{"product_id":"american-vaudeville-9781952271069","title":"American Vaudeville","description":"\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eA dreamlike, evocative reckoning with a lost epoch in popular culture--and with old, weird America.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e At the heart of \u003ci\u003eAmerican Vaudeville\u003c\/i\u003e is one strange, unsettling fact: for nearly fifty years, from the late nineteenth century to the 1930s, vaudeville was everywhere--then, suddenly, it was nowhere. This book tells the story of what was once the most popular form of entertainment in the country using lists, creation myths, thumbnail biographies, dreams, and obituaries. A lyric history--part social history, part song--American Vaudeville sits at the nexus between poetry, experimental nonfiction, and, because it includes historic images, art books. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Geoffrey Hilsabeck's book grows out of extensive archival research. Rather than arranging that research--the remains of vaudeville--into a realistic picture or tidy narrative, Hilsabeck dreams vaudeville back into existence, drawing on photographs, letters, joke books, reviews, newspaper stories, anecdotes, and other material gathered from numerous archives, as well as from memoirs by vaudeville performers like Buster Keaton, Eva Tanguay, and Eddie Cantor. Some of this research is presented as-is, a letter from a now forgotten vaudeville performer to her booking agent, for example; some is worked up into brief scenes and biographies; and some is put to even more imaginative uses, finding new life in dialogues and prose poems. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eAmerican Vaudeville\u003c\/i\u003e pulls the past into the present and finds in the beauty and carnivalesque grotesqueness of vaudeville a fitting image of American life today.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e West Virginia University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 07\/01\/2021\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781952271069\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 160","brand":"Geoffrey Hilsabeck","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40138835558581,"sku":"9781952271069","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_2e44850d-91e0-488d-af9e-70e181a377b0.jpg?v=1622518441","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/american-vaudeville-9781952271069","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}