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| Pt. 1 | Comedy | |
| 1 | Speechless (Charlie Chaplin / Buster Keaton) | 3 |
| 2 | Hanging tough (Harold Lloyd) | 10 |
| 3 | There ain't no Sanity Claus (Groucho Marx and Brothers) | 15 |
| 4 | This guy wouldn't give you the parsley off his fish (Jack Benny) | 24 |
| 5 | Cowardly custard (Bob Hope) | 37 |
| 6 | Idiot semi-savant (Jerry Lewis) | 46 |
| Pt. 2 | Film | |
| 7 | Best picture, 1889 (Edison : the invention of the movies) | 53 |
| 8 | Who was that masked man? (Lon Chaney) | 57 |
| 9 | Reviving ghosts (Olive Thomas / Hindle wakes) | 61 |
| 10 | The pulse of the world (Fritz Lang) | 64 |
| 11 | Ways we weren't (Vitaphone shorts) | 67 |
| 12 | Naked truth (Children of paradise) | 71 |
| 13 | Things that go bump (horror films) | 93 |
| 14 | A few stops on the way to the grave (films noir) | 97 |
| 15 | Hokum became him (William Wyler) | 93 |
| 16 | Primal fear (Nightmare alley) | 97 |
| 17 | Tales of treachery and loyalty (Jules Dassin/Jacques Becker) | 100 |
| 18 | Incomparable (Greta Garbo) | 104 |
| 19 | Awash in ambiguity (Marlon Brando) | 108 |
| 20 | Going his way (Bing Crosby) | 111 |
| 21 | Blond and beaming (Doris Day) | 117 |
| 22 | The two Leons (Animal farm / Looney tunes golden collection, volume two) | 121 |
| 23 | Kong has crazed his mind (Ray Harryhausen) | 124 |
| 24 | All the screen's a stage (Jean Renoir) | 128 |
| 25 | Eternal Times Square (Shadows) | 132 |
| 26 | Once upon a time on the Via Veneto (La Dolce Vita / Divorce Italian Style) | 135 |
| 27 | Charming imagination (L'eclisse) | 139 |
| 28 | I spy (The counterfeit traitor) | 143 |
| 29 | McCarey nods (Satan never sleeps) | 146 |
| 30 | Across the Pacific (Zero focus / The demon) | 149 |
| 31 | "My life makes me cry" (The insect woman) | 151 |
| 32 | The Holland line (Dutch movies) | 154 |
| 33 | Still curious (I am curious) | 158 |
| 34 | Broken promises (The honeymoon killers) | 162 |
| 35 | Calm, cool, and now collected (Steve McQueen) | 166 |
| 36 | Rock heads (Martin Scorsese) | 170 |
| 37 | Real reality TV (The UP series) | 173 |
| 38 | Roll out the sixties and we'll have a wonderful time (Berkeley in the sixties / Letter to the next generation) | 176 |
| 39 | 'Round and around and around (Twist) | 181 |
| 40 | Color him purple (Listen up : the lives of Quincy Jones) | 183 |
| 41 | Call it anything (Miles Electric) | 186 |
| 42 | Savage servility (Glory) | 188 |
| 43 | Simplicity itself (Robert Bresson) | 191 |
| 44 | Pretty boy (Alain Delon) | 194 |
| 45 | French doubt (Too beautiful for you / May fools) | 196 |
| 46 | Blown away (A shock to the system / Pretty woman / The hot spot / White palace) | 200 |
| 47 | WWII and the whole truth (The big red one / Devils on the doorstep / British war collection) | 208 |
| Pt. 3 | Music | |
| 48 | Mixing hot licks with vanilla (Fats Waller / Glenn Miller) | 217 |
| 49 | Brush up your Porter (Cole Porter) | 221 |
| 50 | Long-playing (Duke Ellington) | 225 |
| 51 | Jazz for the eyes (The sound of jazz / Jazz on a summer's day) | 232 |
| 52 | Regrets, they've had a few (Sinatra) | 236 |
| 53 | The ambassadors (A great day in Harlem / The real ambassadors) | 240 |
| 54 | Explosive (Count Basie) | 244 |
| 55 | "I'm Supposed to Deliver" (B. B. King) | 246 |
| 56 | Brother Al (Al Cohn) | 259 |
| 57 | The arranger (Gil Evans) | 264 |
| 58 | A new kind of virtuosity (Christopher Earl) | 269 |
| 59 | Beale Street talks (Harold Mabern) | 273 |
| 60 | Old Man Rivers (Sam Rivers) | 277 |
| 61 | Who's gonna throw that minstrel boy a coin? (Bob Dylan) | 280 |
| 62 | Fresh flowers (Albert Ayler) | 284 |
| 63 | Put your voice where your mouth is (lip-syncing) | 287 |
| 64 | On her 90th birthday (Billie Holiday) | 291 |
| Pt. 4 | Books | |
| 65 | 'Harsh as the sound of a man's snore was the name of Khufu' (Norman Mailer) | 297 |
| 66 | The grove of Academe (The new grove dictionary of American music) | 300 |
| 67 | Carrying a torch (the modern library) | 304 |
| 68 | Muddy Waters, I presume (Alan Lomax) | 310 |
| 69 | Soupspoon's blues (Walter Mosley) | 313 |
| 70 | Short and acerbic (M. M. Liberman) | 316 |
| 71 | Oxford jazz (Sheldon Meyer) | 319 |
| 72 | A public burning (Ralph Ellison) | 322 |
| 73 | Doin that waitin (Albert French) | 327 |
| 74 | Closed minds (Saul Bellow) | 329 |
| 75 | Laughing man (Moss Hart) | 332 |
| 76 | He's got no kick against modern jazz (Robert Christgau) | 340 |
| 77 | Mr. Ellington, meet Mr. Matisse (Alfred Appel Jr.) | 343 |
| 78 | Fighting for freedom and bad taste (Sammy Davis Jr.) | 347 |
| 79 | Pops and pops (Louis Armstrong and Paul Whiteman : two kings of jazz) | 352 |
| 80 | Seduced (Classics illustrated) | 357 |
| 81 | Fear and trembling (Friedrich Durrenmatt) | 369 |
| 82 | Kaddish for the Jews (Soma Morgenstern) | 377 |
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
GREG Roble
reviewed Natural Selection: Gary Giddins on Comedy, Film, Music, and Books on December 13, 2016
Natural Selection: Gary Giddins on Comedy, Film, Music, and Books
Not as outrageous as, say, Pauline Kael, and not as snarky as, say, Anthony Lane or as loquacious as Greil Marcus or as rowdy as Lester Bangs, but Gary Giddins is still a critic that rocks.
A long time jazz writer who also writes often and well about film, books, and general culture, Giiddins has great taste and an informed, unpretentious, witty prose style. It brings out the value of people who made amazing art that might be overlooked these days- people like The Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton, Fritz Lang, John Cassavettes, Bresson, Clifford Brown, Albert Ayler, Duke Ellington, and many more.
I worry sometimes whether or not culture from before, say, the sixties gets sort of shunted to the side in terms of the public imagination. Mostly there's boomer nostalgia about hippie stuff or 70's era music. Don't get me wrong- I love that stuff as much as the next guy, but I think we already know how great it was.
What we need is to find the things that came generations before that and renew them. Charlie Parker is still cool. Jon Ford is still badass. Ralph Ellison should never be overlooked, even if people only know Invisible Man, great book that it is. Same goes for Jazz, of course- the music of Louis Armstrong and Duke and Bud Powell and Ornette and Coltrane and Miles and Basie and Sinatra and Sarah Vaughn and Billie Holiday is just as vital and irresistible as it ever was.
All we need is someone to help us figure it all out, explain it for us a little, and have the passion and the articulation to help make it new. Gary Giddins is one of those critics who helps to do just that.
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