Camera Man

Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century

By: Dana Stevens

Narrated by: Dana Stevens

Named a Best Book of 2022 by The New Yorker, Publishers Weekly, and NPR

In this genre-defying “new kind of history” (The New Yorker), the chief film critic of Slate places comedy legend and acclaimed filmmaker Buster Keaton’s unique creative genius in the context of his time.

Born the same year as the film industry in 1895, Buster Keaton began his career as the child star of a family slapstick act reputed to be the most violent in vaudeville. Beginning in his early twenties, he enjoyed a decade-long stretch as the director, star, stuntman, editor, and all-around mastermind of some of the greatest silent comedies ever made, including Sherlock Jr., The General, and The Cameraman.

Even through his dark middle years as a severely depressed alcoholic finding work on the margins of show business, Keaton’s life had a way of reflecting the changes going on in the world around him. He found success in three different mediums at their creative peak: first vaudeville, then silent film, and finally the experimental early years of television. Over the course of his action-packed seventy years on earth, his life trajectory intersected with those of such influential figures as the escape artist Harry Houdini, the pioneering Black stage comedian Bert Williams, the television legend Lucille Ball, and literary innovators like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Samuel Beckett.

In Camera Man, film critic Dana Stevens pulls the lens out from Keaton’s life and work to look at concurrent developments in entertainment, journalism, law, technology, the political and social status of women, and the popular understanding of addiction. With erudition and sparkling humor, Stevens hopscotches among disciplines to bring us up to the present day, when Keaton’s breathtaking (and sometimes life-threatening) stunts remain more popular than ever as they circulate on the internet in the form of viral gifs. Far more than a biography or a work of film history, Camera Man is a wide-ranging meditation on modernity that paints a complex portrait of a one-of-a-kind artist.

The Dawn of Cinema Through The Life of Buster Keaton

Dana Stevens tackles many interesting subjects in this Buster Keaton biography. I like how it tackles subjects such as child actors, the movie industry, alcoholism, McCarthyism, etc through the life of BK in such a seamless way.

A well written tribute

I really enjoyed this tribute to one of greatest of all time. Thank you!

What an achievement!

Congrats to Dana Stevens on her fantastic jobs as researcher, writer and reader. I especially love the side issues she gets into such as Robert Sherwood’s life and his reviews of Buster’s work. Love the story from Geraldine Chaplin.

Informative and entertaining

This is a great book that provides a lot of context and history around Buster Keaton's life and the entertainment industry. Narration is fantastic.

Maybe better than an ordinary biography

I have only seen a few Keaton shorts. I don't consider myself to be a huge fan, though I did enjoy those shorts, and might enjoy watching others. So I was not sure how I feel about this book. But I found it very enjoyable overall, though never quite as much fun as actually watching a Keaton movie. The thing about this book is that it is kind of a mash-up. Part biography of Keaton, and part history of the 20th Century as it related to Keaton. Those looking for a very detailed biography of Keaton might be disappointed. There is a lot of detail here, but I'm sure other biographies have even more. For me, the level of biographical detail seemed just right. I am not trying to become a Keaton scholar. While a book focused narrowly on Keaton might have some dull moments, or a lot of dull moments, this book has the advantage of going off on tangents that enliven the narrative. So, for instance, I learned something about the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, a bit about the history of the circus in France and something about the difficulty of working under the hot lights of early cinema. My only complaint is that I felt the narrator read her book a little too fast. But this was easily corrected by adjusting the narration speed on my computer.