
Natural Selection: Gary Giddins on Comedy, Film, Music, and Books by Gary Giddins
By Gary GiddinsNatural Selection: Gary Giddins on Comedy, Film, Music, and Books by Gary Giddins
Long recognized as America's most brilliant jazz writer, the winner of many major awards--including the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award--and author of a highly popular biography of Bing Crosby, Gary Giddins has also produced a wide range of stimulating and original cultural criticism in other fields. With Natural Selection, he brings together the best of these previously uncollected essays, including a few written expressly for this volume.
The range of topics is spellbinding. Writing with insight, humor, and a famously deft touch, he offers sharp-edged perspectives on such diverse subjects as Federico Fellini and Jean Renoir, Norman Mailer and Ralph Ellison, Marlon Brando and Groucho Marx, Duke Ellington and Bob Dylan, horror and noir, the cartoon version of Animal Farm and the comic book series Classics Illustrated. Giddins brings to criticism an uncommon ability, long demonstrated in his music writing, to address in very few words an entire career, so that we get an in-depth portrait of the artist beyond the film, book, or recording under review. For instance, Giddins offers a stunning reappraisal of Doris Day, who he terms "the coolest and sexiest female singer of slow ballads in film history." He argues eloquently for a reconsideration of the forgotten German-language novelist Soma Morgenstern. In a section on comedy, he offers fresh perspectives on the three great silent film stars--Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd--while resurrecting the legendary Jack Benny and reevaluating the controversial Jerry Lewis. There's also a memorable look at Bing Crosby's film career (he calls Crosby's blockbuster Going My Way "a neglected masterpiece") and a close examination of Marcel Carne's beloved Children of Paradise. Of course, Giddins also supplies excellent commentary on jazz: major and underrated figures, and especially the uses of jazz in film.
A wonderful gathering of little-known treasures, Natural Selection will broaden the perception of Gary Giddins as one of our most important cultural critics.
Book details
- Hardcover
- 432 pages
- English
- 019517951X
- 9780195179514
About Gary Giddins
gary giddins was Read More about Gary Giddins
More Books By Gary Giddins
People who bought this also bought
Zig Ziglar's Secrets of Closing the Sale: For Anyone Who Must Get Others to Say Yes! book by Zig Ziglar
New Book
A Man of Good Hope: One Man?s Extraordinary Journey from Mogadishu to Tin Can Town book by Jonny Steinberg
New Book
Women on the Hill: : Challenging the Culture of Congress
Used Book
American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman
Used Book
The Looting Machine: Warlords, Oligarchs, Corporations, Smugglers, and the Theft of Africa's Wealth book by Tom Burgis
New Book
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China book by Evan Osnos
New Book
The Wisdom of Sundays: Life-Changing Insights from Super Soul Conversations book by Oprah Winfrey
New Book
Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited book by Joseph E. Stiglitz
New Book
Amedeo : a true story of Love and war in Abyssinia book by Sebastian O'Kelly
New Book
The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload book by Daniel J. Levitin
New Book
The young church in action: A translation of the Acts of the Apostles
Used Book
Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World book by Meredith Broussard
New Book
Atkins for Life : The Complete Controlled Carb Program for Permanent Weight Loss
Used Book