Description
Named a Best Book of 2022 by The New Yorker Publishers Weekly and NPR
In this genredefying new kind of history The New Yorker the chief film critic of Slate places comedy legend and acclaimed filmmaker Buster Keatons unique creative genius in the context of his time
Born the same year as the film industry in 1895 Buster Keaton began his career as the child star of a family slapstick act reputed to be the most violent in vaudeville Beginning in his early twenties he enjoyed a decadelong stretch as the director star stuntman editor and allaround mastermind of some of the greatest silent comedies ever made including Sherlock Jr The General and The Cameraman
Even through his dark middle years as a severely depressed alcoholic finding work on the margins of show business Keatons life had a way of reflecting the changes going on in the world around him He found success in three different mediums at their creative peak first vaudeville then silent film and finally the experimental early years of television Over the course of his actionpacked seventy years on earth his life trajectory intersected with those of such influential figures as the escape artist Harry Houdini the pioneering Black stage comedian Bert Williams the television legend Lucille Ball and literary innovators like F Scott Fitzgerald and Samuel Beckett
In Camera Man film critic Dana Stevens pulls the lens out from Keatons life and work to look at concurrent developments in entertainment journalism law technology the political and social status of women and the popular understanding of addiction With erudition and sparkling humor Stevens hopscotches among disciplines to bring us up to the present day when Keatons breathtaking and sometimes lifethreatening stunts remain more popular than ever as they circulate on the internet in the form of viral gifs Far more than a biography or a work of film history Camera Man is a wideranging meditation on modernity that paints a complex portrait of a oneofakind artist
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