Syllabi September 24, 2010

As any comedian knows, the quickest way to kill a joke is to study it too closely or attempt to explain it. So how can one be serious about comedy? These books manage to capture the fleeting charm of comedy without stepping on the punch line. Chaplin: His Life and Art by David Robinson Robinson’s volume is a magisterial biography for an epic life, written with surprising grace. Like the man he writes about, Robinson has a natural fluency, as well as the ability to wring emotion out of Chaplin’s fluctuations in fortune. “He remembered that as he looked at