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The Anatomy of Harpo Marx

Wayne Koestenbaum author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:University of California Press

Published:7th Feb '12

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Anatomy of Harpo Marx cover

"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.

"A zesty and deeply literate joy to read." -- Jonathan Kiefer New Haven Review "A charming and rigorous study." -- Brian Dillon Sight & Sound Magazine "A fittingly zany, aphoristic, and meandering study of the great mime of Marx Brothers fame... Koestenbaum's approach to Harpo makes for highly animated reading." -- Noah Isenberg Bookforum "Koestenbaum provides an informed, original, and near-obsessive assessment of all things Harpo." Publishers Weekly "Provocative, original scholarship that lights a fire under the typically stodgy studies that we usually get from university press star biographies." -- Dennis King Oklahoman

ISBN: 9780520269002

Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 20mm

Weight: 590g

336 pages