Camera Man: Buster Keaton The Dawn of Cinema and the Invention of the Twentieth Century

Buster Keaton certainly deserves the enduring praise his technical and aesthetic achievements have earned over the years. With this in mind, fans and scholars may wonder if his career warrants a new book. Happily, and perhaps surprisingly, Dana Stevens’ Camera Man: Buster Keaton, The Dawn of Cinema, and The Invention of the Twentieth Century confirms that the answer is a solid “Yes.” Stevens’ research proves so much more has remained to be said, primarily and essentially in the realm of cultural contextualization as well as acknowledgement of Keaton’s comic creativity and personal problems. Camera Man achieves what a thorough, insightful portrait should: it presents the subject as a complex human being, succeeding and failing, generous and foolish, inspired and self-defeating, and, in the case of Buster Keaton, a comic genius of his very distinctive time.