The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Bohemians: A Graphic History of Creative Mavericks

Long before there were hipsters and squares, even before there were beatniks, there were Bohemians — named after Bohemia, a geographical area part of the modern Czech Republic, which mid-nineteenth-century French journalists mistakenly believed to be the source of Europe’s Roma population, the “gypsies” who symbolized carefree romanticism.

In Bohemians: A Graphic History (public library), editors Paul Buhle and David Berger assemble an all-star roster of contemporary comic artists — many familiar from the excellent Graphic Canon series — to trace back the origin of the Bohemian movement to the artist studios of 1850s Paris and celebrate its greatest luminaries from the century that followed. This graphic nonfiction counterpart to the story of Mark Twain’s West Coast Bohemia explores the worlds of literature, art, modern dance, jazz, and more through such cultural icons as Walt Whitman, whose Leaves of Grass is celebrated as the greatest American poem, Henry Miller, “the Thoreau of Big Sur,” who bequeath us timeless wisdom on everything from creative discipline to growing old to the meaning of life, Oscar Wilde, whose opinions on art were as bold as were his romantic exploits, and Gertrude Stein, the Queen Bee of the literary expat community.

Buhle writes in the introduction:

Bohemians have occupied a semi-subversive status in modern society without being, in any consistent way, political-minded or even organized. The danger that they pose for the fretful of every generation since the 1850s is also the secret of their lasting appeal, in particular, to the disaffected and the young… They belong to no clear or certain social class, yet they continue to be the transgressive class.

Complement Bohemians: A Graphic History with more excellent graphic nonfiction on everything from Freud’s life and legacy to the inner workings of the brain to the unsung heroes of black history, as well as some excellent graphic biographies of Salvador Dalí, Andy Warhol, Charles Darwin, Richard Feynman, Hunter S. Thompson, and Steve Jobs.

Images courtesy of Verso Books


Published July 9, 2014

https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/07/09/bohemians-a-graphic-history/

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