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Home > Art, Film & Photography > General > Music > Music: styles and genres > Natural Selection: Gary Giddins on Comedy, Film, Music, and Books
Natural Selection: Gary Giddins on Comedy, Film, Music, and Books

Natural Selection: Gary Giddins on Comedy, Film, Music, and Books


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About the Book

Long recognized as America's most brilliant jazz writer, winner of the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award, 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. Throughout, Giddins reveals his uncommon ability 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. A wonderful gathering of little-known treasures, Natural Selection will broaden the perception of Gary Giddins as one of our most important cultural critics.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Part One: Comedy 1: Speechless 2: Hanging Tough 3: There Ain't No Sanity Claus 4: This Guy Wouldn't Give You the Parsley off His Fish 5: Cowardly Custard 6: Idiot Semi-Savant Part Two: Film 7: Best Picture, 1889 8: Who Was That Masked Man? 9: Reviving Ghosts 10: The Pulse of the World 11: Ways We Weren't 12: Naked Truth 13: Things That Go Bump 14: A Few Stops on the Way to the Grave 15: Hokum Became Him 16: Primal Fear 17: Tales of Treachery and Loyalty 18: Incomparable 19: Awash in Ambiguity 20: Going His Way 21: Blond and Beaming 22: The Two Leons 23: Kong Has Crazed His Mind 24: All the Screen's a Stage 25: Eternal Times Square 26: Once upon a Time on the Via Veneto 27: Charming Imagination 28: I Spy 29: McCarey Nods 30: Across the Pacific 31: "My Life Makes Me Cry" 32: The Holland Line 33: Still Curious 34: Broken Promises 35: Calm, Cool, and Now Collected 36: Rock Heads 37: Real Reality TV 38: Roll Out the Sixties and We'll Have a Wonderful Time 39: 'Round and Around and Around 40: Color Him Purple 41: Call It Anything 42: Savage Servility 43: Simplicity Itself 44: Pretty Boy 45: French Doubt 46: Blown Away Part Three: Music 48: Mixing Hot Licks with Vanilla 49: Brush Up Your Porter 50: Long 51: Jazz for the Eyes 52: Regrets, They've Had a Few 53: Ambassadors 54: Explosive 55: "I'm Supposed to Deliver" 56: Brother Al 57: The Arranger 58: A New Kind of Virtuosity 59: Beale Street Talks 60: Old Man Rivers 61: Who's Gonna Throw That Minstrel Boy a Coin? 62: Fresh Flowers 63: Put Your Voice Where Your Mouth Is 64: On Her 90th Birthday Part Four: Books 65: "Harsh as the sounds of a man's snore was the name of Khufu" 66: The Grove of Academe 67: Carrying a Torch 68: Muddy Waters, I presume 69: Soupspoon's Blues 70: Short and Acerbic 71: Oxford Jazz 72: A Public Burning 73: Doin That Waitin 74: Closed Minds 75: Laughing Man 76: He's Got No Kick Against Modern Jazz 77: Mr. Ellington, Meet Mr. Matisse 78: Fighting for Freedom and Bad Taste 79: Pops and Pops 80: Seduced 81: Fear and Trembling 82: Kaddish for the Jews Index

About the Author :
Gary Giddins wrote the Village Voice's 'Weather Bird' column for more than thirty years. His eight books and three documentary films have garnered unparalleled recognition for jazz, including a National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, two Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Awards, six ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards, a Guggenheim, and a Peabody. He lives in New York City.

Review :
"Just try to read all of 'Natural Selection' without buying at least a few CD's and DVD's; the Criterion Collection should pay Giddins a commission."--New York Times Book Review "In an age of blogs and the everyman critic, it's reassuring to know people as brilliant as Giddins are still ready to offer insights only a true critic can provide. This is an exceptional addition to a remarkable career.... Nowhere else in his works do we find such a wide range of subjects, which proves his perceptive talents and in-depth knowledge of the mediums of which he writes are unequalled."--Library Journal(starred review) "Just try to read all of 'Natural Selection' without buying at least a few CD's and DVD's; the Criterion Collection should pay Giddins a commission."--New York Times Book Review "In an age of blogs and the everyman critic, it's reassuring to know people as brilliant as Giddins are still ready to offer insights only a true critic can provide. This is an exceptional addition to a remarkable career.... Nowhere else in his works do we find such a wide range of subjects, which proves his perceptive talents and in-depth knowledge of the mediums of which he writes are unequalled."--Library Journal(starred review)


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Product Details
  • ISBN-13: 9780195368505
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
  • Publisher Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
  • Height: 145 mm
  • No of Pages: 432
  • Returnable: Y
  • Sub Title: Gary Giddins on Comedy, Film, Music, and Books
  • Width: 224 mm
  • ISBN-10: 0195368509
  • Publisher Date: 24 Apr 2008
  • Binding: Paperback
  • Language: English
  • Returnable: Y
  • Spine Width: 28 mm
  • Weight: 581 gr


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