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jimhaberl's review
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
A lovingly crafted biography of Buster Keaton by a true fan of his work. While Dana Stevens includes a wealth of well-researched history, she always includes her own voice, which makes this book informative and exceedingly readable.
laz_'s review
4.0
If you love old classic Hollywood, especially silent film, I can’t recommend this enough. I love Buster Keaton and this was such an awesome dive into his history and the world around him. Since this book is partly a Keaton biography and partly a look into the environment and world of silent-era Hollywood and later into early talkies, it can sometimes feel strange when you’re invested in a part of Keaton’s life and then a separate aspect of the silent era is explored—I like the idea of the two subjects, and as an old film lover I will eat up any and all information, it can sometimes make for a meandering, less linear sense of direction.
All of this is to say though that this is a delight for any fans of Buster or silent film/old Hollywood! Wonderfully researched but not dense or info-dumpy.
All of this is to say though that this is a delight for any fans of Buster or silent film/old Hollywood! Wonderfully researched but not dense or info-dumpy.
amlibera's review against another edition
5.0
Not a traditional biography of Buster Keaton, rather a series of essays that both tell Keaton's story and move beyond it to explore a range of movements and structures of twentieth century America (the start of AA for example) as well as the myths and growth of a variety of American performance mediums. I teach Keaton in my comedy history class (and TBH, he's always been my favorite of the silent performers) and there was so much here that resonated, provoked, or otherwise fascinated someone who already had a fair amount of knowledge about the subject.
ryanferguson83's review
Hope to come back to this. Want to watch more Buster Keaton movies first for context.
athryn's review
informative
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
3.0
Felt more like a series of essays than a coherent biography or history of Keaton. Which is totally fine, but I wasn't expecting that going in. I did enjoy reading about the wider world of Hollywood of the time, filtered through people who worked with Keaton, but I think I would have preferred something either more focused on Keaton himself, or more expansive in scope.