Log in Subscribe

About Books

January 27, 2022

George Ernsberger
Posted 1/27/22

Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century by Dana Stevens (Atria).

A biography of the great deadpan comedian and genius film-maker—he is, it …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in

About Books

January 27, 2022

Posted

Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century by Dana Stevens (Atria).

A biography of the great deadpan comedian and genius film-maker—he is, it turns out, great company for a few hours (it’s a big book). But it’s a good deal more, too, a well developed history of America’s cultural maturation, including some glitter but then also a good deal of art. We notice that pretty early on; Stevens knows what stories, and what about them, are worth telling, as well as the larger story that they cast light on—which would be the maturing of American popular art. Keaton was born in 1895, almost exactly as moving pictures were first created (to be viewed as a sort of sleight-of-hand stunt in little machines to peer into). He was a young man, then, as film was becoming cinema, with what we can now see plainly was classical depth, more than a little of it created by Keaton. (But we get a rich lot of sharp biographical sketches of other important people, in vaudeville, and then, of course, in film.) For Keaton, there’s early triumph, but then dramatic struggles; after his stardom in movies had faded he fell into serious alcoholism (though he continued to work in the film industry), until finally, with the help of a blessed marriage and settled life, he overcame that affliction, making for a perfectly beautiful denouement to his long and storied life. It’s a trip, this book. I don’t suppose I can sell you on it if you’ve no interest in early films, but it’s a great American story, about more than Buster, and it certainly has a happy ending.

Desolation Canyon by P. J. Tracy (Minotaur).

Sophisticated and sly L.A. novel, but also a serious crime novel and—I regret having to tell you—a sequel to what has to have been a terrific novel that the column overlooked a year ago called Deep into the Dark. Needs some allowance for believing in an L.A. cop this smart and funny and sexy and tough, but a pleasure to give in to that—and you should have no trouble finding the paperback reprint of the earlier one.

The Fields by Erin Young (Flatiron).

A murder mystery, pretty gory in fact, a police procedural; contemporary, but the author has been a writer of historical fiction and traces of that way of organizing and placing the action can be felt. Murders are investigated and solved, and characters are well realized, but the effect on a whole society of great socioeconomic forces is an audible undertone, rumbling under the action. It’s a big book; family farms (in this novel, in Iowa) are losing their reason for being and/or simply being bought up by what amounts to an almost-manufacturing system of farming and food production and marketing, all but burying a way of life. This is both a satisfying suspense novel and a novel of this stage of American social history.

Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here