"The Anatomy of Harpo Marx" is a luxuriant, detailed play-by-play account of Harpo Marx's physical movements as captured on screen. Wayne Koestenbaum guides us through the thirteen Marx Brothers films, from "The Cocoanuts" in 1929 to "Love Happy" in 1950, to focus on Harpo's chief and yet heretofore unexplored attribute - his profound and contradictory corporeality. Koestenbaum celebrates the astonishing range of Harpo's body - its kinks, sexual multiplicities, somnolence, Jewishness, "cute" pathos, and more. In a virtuosic performance, Koestenbaum's text moves gracefully from insightful analysis to cultural critique to autobiographical musing, and provides Harpo with a host of odd bedfellows, including Walter Benjamin and Barbra Streisand.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
"A zesty and deeply literate joy to read." -- Jonathan Kiefer New Haven Review "A charming and rigorous study." -- Brian Dillon Sight & Sound Magazine "A fittingly zany, aphoristic, and meandering study of the great mime of Marx Brothers fame... Koestenbaum's approach to Harpo makes for highly animated reading." -- Noah Isenberg Bookforum "Koestenbaum provides an informed, original, and near-obsessive assessment of all things Harpo." Publishers Weekly "Provocative, original scholarship that lights a fire under the typically stodgy studies that we usually get from university press star biographies." -- Dennis King Oklahoman
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Verlagsort
Zielgruppe
Produkt-Hinweis
Illustrationen
Maße
Höhe: 229 mm
Breite: 152 mm
Dicke: 0 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-0-520-26901-9 (9780520269019)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Wayne Koestenbaum is Distinguished Professor of Literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He is the author of thirteen books of criticism, poetry, and fiction, including a biography of Andy Warhol, and the acclaimed The Queen's Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire.
Acknowledgments I. Early Ecstatic Emptiness The Holy Fool Flees Language's Stink Bomb: The Cocoanuts (1929) Pinky, the Pointing Scapegoat, Lags Behind: Duck Soup (1933) The Mad Mohel's Goo-Goo Eyes of Monomaniacal Attunement: A Night at the Opera (1935) Poppy Power; or, The Thick-Enough Art of Zombie Dumbfoundment: Animal Crackers (1930) II. Later Astonishments Fake Dead Jew as Cute Zoo-Idiot: Room Service (1938) Passe Punchy's Humiliated Buddy Huddle: At the Circus (1939) Freeze Rusty's Anal Rage in a Cozy Void: Go West (1940) Lonely Wacky's Incremental Lines of Flight: The Big Store (1941) The Bubble-Blowing Demarcator Tickles Totality: A Night in Casablanca (1946) Bulge, Glaze, Pause, Shock; or, The Bushy-Haired Ragpicker's Burnt Offering: Love Happy (1949) III. The Idiot Tumbles Back to the Beginning of Time The Undeliverable Ice of Pinky's Mom-Mouth: Horse Feathers (1932) The Kippering, Bopping, Shushing, Bear-Hugging, Beard-Pulling Bustle: Monkey Business (1931) The Pretzel Glimmer-Eye of Stuffy's Stuttering Surge: A Day at the Races (1937)
