Recent Arrivals

A while back, PW had me review Keystone, a biography of early film comedy star/producer Mack Sennett by Simon Louvish that, partly because of the paucity of data on Louvish and partly because of Keystone's prominence as a studio during its peak years, includes informaton on a slew of other early film legends. But, I warned, "although Louvish regards all his sources, from celebrity memoirs to fawning magazine articles, with healthy skepticism, he appears to have been seduced by their florid style. 'Murky shadows gathered in the sunny glades where the movie people had frolicked in their make-believe innocence in never-never land' is a typical example," an undercutting distraction from the strong historical research on display. If you're already familiar with, say, the Fatty Arbuckle story or the murder of William Desmond Taylor, a lot of this may be old hat, but I was engaged by the story of Keystone as a precursor to the golden age of the powerful film studios.

I also got my finished copy of Join Me, the story of a Brit slacker who launched his own cult of personality online and watched it spin out of control all over Europe, all the while trying to keep his girlfriend from figuring out what he's gone and done. "The story's pretty silly," I admitted, "and Wallace's plan is strongly reminiscent of the theme of Pay It Forward (which he acknowledges), so he lets readers in on the joke right away, dragging them into his confidence." And you know what? It works. Now Americans can get in on the fun.