The Anatomy of Harpo Marx is a luxuriant, detailed play-by-play account of Harpo Marx's physical movements as captured on screen. Wayne Koestenbaum guides us through the thirteen Marx Brothers films, from The Cocoanuts in 1929 to Love Happy in 1950, to focus on Harpo's chief and yet heretofore unexplored attribute--his profound and contradictory corporeality. Koestenbaum celebrates the astonishing range of Harpo's body--its kinks, sexual multiplicities, somnolence, Jewishness, "cute" pathos, and more. In a virtuosic performance, Koestenbaum's text moves gracefully from...

The Anatomy of Harpo Marx is a luxuriant, detailed play-by-play account of Harpo Marx s physical movements as captured on screen. Wayne Koestenbaum guides us through the thirteen Marx Brothers films, from The Cocoanuts in 1929 to Love Happy in 1950, to focus on Harpo s chief and yet heretofore unexplored attributehis profound and contradictory corporeality. Koestenbaum celebrates the astonishing range of Harpo s bodyits kinks, sexual multiplicities, somnolence, Jewishness, cute pathos, and more. In a virtuosic performance, Koestenbaum s text moves gracefully from...

The lives of people both famous and obscure are filled with moments when their dirty laundry sees daylight. At such times we witness the reversibility of success, of prominence, but also come to terms viscerally with our own most vulnerable selves. We cannot stop watching the scene of shame, identifying with it, absorbing its nearness, relishing our immunity, even as we acknowledge the universality of the human stain, the uneasy predicament of living in our own bodies -