{"product_id":"lynd-ward-six-novels-in-woodcuts","title":"Lynd Ward: Six Novels in Woodcuts","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the eve of the Great Depression to the start of World War II, Lynd Ward (1905-1985) observed the troubled American scene through the double lens of a politically committed storyteller and a visionary graphic artist. His medium--the wordless \"novel in woodcuts\"--was his alone, and he quickly brought it from bold iconographic infancy to subtle and still unrivalled mastery.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eGods' Man\u003c\/i\u003e (1929), the audaciously ambitious work that made Ward's reputation, is a modern morality play, an allegory of the deadly bargain a striving young artist often makes with life. Madman's Drum (1930), a multigenerational saga worthy of Faulkner, traces the legacy of violence haunting a family whose stock in trade is human souls. Wild Pilgrimage (1932), perhaps the most accomplished of these early books, is a study in the brutalization of an American factory worker whose heart can still respond to beauty but whose mind is twisted in rage against the system and its shackles.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003ePrelude to a Million Years\u003c\/i\u003e (1933) is a dark meditation on art, inspiration, and the disparity between the ideal and the real. \u003ci\u003eSong Without Words\u003c\/i\u003e (1936), a protest against the rise of European fascism, asks if ours is a world still fit for the human soul. \u003ci\u003eVertigo\u003c\/i\u003e (1937), Ward's undisputed masterpiece, is an epic novel on the theme of the individual caught in the downward spiral of a sinking American economy. Its characters include a young violinist, her luckless fiancé, and an elderly business magnate who--movingly, and without ever becoming a political caricature--embodies the social forces determining their fate.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe images reproduced in this volume are taken from prints pulled from the original woodblocks or first-generation electrotypes. The Library of America is proud to bring Ward's masterworks to a new generation of readers, together with nine illuminating essays about his craft, including those he wrote for the long out-of-print \u003ci\u003eStoryteller Without Words\u003c\/i\u003e, a 1974 retrospective. Art Spiegelman contributes an introductory essay, \"Reading Pictures,\" that defines Ward's towering achievement in that most demanding of graphic-story forms, the wordless novel in woodcuts.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Library of America","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47548313796770,"sku":"9781598530827","price":80.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1240\/0398\/files\/imageloader_77958310-f460-4629-a7e9-bb2433004255.jpg?v=1787317937","url":"https:\/\/thereadingspa.com\/products\/lynd-ward-six-novels-in-woodcuts","provider":"The Reading Spa","version":"1.0","type":"link"}