Books by Ian Brodie

Features carefully chosen walks that are intended for various ages and abilities, guiding the walker through some of the most picturesque landscape in Lancashire. This title includes instructions that are accompanied by helpful maps, local information, historical background and attractive photographs.

"Now iconic to Canadian, if not global culture, Cape Breton Island underwent a metamorphosis of sorts during the 1970s and 1980s. Long marginalized by geography, economics and predominant mainland political culture, a countercultural sea change brought the island's deeply rooted creative side-music, drama, literature and humour-to centre stage. One such stage was Old Trout Funnies, a homegrown satirical series of comic books created by artist Paul MacKinnon. MacKinnon's Cape Breton comic book heroes, the Cape Breton Liberation Army, led the revolution, lampooning local and provincial politics, labour unions, environmental activism, government infrastructure projects and back-to-the-landers. Through the farcical exploits of the CBLA, Old Trout Funnies parodied and played with the caricature of Cape Bretoners as shiftless, happy-go-lucky rogues whose motivation emanated from the taverns. In The Comic Origins of the Cape Breton Liberation Army, folklorist Ian Brodie explores the themes and the legacy of Old Trout Funnies, providing the cultural and historical context for a project that was intensely esoteric and in-the-moment. Included are the complete runs of the comics, the calendars and some rarely seen ancillary images of the CBLA, and of some unfinished and unpublished works."

In A Vulgar Art Ian Brodie uses a folkloristic approach to stand-up comedy, engaging the discipline's central method of studying interpersonal, artistic communication and performance. Because stand-up comedy is a rather broad category, people who study it often begin by relating it to something they recognize--"e;literature"e; or "e;theatre"e;; "e;editorial"e; or "e;morality"e;--and analyze it accordingly. A Vulgar Art begins with a more fundamental observation: someone is standing in front of a group of people, talking to them directly, and trying to make them laugh. So this book takes the moment of performance as its focus, that stand-up comedy is a collaborative act between the comedian and the audience.Although the form of talk on the stage resembles talk among friends and intimates in social settings, stand-up comedy remains a profession. As such, it requires performance outside of the comedian's own community to gain larger and larger audiences. How do comedians recreate that atmosphere of intimacy in a roomful of strangers? This book regards everything from microphones to clothing and LPs to Twitter as strategies for bridging the spatial, temporal, and socio-cultural distances between the performer and the audience.