Media Release -- The Cartoon Art Museum welcomes author Todd DePastino on Friday, October 2, 2009 from 7:00 to 9:00pm for a special presentation on the life and art of multiple Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Bill Mauldin. DePastino’s program is an illustrated talk on the great World War II cartoonist Bill Mauldin, an army infantry sergeant who rocketed to fame at age 22 with his wildly popular feature Up Front. Week after week, Mauldin defied army censors, German artillery, and General George Patton's pledge to throw him in jail for insubordination to deliver his grim depictions of war to Stars and Stripes and hundreds of homefront newspapers. There, readers followed the stories of Willie and Joe, two wise-cracking ‘dogfaces’ whose mud-caked uniforms and pidgin of army slang and slum dialect bore eloquent witness to the world of combat and the men who lived – and died – in it. We have never viewed war in the same way since.
This presentation is based on DePastino's book, BILL MAULDIN: A LIFE UP FRONT (W.W. Norton, 2008), which has been named one of the best books of 2008 by the Boston Globe, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, among others. DePastino is also editor of the acclaimed WILLIE & JOE: THE WWII YEARS (Fantagraphics Books, 2008), the first complete collection of Mauldin's World War II. His previous books include CITIZEN HOBO: HOW A CENTURY OF HOMELESSNESS SHAPED AMERICA (University of Chicago Press, 2003) which won a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. He has a Ph.D. in American History from Yale University and teaches at Waynesburg University. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife and two daughters.
The suggested donation for this presentation is $5, although no one will be turned away for lack of funds.
