(no subject)
May. 16th, 2026 07:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI do think there is a particular charm, a particular interest, in a biographer who is really visibly in love with their subject. Like, you probably wouldn't want it in every biography. But it's nice to know that the author really extremely wants to be there. It gives an enjoyable sort of tension to the reading experience: at what point is the book going to go off-the-rails because the author has spontaneously transmigrated back to 1931 in a doomed attempt to alter the course of history and fix Buster Keaton's Hollywood career with the power of her passion alone? It could happen! It feels like everything has been foreshadowing it!
Obviously Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the of the Twentieth Century does not in fact go off the rails in this way, it does actually remain an interesting and readable biography that uses Keaton's life and career as a jumping-off point to explore the times in which he lived. In the book's introduction, Stevens explains that her fascination with Keaton is such that whenever I heard about something that took place between 1895 and 1966, I found myself trying to fit that event or phenomenon into the puzzle of his life and work. (She also uses the introduction to share a poem she wrote about Keaton. It's not bad!) Anyway, this is a pretty fruitful methodology that leads her to down various side paths to explore not just the history of early cinema but other twentieth-century touchstones such as changing child labor laws, vaudeville and minstrel shows, the rise of Alcoholics' Anonymous, and the career of F. Scott Fitzgerald.*
Often these aren't things that directly impacted Keaton -- Keaton never participated in AA, for example; by the time the program started to gain popularity, Keaton had already hit his rock bottom and come out the other side -- but they run along parallel tracks, such that Keaton's life casts a mirror on the phenomenon or vice versa, or there's an interesting alternate pathway to be imagined where they did indeed intersect. Keaton and Chaplin only worked together once, but you can't help but compare/contrast their trajectories; Keaton and Fitzgerald may never even have met at all, but the downward arcs of their careers were both intertwined with MGM executive Irving Thalberg, on whom Fitzgerald based his last novel.
(Also, it can't have helped with Fitzgerald's fascination, says Stevens, that Thalberg was also extraordinarily good-looking, slight-framed and serious-faced, with large, liquid brown eyes and wavy black hair -- an appearance not unlike that of a certain slapstick comedian whose contract his company had just acquired. We DON'T know they met but we DO know that if they did, Fitzgerald would CERTAINLY have thought Keaton was hot!)
It feels, in other words, like exactly what it is -- a book written by a person whose obsession with one individual has led them down a number of other interesting rabbitholes, to fruitful if not entirely cohesive results. If Keaton had been a fictional character, this might have been a 120K fanfic with a number of beautifully researched, oddly specific chapters. Because Keaton is a real person, we got this book. I had a great time!
Obviously Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the of the Twentieth Century does not in fact go off the rails in this way, it does actually remain an interesting and readable biography that uses Keaton's life and career as a jumping-off point to explore the times in which he lived. In the book's introduction, Stevens explains that her fascination with Keaton is such that whenever I heard about something that took place between 1895 and 1966, I found myself trying to fit that event or phenomenon into the puzzle of his life and work. (She also uses the introduction to share a poem she wrote about Keaton. It's not bad!) Anyway, this is a pretty fruitful methodology that leads her to down various side paths to explore not just the history of early cinema but other twentieth-century touchstones such as changing child labor laws, vaudeville and minstrel shows, the rise of Alcoholics' Anonymous, and the career of F. Scott Fitzgerald.*
Often these aren't things that directly impacted Keaton -- Keaton never participated in AA, for example; by the time the program started to gain popularity, Keaton had already hit his rock bottom and come out the other side -- but they run along parallel tracks, such that Keaton's life casts a mirror on the phenomenon or vice versa, or there's an interesting alternate pathway to be imagined where they did indeed intersect. Keaton and Chaplin only worked together once, but you can't help but compare/contrast their trajectories; Keaton and Fitzgerald may never even have met at all, but the downward arcs of their careers were both intertwined with MGM executive Irving Thalberg, on whom Fitzgerald based his last novel.
(Also, it can't have helped with Fitzgerald's fascination, says Stevens, that Thalberg was also extraordinarily good-looking, slight-framed and serious-faced, with large, liquid brown eyes and wavy black hair -- an appearance not unlike that of a certain slapstick comedian whose contract his company had just acquired. We DON'T know they met but we DO know that if they did, Fitzgerald would CERTAINLY have thought Keaton was hot!)
It feels, in other words, like exactly what it is -- a book written by a person whose obsession with one individual has led them down a number of other interesting rabbitholes, to fruitful if not entirely cohesive results. If Keaton had been a fictional character, this might have been a 120K fanfic with a number of beautifully researched, oddly specific chapters. Because Keaton is a real person, we got this book. I had a great time!
no subject
Date: 2026-05-16 12:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-16 01:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-16 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-16 06:46 pm (UTC)Some years ago I got
"One night during my late teens I wandered into the living room while my parents were watching television. I glanced at the wordless, black-and-white whirlwind on the screen and found myself laughing helplessly. The film that had sucked me in was a 1921 silent comedy short called The Goat, and the man at the eye of the storm was Buster Keaton. As soon as I saw him I was hooked by the graceful anomaly he presented. His small, vigorous body, costumed in baggy pants, floppy shoes and clip-on tie, was constantly in motion: slipping, falling, getting hilariously tangled up in its surroundings. Through all these antics his pale, haunting face floated above the fray. Under a hat like a pie plate, the features were strangely beautiful, the expressions incongruously subtle and solemn. Yet somehow the noble, melancholy head was a perfect match for the reckless tumbler's physique. I wanted to know more, to understand how he fit together and why he knocked me out."
It's quite good and also I think everyone who has written about Keaton since James Agee may have just been like that.
no subject
Date: 2026-05-16 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-16 08:19 pm (UTC)I mean I am also like that about Buster Keaton.
no subject
Date: 2026-05-16 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-16 09:05 pm (UTC)Ack! I am inclined toward Sherlock Jr. (1924) because it's meta-cinema on top of physical comedy—a projectionist in love dreams himself into the melodrama onscreen and proceeds to smash the fourth wall like a live-action cartoon—but Seven Chances (1925) and Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) contain two of Keaton's most famous stunts wrapped in classically fast-moving romance gags and are thus representative as well as funny. College (1927) is terrific varsity send-up with really stupid (complimentary) messing about in boats. Our Hospitality (1923) is less wild than Keaton's features would become, but it has an archetypal bit with a waterfall. I would actively not recommend starting with The Cameraman (1928) even though it is often regarded as his masterpiece; it is a gorgeous showcase for Keaton moving through space and it has a tong war stuck through the middle of it.
no subject
Date: 2026-05-17 09:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-17 09:39 pm (UTC)You're welcome! Apologies if instead of a spread of options that was just sort of a dump of titles.
no subject
Date: 2026-05-17 02:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-17 11:51 am (UTC)