Graphic Musical Biography: An Intermedial Case of Musico-Comical Life Writing
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Daniel Stein
Abstract
This essay reads graphic biographies of popular musicians as a subgenre of intermedial life writing that does not adapt a specific source text into the comics medium but grapples with the visual-verbal adaptation of an intermedial life story instead. Foregrounding the specificity of graphic musical biography by distinguishing it from musical autobiography in comic form, I extend the common distinction between music in comics and comics as/like music to account for the ways in which graphic biographies of musicians such as Billie Holiday, Johnny Cash, Louis Armstrong, and John Coltrane not only represent and simulate but also contextualize and historicize the seminal sounds and musical practices they seek to approximate.
Abstract
This essay reads graphic biographies of popular musicians as a subgenre of intermedial life writing that does not adapt a specific source text into the comics medium but grapples with the visual-verbal adaptation of an intermedial life story instead. Foregrounding the specificity of graphic musical biography by distinguishing it from musical autobiography in comic form, I extend the common distinction between music in comics and comics as/like music to account for the ways in which graphic biographies of musicians such as Billie Holiday, Johnny Cash, Louis Armstrong, and John Coltrane not only represent and simulate but also contextualize and historicize the seminal sounds and musical practices they seek to approximate.
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Table of Contents V
- Acknowledgments VII
- Intermediality, Life Writing, and American Studies: A Brief Introduction 1
- Making an Entrance, Illustrating a Life: Remediating Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography in Nineteenth-Century America 9
- Illustrations “More Numerous Than We Could Have Expected”: Biography as “Mixed Media” in William Lloyd Garrison, 1805–1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children (1885–1889) 35
- Performing Lives in Nineteenth-Century US-American Culture: From Paratheatricals to Early Cinema 51
- Lenny: (Auto‐)biography, Black-and-White, and Juxtapositional Montage in Bob Fosse’s Hollywood Renaissance Biopic 75
- The Remediation of Little Edie: From It-Girl to Loony Cat Lady to Cultural Icon 99
- Graphic Musical Biography: An Intermedial Case of Musico-Comical Life Writing 119
- Ekphrastic Encounters and Word– Photography Configurations in Contemporary Transcultural American Life Writing 147
- “A Figment of Someone Elseʼs Imagination”: Intermedial Games in Paul Austerʼs Report from the Interior 167
- Auto-Assembling the Self on Social Networking Sites: Intermediality and Transnational Kinship in Online Academic Life Writing 191
- Intermedial On/Offstage Auto/Biography: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, Hip Hop, and Historiography 211
- Emily Dickinson, Intermediality, and Life Writing: An Interview with Susan Snively 233
- The Respectful Biographer’s Empathetic Imagination: An Interview about Intermediality and Life Writing with Brenda Wineapple 245
- Note on the Contributors 253
- Index 255
Chapters in this book
- Frontmatter I
- Table of Contents V
- Acknowledgments VII
- Intermediality, Life Writing, and American Studies: A Brief Introduction 1
- Making an Entrance, Illustrating a Life: Remediating Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography in Nineteenth-Century America 9
- Illustrations “More Numerous Than We Could Have Expected”: Biography as “Mixed Media” in William Lloyd Garrison, 1805–1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children (1885–1889) 35
- Performing Lives in Nineteenth-Century US-American Culture: From Paratheatricals to Early Cinema 51
- Lenny: (Auto‐)biography, Black-and-White, and Juxtapositional Montage in Bob Fosse’s Hollywood Renaissance Biopic 75
- The Remediation of Little Edie: From It-Girl to Loony Cat Lady to Cultural Icon 99
- Graphic Musical Biography: An Intermedial Case of Musico-Comical Life Writing 119
- Ekphrastic Encounters and Word– Photography Configurations in Contemporary Transcultural American Life Writing 147
- “A Figment of Someone Elseʼs Imagination”: Intermedial Games in Paul Austerʼs Report from the Interior 167
- Auto-Assembling the Self on Social Networking Sites: Intermediality and Transnational Kinship in Online Academic Life Writing 191
- Intermedial On/Offstage Auto/Biography: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, Hip Hop, and Historiography 211
- Emily Dickinson, Intermediality, and Life Writing: An Interview with Susan Snively 233
- The Respectful Biographer’s Empathetic Imagination: An Interview about Intermediality and Life Writing with Brenda Wineapple 245
- Note on the Contributors 253
- Index 255
