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mollie_makebelieve's review
5.0
What a fantastic historical read. I have always been a HUGE Chaplin fan so this book appealed to me from the cover alone. I'm glad I picked it up because it really was an enjoyable read.
It follows intertwining stories in America, 1918 one of which is Charlie Chaplin, and from my own knowledge and research it's pretty historically accurate! other characters in the book are real life historical figures while some are fictitious but believable to have existed. With several great quotes and a couple of surprises as to who the characters were in real life this has become one of my favorite books! The author, I think, did a good job getting details and conversations as close to real as possible. understandably with some poetic licensing.
It follows intertwining stories in America, 1918 one of which is Charlie Chaplin, and from my own knowledge and research it's pretty historically accurate! other characters in the book are real life historical figures while some are fictitious but believable to have existed. With several great quotes and a couple of surprises as to who the characters were in real life this has become one of my favorite books! The author, I think, did a good job getting details and conversations as close to real as possible. understandably with some poetic licensing.
jomasini's review against another edition
3.0
I enjoyed it but not as much as 'Carter...', it was quite slow going throughout but the stories were all engaging
alexrobinsonsupergenius's review
5.0
Chaplin is only one of the characters in the book, with nearly equal time given to two other young men whose destinies are caught in the grip of the Great War. Luckily I enjoy the silent movie era and WW1 so this book was right up my alley, as the kids say.
The book has a huge cast of characters and the narrator does a fine job keeping them distinctive though his uniquely bass voice makes for an interesting fit with the more dainty characters (ie: Mary Pickford). It did make me want rewatch some Chaplin films so that’s a plus.
The book has a huge cast of characters and the narrator does a fine job keeping them distinctive though his uniquely bass voice makes for an interesting fit with the more dainty characters (ie: Mary Pickford). It did make me want rewatch some Chaplin films so that’s a plus.
sujuv's review
4.0
I loved this book! A well-written, entertaining, ultimately moving read. It takes as it starting point an apparently true instance of hundreds of "sightings" of Charlie Chaplin throughout the world at the same time. From there, it follows Chaplin and ends with the creation of United Artists, as well as the stories of 2 men involved with 2 of the Chaplin sightings. One ends up fighting Bolsheviks in Russia, and the other fights in World War I and ends up finding and bringing up 2 dogs on the field of battle - one of whom turns out to be Rin Tin Tin. A great mix of fact and fiction.
bupdaddy's review
4.0
Does an emotional impact still count if you're not sure why you feel it?
I like Gold's writing - sort of an short-attention-span smarty-pants thing - smatterings of 1910's American culture you're expected to just know - various silent movies, Krazy Kat, and the Four Minute Men; short phrases in French, Russian, German. Makes me feel smart without having to concentrate too much.
And I really like Charlie Chaplin, and am interested in silent movies in general. I was disappointed to learn one of the Mary Pickford movies with ZaSu Pitts that was in the book is a lost film.
So it was an absorbing read.
But, with about a hundred pages to go, I asked myself 'what's the basic question I'm waiting to get answered?' and I couldn't answer that. By the time I finished, I realized that like its namesake movie, Sunnyside is about things not fitting together perfectly, and real life not supplying a clean narrative driving toward anything. Things don't make sense. The universe doesn't make patterns, we just perceive them. I get it.
But Sunnyside was one of Chaplin's least successful films - financially and artistically (you know, I'm not really sure about financially, now that I mention it. The book implies it, but I think it did just fine. Not going to bother to research it). Maybe it wasn't the best structure to imitate.
I like Gold's writing - sort of an short-attention-span smarty-pants thing - smatterings of 1910's American culture you're expected to just know - various silent movies, Krazy Kat, and the Four Minute Men; short phrases in French, Russian, German. Makes me feel smart without having to concentrate too much.
And I really like Charlie Chaplin, and am interested in silent movies in general. I was disappointed to learn one of the Mary Pickford movies with ZaSu Pitts that was in the book is a lost film.
So it was an absorbing read.
But, with about a hundred pages to go, I asked myself 'what's the basic question I'm waiting to get answered?' and I couldn't answer that. By the time I finished, I realized that like its namesake movie, Sunnyside is about things not fitting together perfectly, and real life not supplying a clean narrative driving toward anything. Things don't make sense. The universe doesn't make patterns, we just perceive them. I get it.
But Sunnyside was one of Chaplin's least successful films - financially and artistically (you know, I'm not really sure about financially, now that I mention it. The book implies it, but I think it did just fine. Not going to bother to research it). Maybe it wasn't the best structure to imitate.
rocketiza's review against another edition
1.0
I haven't ever had an interest in Charlie Chaplin and this novel didn't change that.
thematinee's review against another edition
3.0
Every chapter that focuses on Pickford, Fairbanks, and Chaplin is like hearing my favorite song be played over and over. It paints beautiful - and sometimes tragic - portraits of all three legends ad makes me wish I could have been witness to this moment in movie history for even a day.
Even the critic Munsterberg whose work I came to appreciate last year gets a moment in the sun.
However the chapters on the warfront did nothing for me. Glimmers might have been haunting; whole chapters seemed distracting.
But then there's this, spoken in the face of tragedy;
"...was life basically random, and were our agile human brains trained in analogy and connecting dots, always making constellations out of chaos? Or was there a deeper meaning, and was it when we were in touch with the divine that we allowed ourselves to see it? Every moment of belief was actually about choosing belief, and that was what he called faith. Perhaps one moment in the future, every person in this room would again have some kind of faith."
Amen.
Even the critic Munsterberg whose work I came to appreciate last year gets a moment in the sun.
However the chapters on the warfront did nothing for me. Glimmers might have been haunting; whole chapters seemed distracting.
But then there's this, spoken in the face of tragedy;
"...was life basically random, and were our agile human brains trained in analogy and connecting dots, always making constellations out of chaos? Or was there a deeper meaning, and was it when we were in touch with the divine that we allowed ourselves to see it? Every moment of belief was actually about choosing belief, and that was what he called faith. Perhaps one moment in the future, every person in this room would again have some kind of faith."
Amen.
readerpants's review
3.0
It felt like all of Glen David Gold's writing since [b:Carter Beats The Devil|4599|Carter Beats the Devil|Glen David Gold|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165446946s/4599.jpg|859386] had been spent honing his heartbreaking irony skills at McSweeney's. Apparently narrative is too 2004?
This book really was a slog, which is not to say I didn't cry. Five separate narratives was just too many: they kept pulling me out of each story as soon as I got into it, like Brecht, which was just as well since I couldn't have taken the emotional beating otherwise. It took me a week and a fair bit of willpower to finish.
I think I would have loved this book in high school, when I would have chewed on its profundity for weeks, and also cried a lot.
This book really was a slog, which is not to say I didn't cry. Five separate narratives was just too many: they kept pulling me out of each story as soon as I got into it, like Brecht, which was just as well since I couldn't have taken the emotional beating otherwise. It took me a week and a fair bit of willpower to finish.
I think I would have loved this book in high school, when I would have chewed on its profundity for weeks, and also cried a lot.
ben_miller's review against another edition
4.0
A very good book that falls short of greatness, but not for lack of trying.
It doesn't get much more ambitious than this until you start talking about the all-time great novels. But ambition and success are not synonymous. Gold is a very good writer, but he's at his worst when he tries his hardest to entertain. This book's most successful moments (and a "moment" in this tome can be 40 or 50 pages long) come when he relaxes and lets the story do the work. The crowning achievement of the book is the extended scene of Charlie Chaplin at Samuel Goldwyn's beach house, coming about a third of the way into the book. Here we see Gold's penetrating understanding of Chaplin's psyche and his flair for crafting a very long and dynamic scene in which many things are happening and all of them are balanced perfectly. That's a microcosm of the book as a whole, in which an absurd number of characters are orbiting a central theme of performances (and falseness) during wartime.
The low points, such as Hugo Black's cartoonish train battle with the Bolsheviks, are low points not because of the content (cartoonishness is obviously the point here) but because the writing is trying so hard to make you see the cartoonishness of it. Gold retreats into bucketfuls of similes, some of them good, many of them bad, some of them downright baffling. There must be at least a thousand similes in this book. If someone, say an editor, were to go through and cut out 750 of them, we'd have a much better narrative on our hands.
But the ambition here, and the general success in executing it, cannot be understated. You'd have to be crazy to attempt this, and pretty damn good to, for the most part, pull it off. It's a book I didn't mind living with for 650 pages, and felt I had learned quite a bit from. Not necessarily facts, but truths. It puts into relief just how thoroughly our worldviews are shaped by movies. There's a scene in which somebody (Hugo, I think) is fighting an actual war and imagines watching himself do these things as a soldier in a movie instead, and that, I'm afraid, gets straight to the heart of the way we think of ourselves now.
It doesn't get much more ambitious than this until you start talking about the all-time great novels. But ambition and success are not synonymous. Gold is a very good writer, but he's at his worst when he tries his hardest to entertain. This book's most successful moments (and a "moment" in this tome can be 40 or 50 pages long) come when he relaxes and lets the story do the work. The crowning achievement of the book is the extended scene of Charlie Chaplin at Samuel Goldwyn's beach house, coming about a third of the way into the book. Here we see Gold's penetrating understanding of Chaplin's psyche and his flair for crafting a very long and dynamic scene in which many things are happening and all of them are balanced perfectly. That's a microcosm of the book as a whole, in which an absurd number of characters are orbiting a central theme of performances (and falseness) during wartime.
The low points, such as Hugo Black's cartoonish train battle with the Bolsheviks, are low points not because of the content (cartoonishness is obviously the point here) but because the writing is trying so hard to make you see the cartoonishness of it. Gold retreats into bucketfuls of similes, some of them good, many of them bad, some of them downright baffling. There must be at least a thousand similes in this book. If someone, say an editor, were to go through and cut out 750 of them, we'd have a much better narrative on our hands.
But the ambition here, and the general success in executing it, cannot be understated. You'd have to be crazy to attempt this, and pretty damn good to, for the most part, pull it off. It's a book I didn't mind living with for 650 pages, and felt I had learned quite a bit from. Not necessarily facts, but truths. It puts into relief just how thoroughly our worldviews are shaped by movies. There's a scene in which somebody (Hugo, I think) is fighting an actual war and imagines watching himself do these things as a soldier in a movie instead, and that, I'm afraid, gets straight to the heart of the way we think of ourselves now.
anniew415's review
2.0
I cannot believe I actually read all 500-odd pages of this book. If it were 200 or even 300 it would have been a masterpiece. Please learn to edit Mr. Gold!
Too many tangents, odd stories, and pages and pages of unnecessary stuff in here. What does a random story line about the Allied front in Russia post-World War I have to do with...anything? I can see how the author attempted to tie it all together, but this was just a mess with barely any plot. (In fact, what plot?) That makes me sad because I had really high hopes for it after "Carter Beats the Devil", which I loved.
Expectations suck, I guess.
Too many tangents, odd stories, and pages and pages of unnecessary stuff in here. What does a random story line about the Allied front in Russia post-World War I have to do with...anything? I can see how the author attempted to tie it all together, but this was just a mess with barely any plot. (In fact, what plot?) That makes me sad because I had really high hopes for it after "Carter Beats the Devil", which I loved.
Expectations suck, I guess.