Chuck Jones: A Flurry of Drawings (Portraits of American Genius)

By Hugh Kenner

Book Overview

Creator of the mono-maniacal Wile E. Coyote and his elusive prey, the Road Runner, Chuck Jones has won three Academy Awards and been responsible for many classics of animation featuring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and Elmer Fudd. Who better to do Chuck Jones than Hugh Kenner, master wordsmith and technophile, a man especially qualified to illuminate the form of literacy that Jones so wonderfully executes in the art of character animation?

A Flurry of Drawings reveals in cartoon-like sequences the irrepressible humor and profound reflection that have shaped Chuck Jones's work. Unlike Walt Disney, Jones and his fellow animators at Warner Brothers were not interested in cartoons that mimicked reality. They pursued instead the reality of the imagination, the Toon world where believability is more important than realism and movement is the ultimate aesthetic arbiter. Kenner offers both a fascinating explanation of cartoon culture and a new understanding of art's relationship to technology, criticism, freedom, and imagination.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520087976
• ISBN13: 9780520087972
• Release Date: October 1994
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 114 Pages
• Weight: 0.71 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.5" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Marvelous Biography of America's Greatest Animator

Professor Kenner turns his pen toward a study of the creator of The Roadunner and the Coyote, and of Bugs Bunny in this wonderful little monograph. Writing with wit and verve he traces Jones' career from the beginning to the present,touching on the high and low but always bringing us the essence of a true comic genius.