Meanwhile...
May. 31st, 2007 09:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sdelmonteOK, I think I will not talk about the Great LJ Whatever for a while, short of saying that I have no plans to move my journal, but will follow friends' journals if need be.
Let's talk about something else, shall we?
I just finished the second volume of Simon Callow's projected three-part work on Orson Welles. Good stuff, but it gets far too detailed about a small chunk of Welles' life (1941-47). This is strangely reminiscent of the very different multi-part biography of LBJ by Robert Caro. In both cases, the subject is an outsided, controversial figure whose influence on their chosen field of endeavor is vast but forgotten with time. In both cases, the first volume covers a fairly good amount of time, ending in a seminal moment for the subject (for Welles, Citizen Kane; for LBJ, his first race for US Senate). In both cases, the readers wait years to see what will come next, and are surprised to find that the second book devoted a lot of time to a short period. And in both cases, this reader was disappointed, though Caro's mistake was not the excessive detail but the new level of contempt he had for LBJ that was not present in the first (or the third) book. Callow, if nothing else, still retains his love - worship? - of Welles.
Thankfully, Callow is a gifted writer and even when he takes too long examining the pieces of a Welles film, it's a good read. This book did need some help with the editing. In discussing the humor of Jack Benny (a favorite of both Welles and myself), he recaps the famous "your money or your life" routine by telling us that the flustered Benny finally replies to the crook "I'm turning it over!" instead of "I'm thinking, I'm thinking!" There are spelling mistakes, and in one place a name is changed one line after its previous usage. Proofreading is a dying art, no doubt.
I still can recommend this book to anyone who liked the first, and can recommend both this and its predecessor to anyone with an interest in the glory days of Hollywood, or in the charismatic but never entirely successful Welles.
Let's talk about something else, shall we?
I just finished the second volume of Simon Callow's projected three-part work on Orson Welles. Good stuff, but it gets far too detailed about a small chunk of Welles' life (1941-47). This is strangely reminiscent of the very different multi-part biography of LBJ by Robert Caro. In both cases, the subject is an outsided, controversial figure whose influence on their chosen field of endeavor is vast but forgotten with time. In both cases, the first volume covers a fairly good amount of time, ending in a seminal moment for the subject (for Welles, Citizen Kane; for LBJ, his first race for US Senate). In both cases, the readers wait years to see what will come next, and are surprised to find that the second book devoted a lot of time to a short period. And in both cases, this reader was disappointed, though Caro's mistake was not the excessive detail but the new level of contempt he had for LBJ that was not present in the first (or the third) book. Callow, if nothing else, still retains his love - worship? - of Welles.
Thankfully, Callow is a gifted writer and even when he takes too long examining the pieces of a Welles film, it's a good read. This book did need some help with the editing. In discussing the humor of Jack Benny (a favorite of both Welles and myself), he recaps the famous "your money or your life" routine by telling us that the flustered Benny finally replies to the crook "I'm turning it over!" instead of "I'm thinking, I'm thinking!" There are spelling mistakes, and in one place a name is changed one line after its previous usage. Proofreading is a dying art, no doubt.
I still can recommend this book to anyone who liked the first, and can recommend both this and its predecessor to anyone with an interest in the glory days of Hollywood, or in the charismatic but never entirely successful Welles.
