Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler

This biography provides a comprehensive account of Walt Disney's life from his boyhood in Marceline, Missouri and Kansas City to his death in Los Angeles. I thought it was especially good on his work. At least according to this book, Walt was often the guiding force behind novel ideas, but it really wasn't his skill as an animator that launched the Disney empire--it was his ability to see the cultural potential for animations. I particularly liked the accounts of Disney's collaborations with Leopold Stowkowski and Salvador Dali. The book also portrays Disney as restless: once he achieved something, his interest often turned to doing something new instead of simply repeating his success (which is not, of course, to say that his companies didn't often try to capitalize on and reproduce these successes!). I have read that the Disney family (and particuarly Diane Disney Miller) disagree with the author's characterization of Disney (especially in his relationship with his wife), but I thought the book made sense and gave a persuasive reading of Walt's life and its meaning in the midst of the American Century.

All We Know: Three Lives by Lisa Cohen

This book provides three more-or-less well-developed biographical sketches of three women who traveled in similar circles during the years of modernism. It contends that in understanding the lives of these three women (Esther Murphy, Mercedes de Acosta, and Madge Garland) we can uncover a feminine side to high modernism, which seems to consist of a writing side, a fan side, and a fashion side. But I don't think the book makes its case particularly well. Even though all three women knew each other, I had trouble understanding why we needed their stories to be told together. The biographies are certainly entertaining, I just am not sure the premise of the book holds together as well as it might.

A Fistful of Collars by Spencer Quinn

In this book Chet and Bernie's easy, well-paying job of keeping an eye on a wild movie star suddenly gets more pressing and difficult when they start finding bodies in the wake of his handlers and their investigation. At the same time their personal life gets much more difficult as Bernie and Suzie begin to navigate a long-distance relationship and Leda (Bernie's ex-wife) is star struck. The story--which involves delving into the movie star's past and solving a cold case which involves city government corruption--is good, and, as usual, Quinn's characterization of Chet shines. An entertaining addition to the series.

A Life by Elia Kazan

This autobiography recounts Kazan's life, in detail until the end of his film career, and then in sketches (mostly focusing on the death of his second wife and friends) until the late nineteen eighties. The tone of the book suggests that Kazan isn't holding anything back (not always true, as he himself admits), although he tends to speak forthrightly about most subjects (it seems the people he wants to impress, or at least not to scandalize, are his children, despite their relatively small parts in the book itself). There's a bit of back and forth--the story doesn't always go strictly chronologically, especially where Kazan's Congressional testimony in 1952 is concerned. It does give Kazan's take on that testimony in fairly straightforward rehearsal of his side of those events. Overall, the book is enjoyable--definitely an entertaining read. It explains a lot about Kazan's behavior, his choices, and his methods of directing, even if its subject is not always sympathetic (the womanizing without apology, in particular, struck me as egregious).

I Am Half-Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley

In this mystery Flavia de Luce finds her Christmas celebrations (and plans for catching Santa Claus and dazzling the surrounding countryside with her chemical acumen through a fireworks display) interrupted, first by a film crew coming to make a movie at Buckshaw (one of her father's attempts to hold on to the property despite increasing financial difficulties), and then by murder. I really enjoyed this mystery--I thought the holiday and the presence of the film crew added to the cozy side of things in a really intriguing way. I think the strength of this series is in its sense of character, especially Flavia, who is so sharp about so many things (like chemistry), but is also clueless in other ways (she's continually baffled at why her sisters seem to hate her). I'll be glad when the next entry in this series appears.

Vampire Legends in Contemporary American Culture: What Becomes a Legend Most by William Patrick Day

This book looks at the role of vampires in American culture. After a short introduction to the topic (bringing vampires out of folklore and into fiction, and from there into the twentieth century), this book focuses on twentieth century materials, ranging from film to television to novels, and focusing most (but not exclusively) on American works. Day suggests that three main modes of vampire stories exist: liberation stories, in which vampires have been sexualized and turned into the protagonist; horror stories, in which vampires are no longer the boogeymen of the past, but harbingers of a terrifying future; and slayer stories, which turn the focus back to the vampire slayers. The book gives good readings, and offers a basic theoretical framework--it wasn't bad, but nothing to knock your socks off, either.

Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphor, and Media into the Twenty-First Century by Marina Warner

This book investigates representations of the spirit and the supernatural, starting early but really hitting its stride around the early eighteenth century and continuing into the twenty-first century. It considers representations of the self and a spiritual presence in material (wax, cloud, photographs, film) and immaterial (ether, air, ectoplasm) forms. The book casts a wide-ranging net to gather its evidence--we see examples drawn from art, literature, material culture, and many other places. Generally it argues that despite our increasing understanding of the processes in the world and our increasing secularization, we still need, perhaps more than ever, representations of spirit. I thought the last chapter, on zombies, was particularly effective. The book had a refreshing tone--it treats moments of spiritualism (like knocking, expulsion of ectoplasm, etc.) as moments to be studied for their interpretative value, not as phenomena to be definitively proven or disproven.

Witches on the Road Tonight by Sheri Holman

This book deftly links the story of a young boy who encounters two WPA artists while growing up in Appalachia with that of the way the family of a small time television entertainer is torn apart when they bring a foster boy into their midst. There's a lot of piecing together that the reader has to do for herself, but I especially enjoyed the parts set in rural Virginia. The television show, which seems to be a sort of low-budget, local market Mystery Science Theater 3000, features Captain Casket (CAP/TAN/CASKT, the Casketeers sing, in a parody of the Mickey Mouse Club song that Disney would shut down faster than you can say "Jimney Cricket" today), and is one of the most entertaining and imaginative bits of the story.

Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism by Frederic Jameson

This book is a massive cultural study of postmodernism that declines to define postmodernism. I found parts of the book very difficult to follow: the theory was dense (and drew on philosophers with whom I am not familiar). I thought Jameson offered convincing readings of film (in ways that reminded me of the way that film works in Infinite Jest) and architecture especially. This book makes me glad my interests are in the nineteenth century.

Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett

This book parodies the siren call of the silver screen, as the whole Discworld is turned upside down when the last of the Doorkeepers dies, the Alchemists discover octo-cellulose, and enterprising individuals flock to Holy Wood. There are lots of great moments sending up classic Hollywood movies (Gone with the Wind, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and Ben-Hur, among others). Very funny.

Hard Core by Linda Williams

Black Frankenstein: The Making of an American Metaphor by Elizabeth Young

This book proposes that in American culture, the figure of Frankenstein has at times been imagined as black as a method of antiracist critique of culture. The book starts with nineteenth century images of Frankenstein. Although at times racists have used the figure, Young argues that it's far more useful for an anti-racist reading because of the human sympathy with which the monster is portrayed in Shelley's tale and in other versions of the story. The next two chapters focus on The Monster, by Stephen Crane, in which Young proposes that Crane retells the Frankenstein story to both make a political commentary (which gives the story a tragic ending) and an aesthetic commentary (which gives the story a successful ending), and Sport of the Gods, by Paul Laurence Dunbar, in which Young investigates the role of irony and parody in Dunbar's reworking of the Frankenstein story. The last chapter deals with 20th century film and popular culture figures of Frankenstein, and how the Frankenstein figure relates to masculinity. I thought Young gave really good close readings, and I think that this book is a good example of transatlantic scholarship, but I felt that it was a little uneven as far as the time periods went--that is to say, I thought her argument hung together better in the 19th century as an unit, and in the 20th century as an unit, than it did in the book as a complete whole.