Tell Me What You're Reading No. 45: Tony Wolf: "Tales From The Wolf"
My friend Tony Wolf and I discussed “Tales From The Wolf”, Tony’s memoir about his years living in Greenpoint, and including a compilation of his New York Times “food cartoon” features, his superhero stories, a moving 9/11 tribute, and Trump era political cartoons. “Tales From The Wolf” can be purchased here. Tony is a cartoonist, an actor (including on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), a singer, film director, and illustrator. He’s essentially a storyteller, a journalist at heart. Tony’s website.
We discussed Tony’s cartooning journey from the time he was a young child, his cartoonist role models, and how he “unwittingly created a new genre in the New York Times food section … a whole new world of visual comics about food.”
Tony’s sense of social justice is revealed in his discussion with me of two graphic novels/ memoirs.
“March”, by former Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis, and comics writer, and Digital Director & Policy Advisor to Congressman Lewis, Andrew Aydin, illustrated and lettered by Nate Powell, is an autobiographical graphic novel trilogy about the civil rights movement, and “They Called Us Enemy” by actor, author and human rights activist, George Takei, a graphic memoir about the 120,000 Japanese Americans rounded up during World War II and imprisoned for years in internment camps. Both, Tony explained, are right up there with “Maus - A Survivor's Tale”, the great graphic novel by cartoonist Art Spiegelman depicting Spiegelman interviewing his father about his experiences as a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor.
Inspired by Nate Powell’s work, once Trump was elected Tony started studying and drawing his own political cartoons.
This is one wide ranging discussion, longer than my usual but great fun. Hope you enjoy it. “Tell Me What You’re Reading”, wherever you listen to podcasts. #bookwormsinthewild
Tony’s New York Times Food Cartoons
Comics and Food @ The New York Times
George Gustines Senior operations manager; began writing about the comic book industry in 2002.
Sam Sifton Assistant managing editor, responsible for culture and lifestyle coverage; founding editor of New York Times Cooking; has served as food editor, culture editor and national editor, and worked as the restaurant critic and a columnist for The New York Times Magazine.
Patrick Farrell Deputy Food Editor.
Links to the cartoonists and others referred to by Tony
Harvey Pekar A “godfather of indie autobiographical comics. Letterman appearance; film: American Splendor.
Robert Crumb Satires of contemporary American culture.
Dean Haspiel Writer and cartoonist.
Walt Simonson Comic book writer and artist.
Frank Miller Comic book writer, penciller and inker.
Nate Powell First cartoonist to win the National Book Award.
Andrew Aydin Creator and co-author of the graphic memoir MARCH, the first comics work to win the National Book Award.
Alan Moore English poet, essayist and cartoonist. Watchmen; Alan Moore on story telling; Medium
Ray Bradbury Science fiction writer; Fahrenheit 451.
Flannery O’Connor Southern novelist, short story writer and essayist.
Dead Robin DC Comics 1988 telephone poll to determine whether or not Robin would die at the Joker's hands.
Doonesbury Comic strip by American cartoonist Garry Trudeau.
Brian Michael Bendis American comic book writer and artist
Rachelle Meyer American illustrator, artist, and writer from Texas, living in the Netherlands. Her New York Times food cartoons.
Cilantrophilia - For the illustrator Rachelle Meyer, a love affair with cilantro was rekindled in a Brooklyn bodega.
Cool Americans - European grocery aisles and the items they contain say a lot about how Americans are viewed overseas.
Rachel Wharton James Beard Award-winning journalist and the author of “American Food: A Not-So-Serious History.”
Koren Shadmi Illustrator and cartoonist
Tom’s Restaurant, a beloved breakfast spot in Prospect Heights, is one of those places that feel welcoming to all who enter. By Jessica Olien
Tom’s Diner; Tom’s Essay, by Suzanne Vega; Tom’s Restaurant
Brooklyn’s Great American Diner
Political Cartoonists
Snoopy’s Toast to Bill Mauldin
David Bowie Diamond Dogs
Interview With a Bookstore: Librairie Drawn & Quarterly
What Tony is Reading
I Heard the Owl Call My Name, by Margaret Craven
Ducks - Two Years in the Oil Sands, by Kate Beaton
Reviews The Guardian | The Washington Post | NPR
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, by Kim Michele Richardson
Review Kirkus Reviews
Working, by Robert Caro
On Writing - A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King
March, by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin,illustrated and lettered by Nate Powell.
Reviews The Washington Post | Cambridge University Press | The Herald Times
THEY CALLED US ENEMY, by George Takei
Reviews The Washington Post | The New York Times | The Los Angeles Times | New York Journal of Books | NPR | Asian Review of Books The Comics Journal
Maus - A Survivor's Tale, by Art Spiegelman
Reviews The New York Times | The Washington Post | The Guardian | New York University | The New Yorker
What Howard has been reading
I heard Woodstock legend, literary agent and editor, author and teacher Abigail Thomas speak at the Woodstock Bookfest at the end of March, and I then read one of her memoirs. It’s called Safekeeping: Some True Stories from A Life. Abigail is 80 years old and she recounted in her talk and she records in her memoir a series of connected and unconnected vignettes of her wild youth. Great fun. A Woodstock legend indeed.
Reviews Bomb Magazine | The Austin Chronicle | Literary Hub
When Steph Kent and Logan Smalley were on the podcast in 2019 to discuss their own Call Me Ishmael project, Steph mentioned her love for Chad Harbach’s novel, The Art of Fielding. I picked it up at the Woodstock Library Book Fair last Fall, and held off reading it until the start of baseball season. It’s about Baseball, Melville, the college campus. Loved it. Thanks Steph.
Reviews The New York Times | The Atlantic | The New Yorker | | The Guardian | The Paris Review | Vanity Fair
In connection with the celebration of Pride Month in 2019, I discussed The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai on a podcast discussion with my then law firm colleagues Alvin Lee and Amy Pasacreta. It’s a moving, beautiful and at the same time devastating novel about the AIDs epidemic in Chicago in the 1980s, its impact on young gay men and on the survivors as well.
Reviews The.New York Times | Los Angeles Review of Books | The Guardian | Chicago Review of Books | The Kenyon Review | Chicago Tribune | Lambda Literary | Fiction Writers Review
Rebecca Makkai; Interviews, Essays and Other Resources; Additional Interviews Fiction Writers Review | Dead Darlings | Bookish
I recently read Makkai’s most recent novel, I Have Some Questions For You, described by Makkai as a literary, feminist, boarding school mystery. It’s as different as can be from The Great Believers, but it’s a fast paced fun read. Makkai is really good.
Reviews The New York Times | NPR | The New Yorker | The Washington Post | The Atlantic | The Seattle Times | Tampa Bay Times
At the beginning of the pandemic, I read James McBride’s great novel Deacon King Kong. It’s about the grit and rage of Blacks and Italians in a Brooklyn housing project and the surrounding area. Supreme storytelling.
Reviews The New Yorker | The New York Times | NPR | The Washington Post | Los Angeles Review of Books | Time | Kirkus Reviews | The Boston Globe | Press Play KCRW
More recently, I read McBride’s memoir and tribute to his mom, The Color of Water - A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother. McBride is the son of a Black father from North Carolina and of a White mother born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Poland. McBride’s tribute describes an extraordinary woman who overcame both anti semitism and racism, abject poverty and other enormous hurdles to raise 12 children to become doctors, social workers, professors, nurses, engineers, as well as a jazz musician, composer, and author. Absolutely remarkable. Thanks for the book Bill Lerman.
Reviews The New York Times | Jewish Book Council | NYT Book Review Podcast (at about minute 13) | Ruth McBride Jordan (NYT obit)
I just finished reading To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf. I read this classic with an on-line book club hosted by the not for profit publishing house, A Public Space. Woolf is a master of the stream-of-consciousness prose style, a rhythm out of the ordinary for me, but I really enjoyed it, especially with this reading group.
Reviews The New York Times | The Guardian | The Paris Review
I also just finished reading Lincoln in the Bardo, by the widely acclaimed brilliant author , George Saunders, fantasizes the graveyard environment faced by President Lincoln and his deceased son Willie; haunting, moving, fantastical and unlike anything I’ve ever read. Really terrific.
Reviews The Atlantic | Wired | The Guardian | The New Yorker | NPR | The New York Times | The New York Times | The Booker Prize | Chicago Review of Books | Berkeley Fiction Review | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | The Los Angeles Review of Books | The Seattle Times | Financial Times
George Saunders: Lincoln in the Bardo (Kansas City Public Library)
After all of that, I was ready for a more light hearted read and I chose a graphic comic book,
Tales from the Wolf, which is also unlike anything I've ever read and is the memoir written by my friend Tony Wolf. I’ve read lots of memoirs, none before in the form of a graphic novel.
