"Making Movie History"

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River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild WestRiver of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West by Rebecca Solnit
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Solnit is a remarkable prose stylist, and her examination of the brave new world of abstractions and representations born in California's violent industrializing Gilded Age past works marvelously. I will even defend her occasionally tendency to wind off into tangled thickets of near schizoid conspiracism about the connections between the various phenomena she investigates with the careful eye of a social historian. Sometimes wild theorizing about the bigger picture is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Comments

  1. Dustin ChangAugust 1, 2011 at 1:40 PM

    I might pick this up. I need something to read for the summer.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Robbie BruensAugust 2, 2011 at 5:49 PM

    It's basically the essential biographical prehistory of movies (or more appropriately given Muybridge's contributions, the prehistory of motion pictures)

    ReplyDelete

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