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Superheroes
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Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/en/superheroes-batman-wonder-woman-534104/
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/14/Omega_the_Unknown_1.jpg
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Marvel Comics, “Omega The Unknown”
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<iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" allow="autoplay" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/809871469&color=%2355d7d2&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=false&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=false"></iframe>
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<p><strong>Robert D. Newman:</strong> Can you give us an example of a Humanities Moment for you, where you became a vessel for the tradition of the humanities somehow, that it flows through you and enables you to create something new and wonderful?</p>
<p><strong>Jonathan Lethem:</strong> Well, I’m going to pick something that may seem a little odd in this context, because it’s normally regarded as a sort of disposable item, but there was a comic book when I was a kid that I was obsessed with called <em>Omega the Unknown</em>. And it was a very strange and awkward comic book, in some ways it was unfinished. It only lasted for ten issues, and it started to map out a really marvelous, ambitious story, but it ground to a halt almost as if it didn’t know how to continue.</p>
<p>Of course, it was also a commercial flop. And at this time, there were very few people working seriously with the iconography of superheroes to make anything that anyone regarded as particularly worth preserving or talking about. They were sort of dime-store items. And ten, fifteen, twenty years later, you had creators like Alan Moore come along or Art Spiegelman, really remarkable creators, Lynda Barry and Dan Clowes, who renewed the sense—or in some ways opened up for many people for the first time—the sense that actually graphic literature could be literature, that it was of lasting value, and that the form had innate properties that were not only interesting, but they conveyed a unique power, and in the right hands they could become true art.</p>
<p>And I guess I was primed, I was predisposed to respond to this assertion. And so I was very welcoming, I was very excited at the way that book stores and librarians and critics began to embrace the power of this form. And so, then, in a kind of wonderful—I won't call it ironic, I guess I will just say, kind of sweet full circle opportunity—Marvel Comics came to me and asked me to write something for them. The people working in the traditional comic book industry had read Michael Chabon’s novel, and they read my novel, and realized, well, novelists are kind of warming up to us, what if we try to bring them in, into the fold? And so I was asked which character out of all of Marvel’s would I like to write, and I think they might have been expecting me to latch on to Spiderman or some other totem in the culture, some other major figure, but I said, “Well, what about Omega the Unknown?” And I got to go back and sort of reconstruct this lost character who had been more or less forgotten, even by the tradition that had given rise to him.</p>
<p>And so I wrote a limited series that was bound and published in hard cover as a kind of graphic novel about Omega the Unknown, who had spoken to me and stirred me in this way that was sort of ahead of its time, because I felt that what those issues had suggested to me was the kind of artistic possibility that I’d seen fulfilled in these later examples, and so I tried to bring Omega and his awkward little story into a kind of fulfillment in turn.</p>
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The Power of Superheroes
Description
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In this podcast excerpt with National Humanities Center Director Robert D. Newman, award-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem discusses how he came to understand of the power of fiction in our lives through the short-lived Marvel comic book series <em>Omega The Unknown</em>. Lethem describes how the unconventional storytelling in this comic book, focusing on the ways that superheroes shape the imaginations of young readers, continues to inform his own approach to fiction.
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Jonathan Lethem, novelist
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jonathan-lethem-omega-unknown
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The comic book series <em>Omega the Unknown</em>
Books & Reading
Comic Books
Fiction
Graphic Novels
Marvel Universe
Omega the Unknown
Superheroes
Writers
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http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/18/477/books-2463779_640.jpg
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Library Bookshelf
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Pixabay
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library-bookshelf
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
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graduate-student-residents-2021
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NHC Graduate Student Summer Residency
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Bailey Boyd, 32, Ph.D Candidate
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<em>Matilda</em>
Description
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I cannot remember who first introduced me to the work of Roald Dahl, but it is his books that sparked a lifelong love of reading for me. I grew up as the only girl between two brothers and our house was peppered with sports equipment; our calendar was controlled by games, practices, and tournaments. We all played sports, and I was frequently the only girl on the boys’ baseball teams, in the age division, and for a long time, in the league. Off the field, I loved school, reading, and arts & crafts. So, at times, I felt a little different or out of place. Like most kids, I often wondered how to act or how to be. <br /><br />I can’t remember now exactly when I read Dahl’s <em>Matilda</em>, but I remember identifying with the storyline about a young girl who felt out of place and who found comfort in stories. She was young, but was smart; she was independent and self-sufficient. She read books far beyond her age. Eventually, she learned she could control objects with her mind and she used these powers to outsmart the terrible people around her. In short, she became a hero. <br /><br />It wasn’t that our situations were the same that I felt an affinity with Matilda – I certainly wasn’t surrounded by terrible people as she was – but I think it was because she, too, felt a little different and she too, liked to read. I loved reading before <em>Matilda</em>, but I think that story made me feel like reading could lead to superpowers. She wasn’t a boy with a cape; she couldn’t scale buildings or fly; she didn’t have some extraordinary strength (and to be fair, it wasn’t the reading that gave her her superpowers, but that is what stuck with me). Rather, she had a library card and some quiet time and a few people that believed in her. So, it was also <em>Matilda</em> that made me feel that reading curled up in the back of the school bus or sitting out recess to finish a book wasn’t something to be embarrassed of, because that’s what she did. I wanted to have the mountains of books she did; I wanted to read everything she had. <br /><br />Now, I am sure I haven’t read everything Matilda did and I have been privileged to have had no real terrible things or people to overcome personally, but one part of her story did resonate. I did stumble into some superpowers. From reading stories, I learned empathy and kindness, connection and perspective, humility and humanity. I could hear stories from other people who were not me, who did not grow up in the world I did, who did not express their stories in the same ways as I would. It isn’t only children’s books that did this and continue to do this for me, but back then, Roald Dahl and so many others started it. <br /><br />These days, I mainly read and write nonfiction. I love how language creates moments and images; I love how writers make words live together on the page. I now study essays & poems, but sometimes I still think of them as kinds of stories. And I still think reading them (or listening to them) leads to those superpowers of connection, compassion, and humanity. <br /><br />But my connection with this children’s book goes beyond that, because it has also taught me why representation is so important. All young people should be able to see themselves in a story, to have that moment of realization, identification, and inspiration. Everyone deserves to see themselves as the hero, no matter their age, gender, race, class, sexual orientation, or disability. No matter if they read themselves in a book, hear themselves in a song, or find themselves in dance, theater, or the fine arts. The ability to see glimpses of our own stories in others is important, because I think it prepares us to be open to other stories completely different than ours. For me, it started with <em>Matilda</em>. And as an adult now, I am still a woman who loves to read and who still believes in its superpowers.
Title
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Reading and its Superpowers
Creator
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Roald Dahl
Identifier
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reading-superpowers
Books & Reading
Children
Children's Literature
Dahl, Roald
Identity
Literature Appreciation
Representation
Self-Realization
Superheroes