Bøker av Julia Langbein

This is the first book length study of Salon caricature, a widespread genre of press illustration that flourished in Paris in the second half of the 19th century. Salon caricature began with a few tentative lithographs in the 1840s and, within a few decades, no Parisian exhibition could open without appearing in warped, incisive, and hilarious miniature in the pages of the illustrated press. Supported by ample primary sources, from Baudelaire and Champfleury, to Grand-Carteret and Duret, as well as archival material made available here for the first time, Laugh Lines explores not only 19th-century caricature but a larger history of reproductive image technologies, including photography, and their relation to painting during the period of modernist emergence. In bringing to light this rich register of art criticism-in-pictures, Laugh Lines offers new material and methods for the study of 19th-century painting, modernism, and art historiography, notably repositioning Édouard Manet in relation to public laughter and comic press art. More generally, Langbein draws back the curtain on a robust culture of comedy around fine art and its reception in 19th-century France, one in which artists of every stripe, including the most sentimental or conservative, were ripe to be made hilarious.

"A brilliantly funny and razor-tongued debut which follows a writer lured to Los Angeles to adapt her feminist mermaid novel into a big-budget action film, who believes her heroine has come to life to take revenge for Hollywood's violations. Penelope Schleeman, a consistently broke Connecticut high school teacher, is as surprised as anyone when her sensitive debut novel, "American Mermaid"-the story of a wheelchair-bound scientist named Sylvia who discovers that her withered legs are the vestiges of a powerful tail-becomes a bestseller. Penelope soon finds herself lured to LA by promises of easy money to co-write the "American Mermaid" screenplay for a major studio with a pair of male hacks. As the studio pressures Penelope to change "American Mermaid" from the story of a fierce, androgynous eco-warrior to a teen sex object in a clam bra, strange things start to happen. Threats appear in the screenplay draft; siren calls lure people into danger. When Penelope's screenwriting partners try to kill Sylvia off entirely in a bitterly false but cinematic end, matters off the page escalate. Is Penelope losing her mind, or is Sylvia among us? American Mermaid follows a young woman braving a world of casual smiles and ruthless calculation, where she discovers a beating heart in her own fiction--a creature she'll do anything to protect. By turns both a comic and fabulously insightful tale of two female characters in search of truth, love, and self-acceptance as they move between worlds without giving up their voices"--

Broke English teacher Penelope Schleeman is as surprised as anyone when her feminist novel American Mermaid becomes a bestseller. Lured by the promise of a big payday, she quits teaching and moves to LA to turn the novel into an action flick. But as she''s pressured to change her main character from a fierce, androgynous eco-warrior to a teen sex object in a clamshell bra, strange things start to happen. Is Penelope losing her mind, or has her mermaid come to life, enacting revenge for Hollywood''s violations? A hilarious and deep story, American Mermaid asks how far we''ll go to protect the parts of ourselves that are not for sale.

"Penelope Schleeman, a consistently broke Connecticut high school teacher, is as surprised as anyone when her sensitive debut novel, 'American Mermaid'--the story of a wheelchair-bound scientist named Sylvia who discovers that her withered legs are the vestiges of a powerful tail--becomes a bestseller. Penelope soon finds herself lured to LA by promises of easy money to co-write the 'American Mermaid' screenplay for a major studio with a pair of male hacks. As the studio pressures Penelope to change 'American Mermaid' from the story of a fierce, androgynous eco-warrior to a teen sex object in a clam bra, strange things start to happen"--