Syncopated
An Anthology of Nonfiction Picto-Essays
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
The stories in Syncopated challenge convention, provide perspective, and search out secret truths–all in the inviting, accessible form of comics.
Syncopated will give you a daringly different view of the past–from the history of vintage postcards to the glory days of old Coney Island. It will immerse you in fascinating subcultures, from the secret world of graffiti artists to the chess champs of Greenwich Village. And it will open your eyes to pieces of forgotten history–for example, the Tulsa race riots of 1921–and to new perspectives on critical current events, such as the interrogation of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay. These “picto-essays” encompass memoir, history, journalism, and biography in varied visual styles–each handpicked by Brendan Burford, one of America’s top editors.
Including:
How and Why to Bale Hay by Nick Bertozzi
Penny Sentiments by Rina Piccolo
Boris Rose: Prisoner of Jazz by Brendan Burford and Jim Campbell
Portfolio by Tricia Van den Bergh
Father Figures by Josh Neufeld
West Side Improvements by Alex Holden
The Evening Hatch by Richard and Brian Haimes
What We So Quietly Saw by Greg Cook
“Like Hell I Will” by Nate Powell
Welcome Home, Brave by Dave Kiersh
The Sound of Jade by Sarah Glidden
Subway Buskers by Victor Marchand Kerlow
Erik Erikson by Paul Karasik
Dvorak by Alec Longstreth
A Coney Island Rumination by Paul Hoppe
An Encounter with Richard Peterson by Brendan Burford
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The big-label relaunch of the once self-published Syncopated anthologies ("a New Yorker for the comics set") is a uniformly classy affair with only a few slow moments. As the title suggests, the book collects meaty article presented as comics. Series editor and curator Burford contributes two pieces, one of which might be the book's high point: a study of the life of Boris Rose, who built probably the world's largest collection of live jazz recordings, still locked in storage and most of it never heard by anyone but Rose himself. Alex Holden provides an amazing bit of picto-journalism in "West Side Improvements," the story of Manhattan's riverside train tracks and the vibrant graffiti culture that grew in their tunnels. Nick Bertozzi's "How and Why to Bale Hay" is a somewhat traditional graphical memoir; Greg Cook's "What We So Quietly Saw" is anything but traditional, using only silhouettes to tell selected stories from inside Guant namo Bay. Only Dave Kiersh's "Welcome Home, Brave" fails to fully satisfy, due to a flat narrative. An elegant and smart volume, well worth the space on the collector's shelf.
