David Thomson (1) (1941–)

Another delving into the long-ago purchased and neglected virtual Kindle pile. If anybody could bring off a one volumes history it is David Thomson and many of his other books have given me pleasure, but here he seems too aware of both some notional restriction on length and a desire to be comprehensive. In practice this means the book is short on the insight, eye for detail and originality that characterise much of Thomsons’ work and just feels pretty dutiful. But it will nevertheless give you a reasonably clear chronological picture.

Is it fair to take Taruskin’s 'Oxford History of Western Music' as the benchmark for single author history in the arts? OUP obviously gave Taruskin carte blanche but if you compare his volume on the first part of the 20th Century (fearless in opinion, unmatched in authority, not afraid to deep dive to a very technical level and ruthless in its narrative omission) it does expose the faultiness in a book like Thomson’s.… (mehr)

No more elegant writer ever wrote on film and film history than does David Thomson. His analyses (with his own special brand of insight and opinion) as well as his superb novels rooted in American movies (SUSPECTS and SILVER LIGHT) are remarkable in their poetic eloquence and original understanding of not just films themselves, but what films mean as a cultural phenomenon. GARY COOPER is a minor effort in his oeuvre, part of a series of monographs on four major stars of Hollywood's Golden Age (BETTE DAVIS, INGRID BERGMAN, and HUMPHREY BOGART are the other books). Thomson writes biographically but also analytically, investing the work with his lovely prose. It's not the full and deeply investigative biography Cooper deserves (and I don't think yet has), and one can complain that it isn't as rich an experience as it could be. But for a short work of this nature, it is a worthwhile effort, and Thomson's writing is so skillful as to enlarge the experience of reading it.… (mehr)