Customer Rating: 
Summary: A Beloved American Original
Comment: The most famous cartoonist of World War Two was Bill Mauldin. Everyone knew his cartoons of the disheveled, ill-shaven GIs Willie and Joe, but not everyone liked them. The GIs themselves were big fans. They knew that Mauldin, even in the simple medium of newspaper comics, was getting their story right. In _Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front_ (Norton), Todd DePastino, who has previously edited a book of Willie and Joe cartoons, has given us what is, surprisingly, the first full length biography of the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist. The book fittingly contains dozens of Mauldin's drawings, and not all from the war years. Like many veterans, Mauldin may have had the high point of his life during the war, but his second Pulitzer came in 1958, and it's not even for his most famous post-war cartoon. A distinctly American genius, Mauldin deserved a sympathetic and detailed biography, and that is just what DePastino has given us.
Mauldin really was a genius with a pencil or pen. He was making detailed drawings before he could talk. He got some formal training, but he could not make cartoons pay, and unemployment was bad enough in 1940 that he joined the Arizona National Guard's 45th Infantry Division. His cartoons, featured in the division newspaper, were humorous takes on the sort of things other soldier cartoonists were doing, showing dumb privates peeling potatoes and dumb officers mouthing off criticisms. After he went through battle in Sicily and Italy, however, the cartoons changed, showing generally competent soldiers, doing a bloody, muddy, dangerous, and unappreciated job. The sympathetic accuracy of the portraits was what made them beloved by the dogfaces that recognized themselves in the depictions and the situations. The GIs loved Mauldin's cartoons; the officers were less than unanimous in their admiration. General Patton hated them, and early in Mauldin's army career, he tried pulling rank, telling Mauldin's commander "Get rid of Mauldin and his cartoons". It was one battle Patton lost. Mauldin's cartoons were syndicated stateside. He also began a writing career that was to prove to be successful, starting with _Up Front_, a bestselling account of the Italian campaign. He became a popular editorial cartoonist. His cartoons took down segregationists, the KKK, and the anti-Communist hysteria of Joe McCarthy. He got himself an FBI file for his efforts. His most famous postwar cartoon was the one of the statue of Lincoln from the Memorial, head in hands after the assassination of Kennedy. Mauldin remained a reporter, taking assignments in Vietnam, Israel, and even the Persian Gulf for our first war there. He acted briefly in the movies. He died of dementia, complicated by alcohol, and a severe scalding accident in 2003.
DePastino's wonderful and moving book rightly concentrates on the war years, but details plenty of the post-war career. Mauldin was self-critical enough to write, "I never quite could shake off the guilt feeling that I had made something good out of the war." He didn't like the Veterans of Foreign Wars or American Legion types who he felt glorified war, and he couldn't stand going to the memorials which brought back gruesome memories. But he died well loved by the soldiers who had loved him for depicting them realistically. In his nursing home, he didn't always recognize family that came to see him, and his marriages and career became blanks. But when the veterans came, just guys who had loved seeing themselves in his work, he seemed to know them. Years before, when Tom Brokaw put to him that the real Willies and Joes were America's "Greatest Generation," Mauldin wasn't having any of it. He replied that "they were human beings, they had their weaknesses and their flaws and their good sides and bad sides. The one thing they had in common was that they were a little too young to die." It was the realistic sort of respect his cartoons had always shown.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Bill Mauldin's relevance today.
Comment: This is a wonderful look at one of the most talented men of the last century. It is a well-written book on a man who embodied the spirit of an age. As the cartooning G.I. of WW 11 who put a face on the common foot soldier to the writer & political cartoonist who struggled to find a place for himself after that war, this book is a great accounting of a singular life in American History and the Art of Political Cartooning. The illustrations and photos are wonderful. The work is remarkable in it's relevance to & resonance in this century.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Fun reading
Comment: This is a book that is hard to put down and was fun to read. Bill tells it how it must have been and there was little glory in being mired in the mud in Italy. Bill had a tenatious work ethic it was interesting to know how he persued and succeded as a war cartoonist. When I put the book down, I pre-ordered his volume of cartoons.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Long Ovedue Book on the Great Bill Mauldin
Comment: Bill Mauldin wrote several great books on his own life including "The Brass Ring" in 1972. This new, and only, biography, by Todd DePastino, is as good a book, or not better, than I thought it would be when I ordered it.
This excellent biography covers Mauldin's entire public and private lives. Bill was born in 1921 and passed away in 2003. The touching last weeks of his life are as inspiring as anything written in the entire book.
Mauldin' most popular book of war time cartoons, "UP FRONT", was published in 1944. It won him instant fame and a Pulitzer Prize for his creation of the now legendary G.I. Wilie and Joe cartoon drawings, on and for army dogfaces, that touched the hearts and souls of our fighting men and women at war, and those and at home.
But, to me, the best part of DePastino's new biography deals with Mauldin's life and career after Bill Mauldin, Joe, and Willie came home from The War. The post WW II period of Bill's career has somehow been neglected before this great book was written. In fact, Mauldin's editorial cartoons, with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and then with the Chicago Sun-Times, brought him another Pulitzer Prize in 1958. Readers will be interested in seeing that cartoon, as well as many of his war, and post war efforts.
In 1965 my father bought an orignal autographed Willie framed canvas cartoon . I now have it. I have told my daughters that the Mauldin drawing is theirs, for the memories of their grandfather and me. This book just makes my fondness for Bill Mauldin even greater. I am going to get copies of this book for my daughters.
Thanks, Mr. DePastino for a great biography on Bill Mauldin.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Man Who Cartooned The Common Soldier!
Comment: Bill Mauldin "A Life Up Front", by Todd Depastino, Chronicles the life and artistry of a man who during World War Two, captured the struggle of the common American soldier through the eyes of his battle weary cartoon charcters Willie and Joe. Willie and Joe made their weekly appearence in the military newspapers such as Stars and stripes, and even our local homegrown papers. His cartoons depicted life as an enlisted soldier and all the hardships that went along with fighting during WW-2. Mauldin's cartoons infuriated general George Patton, to the point that the general threatened to have Mauldin thrown in jail if he ever got assigned to his 45th division. Bill Mauldin was a master story teller, who happened to tell his stories in cartoon format. To the greatest generation, Willie and Joe were characters that were symbolic to every soldier who ever served on the front lines, as the real life foot soldier shared a common bond with Mauldin's cartoon heroes. This book tells the story of a simple man born poor in New Mexico, and how he overcame poverty, to become one of the nations greatest cartoon artists, along with a life full of great times as well as a life full of turmoil, as he battled alcoholism, unstable family life, and finally finding piece prior to his death from alzheimers disease in 2003. Bill Mauldin had a story to tell, and tell it he did, in cartoon format which will live forever in the annals of WW-2 history through the eyes of Willie and Joe,who were just a couple of unshaven, dirty, hungry and tired GI'S who had something to say. This book is generously illustrated with some of the most memorable Willie and Joe cartoons, over the course of this 340 page biography. The author will be releasing in March 2008, a two volume special edition slip case edition of "Willie and Joe", the WW-2 years, which chronicles the entire Bill Mauldin Willie and Joe cartoon catolog complete with commentary.
|
