The Wild Party: The Lost Classic by Joseph Moncure March
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Book Summary Information
Illustrator: Art SpiegelmanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1994
ISBN: 0375706437
Number of pages: 120
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Book Reviews of The Wild Party: The Lost Classic by Joseph Moncure March
Book Review: Debauchery and depravity, illustrated
Summary: 4 Stars
Joseph Moncure March wrote this tale of debauchery and deception in rhyming couplets in 1928, just before the world descended into the depths of the Great Depression.
Decades later, artist and author Art Spiegelman (of MAUS fame), found a copy in a used bookstore and fell instantly in love with the darkness and depravity of March's lost classic. In 1994, nearly 70 years after the publication of The Wild Party, Spiegelman published this illustrated version.
March's short, taut thriller beautifully captures the grim determination of a group of down-but-not-out actors, dancers and vaudeville performers as they use drink and sex to mask the depression of their everyday lives. Spiegelman's woodblock-style illustrations add the perfect touch of dark sensuality that at times turn to stale, harshly lit reality. The poem builds to an inevitable climax of violence that nevertheless leaves the reader sitting up straight and waiting for the end.
William S. Burroughs said of The Wild Party: "It's the book that made me want to become a writer."
Highly recommended.
Summary of The Wild Party: The Lost Classic by Joseph Moncure March
"Spiegelman's drawings are like demonic woodcuts: every angle, line, and curve jumps out at you. Stylishness and brutishness are in perfect accord."-- The New York Times
Art Spiegelman's sinister and witty black-and-white drawings give charged new life to Joseph Moncure March's Wild Party, a lost classic from 1928. The inventive and varied page designs offer perfect counterpoint to the staccato tempo of this hard-boiled jazz-age tragedy told in syncopated rhyming couplets.
Here is a poem that can make even readers with no time for poetry stop dead in their tracks. Once read, large shards of this story of one night of debauchery will become permanently lodged in the brain. When The Wild Party was first published, Louis Untermeyer declared: "It is repulsive and fascinating, vicious and vivacious, uncompromising, unashamed . . . and unremittingly powerful. It is an amazing tour de force."
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