The Anatomy of Harpo Marx / Wayne Koestenbaum.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Koestenbaum, Wayne, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Marx, Harpo, 1888-1964.

Marx, Harpo.

Comedians--United States.

Comedians--United States--Biography.

Motion picture actors and actresses--United States.

Motion picture actors and actresses--United States--Biography.

Motion picture actors and actresses.

Comedians.

Local Subjects:

Comedians--United States.

Comedians--United States--Biography.

Marx, Harpo.

Marx, Harpo, 1888-1964.

Motion picture actors and actresses--United States.

Motion picture actors and actresses--United States--Biography.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (311 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, [2012]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

I. Early Ecstatic Emptiness

II. Later Astonishments

III. The Idiot Tumbles Back to the Beginning of Time

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9786613520838

9781280116544

1280116544

9780520951983

0520951980

OCLC:

779173389