Long recognized as America's most brilliant jazz writer, the winner of many major awards-including the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award-and author of a highly popular biography of Bing Crosby, 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 . Giddins brings to criticism an uncommon ability, long demonstrated in his music writing, 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. For instance, Giddins offers a stunning reappraisal of Doris Day, who he terms "the coolest and sexiest female singer of slow ballads in film history." He argues eloquently for a reconsideration of the forgotten German-language novelist Soma Morgenstern. In a section on comedy, he offers fresh perspectives on the three great silent film stars-Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd-while resurrecting the legendary Jack Benny and reevaluating the controversial Jerry Lewis. There's also a memorable look at Bing Crosby's film career (he calls Crosby's blockbuster Going My Way "a neglected masterpiece") and a close examination of Marcel Carne's beloved Children of Paradise . Of course, Giddins also supplies excellent commentary on jazz: major and underrated figures, and especially the uses of jazz in film.
Show moreLong recognized as America's most brilliant jazz writer, the winner of many major awards-including the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award-and author of a highly popular biography of Bing Crosby, 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 . Giddins brings to criticism an uncommon ability, long demonstrated in his music writing, 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. For instance, Giddins offers a stunning reappraisal of Doris Day, who he terms "the coolest and sexiest female singer of slow ballads in film history." He argues eloquently for a reconsideration of the forgotten German-language novelist Soma Morgenstern. In a section on comedy, he offers fresh perspectives on the three great silent film stars-Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd-while resurrecting the legendary Jack Benny and reevaluating the controversial Jerry Lewis. There's also a memorable look at Bing Crosby's film career (he calls Crosby's blockbuster Going My Way "a neglected masterpiece") and a close examination of Marcel Carne's beloved Children of Paradise . Of course, Giddins also supplies excellent commentary on jazz: major and underrated figures, and especially the uses of jazz in film.
Show moreAcknowledgments
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
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.
"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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