Reading Deadwood: A Western to Swear By (Reading Contemporary Television)
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Book Summary Information
Editor: David LaveryEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-09-19
ISBN: 1845112210
Number of pages: 232
Publisher: I. B. Tauris
Book Reviews of Reading Deadwood: A Western to Swear By (Reading Contemporary Television)
Book Review: Another great book in the Reading Contemporary Television series
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the second title in the Reading Contemporary Television series I have read. Like READING SIX FEET UNDER: TV TO DIE FOR, this volume is a collection of thoughful essays written by academics and media scholars while the series was still in progress. The volume on DEADWOOD covers the first two seasons. This means the authors are not fully aware of all the plotlines that will be pursued in the life of the entire series; nor do they know the ultimate destination of individual characters' story arcs. In the case of DEADWOOD which lasted only three seasons (with rumors of possible movie-length follow-up episode or two), that's a pretty substantial number of episodes, so the authors have plenty to chew on.
Of the fourteen articles in the collection, five really stood out for me: Joseph Millichap's on "Robert Penn Warren, David Milch, and the Literary Contexts of Deadwood"; Sean O'Sullivan's "Old, New, Borrowed, Blue: Deadwood and Serial Fiction," which makes interesting connections to the serialized creations of Charles Dickens; Paul Wright and Hailin Zhou's "Divining the 'Celestials': The Chinese Subculture of Deadwood"; "What's Afflictin' You: Corporeality, Body Crises and the Body Politic in Deadwood"; and David Diffrient's "Deadwood Dick: The Western (Phallus) Reinvented."
The volume also contains an episode guide to the first two seasons, a Deadwood Encyclopedia (not as interesting, helpful, or comprehensive as the word "encyclopedia" implies), notes to some of the articles, and a bibliography/filmography. It does not include a list of characters with the names of the actors who play them, which is frustrating because the way HBO series list credits doesn't make it easy to put a name to a face (the DVDs of season one and two don't help in this regard either; the curious are forced to google the actors' names to find a picture and lists of other films and shows they've appeared in).
This book should be of interest to any serious fan of the show, as well as to people interested in the Western as a literary and cinematic genre and in American history/culture in general.
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