haitian hundred strike. >> that's right. they were still in the struggle in the 1990's connecting art with culture, and both of them with politics resistant. >> and they come out of dissent. depicted in an image getting a

medal from george w. bush. >> the final insult. it can happen to radical artists, but these people -- i mean, some of them are really famous, and we remember them, at least most of us remember gertrude stein, billie holiday and others, but we don't -- we don't so easily remember archer wrote. a great italian american poet, a best-selling poet as of 1912 who was also a labor leader and an extraordinary person as i mentioned karl, a host of others who were just outside our memory now, but really are stunning and fascinating individuals who kept the idea of freedom, moving the came to keep two of the flame to keep it alive during the dark days. it would come back from time to time from the 1920's and 1950's.

>> these guys to speak to us from the dead, name i did not know. i think i know of few things. bernard wolfe. >> sa, bernard wolfe. the author of a book called the not altogether shy memoir of a pornographer. bernard wolfe was a harvard student who was the bodyguard of leon trotsky, unfortunately not on the scene when he was murdered. and wrote a book which was a biography of the jazz musician. >> supposedly an autobiography. better known for having marijuana available than for pie in the instrument, but quite a fascinating life. the writing of this book itself was in a kind of jazz pros which many authors ever since have thought is great and sort of pre cursed all kinds of musical lyrics. and then he needed to make a

living in rhode pornography books for the same publisher, and remember, no surprise. there were not that many publishers of pornography around. a series of science fiction books and a few television shows and so forth and so forth. before get these people, no matter how weird and fascinating new were because they did not do the single great thing, right the single great novel that would keep pan am alive, what is good to bring them back. >> yes. and the thread that runs through it. speaking of the guy who has read a lot of bad writing about jazz, i have to say that the peace by nicholson about be-bop is just about the smartest s.a. about the intricacies, political, social, musical that i have read >> beckham i think he was a lifelong musician. >> i could tell. >> his brother of the monkeys for those of you will not to remember. the first underground artist of wisconsin and the later 1960's,

but as a musician he had tried to tease out the complications and contradictions of be-bop, and instead of flattening it into something that was wonderful everybody who loved it was great and everybody you hated it was awful. if what a ahoy but been he a elections when of -- questions stated be bought for taking the game away from them . other musicians just coming on the scene found exactly what they're looking of. a really complicated relationship between for where. revere their forebears' for the wheel and the -- classic conception of what they're doing. great stuff.

on swine. >> you can approach the mike. while people do that there is a fabulous piece about an origin story about where underground comics come from, fictionalized. i mean, they knew each other. that must have been near and dear to your heart. >> helen merrin, of a great and also very bohemian british actress said that he taught people how to read comics. that is really true. and harvey and i worked on five books together including the adaptation about a half a dozen years ago. his inspiration is very much in these pages be your question please. >> good afternoon. i have a question about karl, a

very conflicted figure known for his novel near heaven, as it was titled. but also one of the best photo documentarians of the harlem renaissance, what he is best known for today, good friends with figures like langston hughes and chester himes. wonder if you could talk more about this conflict to figure. thank you. >> he is one of these incredibly fascinating characters. he grows out in iowa and realizes he has to get to chicago as soon as possible and goes on from chicago or new york and comes out in a time and place where people could not come out in new york city, the late 1910 s and early 1920's. connecting the harlem renaissance with intellectuals. nobody else was doing it as effectively as he was, and for

that matter he was staging drag shows with himself as the guide. now, after his novel, near heaven, was attacked and assaulted by out kinds of critics including wb deploys the sort of decided he wanted to make a switch. he went to france for a bit, and then he came back and became a documentary photographer for the rest of his life. he donated this vast quantity of relief valuable photographs to the library of congress. i have forgotten that he was a crook and assistant to a world war ii time club to have servicemen have a night off and served as a busboy two nights a week for proper and.

they came to deliver against racism and against fascism, by golly, they delivered. >> the chapter, i think, really speaks to what can be done formally in getting things across that may be a text cannot always. page 124, the artist. >> yes. hillary ellison. >> hillary ellison depicted their reviews that he got for the infernal book, a guy named ed small who was kind of like this kind of guide what is it. read the book. these balloons. the father says every word you right should be respectful one. gertrude stein says he never have done anything better. the new york news says anyone

who would call a boat maker have been what : the granny gear. alice dunbar nelson says the author describes his character without patronizing. it is just plain acceptance of a cultivated woman. one paper says romance colored by brown. jim the great african american writer says the most revealing, significant, and powerful novel based exclusively on negro life. yet written. >> indeed. i think we need to put in together. along chapter. claude mckay wrote home to harlem in the late 1920's, which is the juiciest of most delightful, but realistic novel in that time. and was a bohemian extraordinaire, bisexual from jamaica, and someone who had been an editor for revolutionary

magazine, traveled the world, but mainly live life as a low low-pay or un-paid bohemian characters discovering things and then writing novels about them but also writing poetry. i think he wrote a poem called let us not die quietly are something like that amidst the white attack on african americans and the riots of 1919. it was read by churchill, the british population. >> profits. and again, to take this full circle, the form of comex, there is a fellow, a radical writer and sexologist. >> he starts a magazine in 1920. his magazine last until 1940. he is 40 years old and lives with his magazine.

>> you quote him. a lot of magazine editors have died in some other magazines. you quote him. eckhart's and that represents a kind of -- i'm sorry, i can't read my handwriting. a snapshot logic. a carton represents a kind of snapshot logic that is much sharper than words but more effective than argument. >> indeed. well, the comic stage was the most popular section of the daily newspaper from 1900 until at least 1970. the sports section would be the second most popular. but as newspapers hit their highest phase in the 1950's they had some competition or comments from comic books that would be the most singular popular non daily newspaper publication of any kind in the united states between the mid-40s in the early 1950's. and the greatest of the comex, line called d.c. comics really

were guided in many ways. created man comics, became mad magazine, but he and his pals also created a realistic war comics series which was drawn from the korean war veterans and others that portray war and all of the horror and ugliness, therefore not romantic whatsoever. and when underground comic artists started up in the late 60's, they were remembering how these comics were suppressed in the middle. >> dangerous enough according to the powers that be to attract a devoted attention of a very, very powerful senator. >> indeed, and the congressional hearings on -- >> that's right. >> should i say the famous quote about him? he ran around the woods of tennessee with his bible in one hand and is blank in the other.

a hypocrite. >> indeed. >> and the comic books were burned and wisconsin, illinois during this time. these people were serious about suppressing comic spirit what they did was suppress all the art. the serious comics and leave behind archy and the most degraded in my view of the super heroes. but when comic artists, and a generation, taking revenge but also saying, we are going to control the, guard ourselves. our pain may be next to nothing, but at least it will be our own creation. and that is the beginning of a, a car form and the united states it is the core of the artistic contribution in this book and other books like it. >> that's a great story. well, we have, you know, brief moments left. i see harvey kurtz and in the audience. anyone want to have the last word? we will turn it over to paul for a final thought.

>> this is a book which can explain a whole lot to people who are on the 30 and over 30. the parts that i did not script and find an astonishing amount of detail that quite amazes me. but it is the beginning or the early beginnings of a large phase in the transformation of comic art. i would say the printed page and the virtual pages will. artists and writers are finding new ways to express themselves as the world moves from the printed page to the virtual page it's a fascinating development. i have seen to come to the lab -- rather late. as i sort of father it or ogle it along i find wonderful artists and a wonderful mostly young audience that is looking for to waters around the next corner.

[applause] >> well, thank you very much for that discussion. thanks to all of you for your attendance. the book is available for sale in the main lobby, and you will be signing right outside the auditorium are now. thank you for coming and enjoy the rest of the festival. [inaudible conversations] >> that concludes today is live coverage of the 30th annual chicago tribune printers row lit

we are a tiny minority in the population of this country. book people, they are some of the most eccentric people in the world. anyone of us, collector, dealer, could bore you to tears with

just trivial information about a subject that couldn't possibly be of interest to anyone but ourselves. and they are just such quirky personalities in the business. i don't know that we always tend to be very good people persons, we are both people and book people spent a lot of time in their own heads. almost everything i know in my life, i got out of books. there is direct experience, too, you know, books are really the highlight to live in. >> no from booktv to two sullys to utah see the collection of wohlstetter -- wallace stegner. >> nixon booktv, mike earp and david fisher. the co-authors talk about