Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Mack Sennett Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Mack Sennett? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Mack Sennett. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Mack Sennett ReviewI'm a big fan of not only silent films in general but silent comedy in particular, so you would think that I'd be the natural audience for Simon Louvish's new book on Mack Sennett, D.W. Griffith's protégé and the man behind the Keystone Studio, which produced (or at least discovered) such comic geniuses as Charlie Chaplin and Roscoe Arbuckle. Well, you'd be right: I am the natural audience for "Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Mack Sennett." So why was I so disappointed?
It has some new information on the life of the Canadian-born producer and his life and times, but the book is so vilely written that I found it a chore to read. It almost feels like Louvish, who wrote a far better book on the Marx Brothers and other books on famous comedians that I have not read, fell under the stylistic influence of Gene Fowler, a previous Sennett biographer and the maudlin biographer of John Barrymore, whose prose style is replete with every sappy literary cliché known to man (memorably described by Edmund Wilson: "...the style couldn't be more journalistic in a flowery, old-fashioned way... [it] has no structure and no harmonics. It is something that is exhaled like breath or exuded like perspiration."). If you doubt my word and decide to read the book anyway, try and count the number of times Louvish uses the archaic word "quoth" in a sentence.
So I'm torn about this book. There simply aren't enough good books about this period, and there is some new information to be gleaned from Louvish's pages (although I found myself disagreeing with some, but not all, of his conclusions). But its wretched prose style, if you have any feeling at all for the English language, will set your teeth on edge. You might not care if you're a real fan of early silent comedy, and if that's the case go ahead and read it. But don't say I didn't warn you.Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Mack Sennett Overview

Want to learn more information about Keystone: The Life and Clowns of Mack Sennett?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now