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Favorable
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Booklist Alan Moores
There is probably not much new material here--most of the author's sources are widely published--but in this "novel," told in Fatty's voice, Stahl gives Arbuckle a hard-earned humanity as well as explains the actor's incalculable contributions to film comedy. [15 May 2004, p.1612]
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Favorable
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Boston Globe Caroline Leavitt
Stahl's a fabulous writer, tunneling deep into Fatty's mind, creating a richly sympathetic voice that veers from wisecracks to woe, all brilliantly illuminating the humanity behind the clown mask, and revealing a man starving for love.
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Favorable
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Chicago Sun-Times Gary Dretzka
I, Fatty may overflow with insider gossip and speculation on the often sordid affairs of the young movie industry's biggest stars, but it also reveals how exciting it was to be an actor or director in Hollywood's formative years.
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Favorable
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Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Lashing out at the terrible father who didn't love him or confessing his shyness with women, Stahl-as-Arbuckle gets as close to emotionally approachable as we're likely to read from the smack-in-the-face author of the novels ''Perv'' and ''Plainclothes Naked.'
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Favorable
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Kirkus Reviews
He draws a sympathetic portrait of a keen, wounded actor in a tale replete with insightful portraits of American vaudeville and silent film. [1 May 2004, p.422]
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Favorable
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Publishers Weekly
Sad, wild, uproarious. [24 May 2004, p.42]
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Favorable
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The Onion A.V. Club Noel Murray
Stahl sometimes stumbles, especially in losing his character's voice when he recounts the details of the rape trial.... Any inconsistency in style, though, is countered by Arbuckle's casually vivid descriptions of America in the 1910s and '20s.
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Favorable
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Village Voice Rachel Aviv
Combines the juice of the tabloid story with Stahl's particular brand of drug-drenched self-effacement.
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Favorable
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Washington Post Carolyn See
Stahl... explores these themes with intelligence and compassion.
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Favorable
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The Independent Nicholas Royle
I, Fatty may lack the imaginative audacity of cinema novels such as Steve Erickson's Days Between Stations or Theodore Roszak's Flicker, but in terms of its getting under Fatty's skin and creating a truly sympathetic hero in a series of tight spots, it's without equal.
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Favorable
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The Guardian Chris Petit
Apart from its obvious virtues as biographical writing and recreating a lost era, Stahl's book makes an important point in identifying hysteria as a recurring driving force in the American psyche.
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Mixed
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The New York Times Book Review Campbell Robertson
Despite Stahl's aggressive wordplay, ''I, Fatty'' resembles more than anything one of those Hollywood rise-and-fall biographies on television.
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Mixed
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Library Journal Reba Leiding
Unfortunately, Stahl's fictionalized memoir technique distances the reader from the immediacy of Arbuckle's life story. [1 Jun 2004, p.126]
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Terrible
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Houston Chronicle Patrick Kurp
Shrill, crude and cartoonish... The language is slapdash, dreary, often ungrammatical and never funny.
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