Detailed and poignant biography of Buster Keaton, an early comedy genius of silent films. I like him and Harold Lloyd just as much as Charlie Chaplin! ( )

non-fiction, biography, film making, cinema, vaudeville, acting, Hollywood ( )

One would be hard-pressed to deny Keaton the attention of biographers. As one of a few key comedic actors who spanned vaudeville to television and as one of perhaps the best actor-directors to ever work, Keaton's impact on film and the American experience is formidable.

McPherson, who claims among his qualifications having watched lots of Keaton films in his Bronx apartment, seems a bit out of his depth. As a writer, he vacillates between wide-eyed enthusiast and would-be scholar. The enthusiasm does carry the biography, even if a few superlatives get out of hand and having McPherson fill pages with textual recreations of the films in question that drag. The work is carefully footnoted and brief and perfectly suitable as a starting point for those unfamiliar with the subject. It also isn't anything near a replacement for actually viewing the Keaton Co. era films, best collected in The Art of Buster Keaton DVD collection produced a few years ago by Kino. ( )

Just finished this in March 2007. Read it in about ten days. It is easy to fly through books when you're obsessed with the subject. Such obsession! I have already started making notes for a film - this book is good at squashing together neat clips from his life but pads the whole thing out with detailed descriptions of film after film. Spoilers too.

Thinking of one of the best biographies I've read - Hermione Lee's biography of Virginia Woolf - the resources were endless - letters and diaries and on and on, a book about not one life but many. It goes to show how a person is not just what happens to them, but all their interactions with everyone else and you need all that for a good biography. Were the resources not available for Buster?

It has made me want to read more about silent cinema, Marx brothers, Chaplin, film restoration....