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24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Brings Arbuckle to life. A good laugh and a fast read. Enjoy, July 19, 2004
This review is from: I, Fatty: A Novel (Hardcover)
Jerry Stahl seems to be able to find the sarcastic and sardonic humor in even the most downtrodden lives. "I, Fatty" is a firsthand account of Fatty Arbuckle's tumultuous life. It's written very simply and helps us to imagine the inner turmoil of being an outsider in a judgemental society. Born to an abusive father in Kansas, Arbuckle turned to theatre as an escape from a bitter life. He rose to fame in the cinema and at one point was more popular than Chaplin. He was the first screen actor to make a million dollars a year. But in 1921 he was accused of the rape and murder of actress Virginia Rappe. He was slandered by the press and not even his acquittal could save his career. He eventually lost everything. Stahl emphasizes the mental anguish of being fat, impotent, and presumed guilty. He also shows the role that heroin played in Fatty Arbuckle's life. Heroin was readily available and legal at the time, and he became addicted using it as a pain killer after a botched medical procedure. Towards the end of his years, his servant used heroine as a tool to get Arbuckle to divulge all of his secrets. I had the pleasure of hearing Stahl read from the book and it was quite entertaining. He joked that it is obligatory for him to include heroin in every one of his novels. He emphasizes the public outcry against Fatty as being led by a conservative anti-Hollywood element. I would agree, but would also like to point out that in the 1920s journalists had more leeway to embelish the truth and print it as fact. Even today, the press chooses to emphasize some facts over others and often slanders people in the process. If you are interested in the life of one of Hollywood's first stars, and if you like dark humor, "I, Fatty" is for you. It's a good read that will make you think and give you a laugh or two.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The real Hollywood, August 19, 2004
This review is from: I, Fatty: A Novel (Hardcover)
'A little tramp stops being a tramp when the camera
stops rolling. But a Fatty stays fat'
Until I read Jerry Stahl's almost unbearably
beautiful faux memoir on Fatty Arbuckle, all I knew
about the silent movie star was what I'd read in
'Hollywood Babylon' many years earlier. The first
Movie-star in history, ruined by the accusation that
he raped and murdered a young starlet with the help of
a Coca-Cola bottle. Stahl crawls into the mind of a
battered, dirt-poor little boy, hated by his father.
After ditching school to watch vaudeville shows, he
soon stumbles on the stage himself. But he becomes
famous for what he loathes himself most for: for being
fat. He stuffs himself in baby-clothes and drag and
soon matches Charlie Chaplin's and Buster Keaton's
popularity and public adulation. But he becomes
famous for what he loathes himself most for: for being
fat.
It is well known that he drank too much. But his
Heroin-addiction was something that is not that well
known. Even though he was acquitted after three trials,
he never recovered. Stahl draws a brilliant parallel
to the first victim of the media driven Hollywood
scandal. No matter what's the truth; the public has
decided that this fat and disgustingly funny troll did
it.
Stahl makes you feel the anguish and the self-hatred
like nobody else, but he also makes us love Fatty Arbuckle.
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13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A very well written novel, as long as you keep in mind that what you read is a novel, March 23, 2006
First of all, I have to make it clear that Jerry Stahl's book I, FATTY is not about Roscoe Arbuckle. It is rather a novel about a fictional silent film comedian given Arbuckle's name. It seems quite obvious to me that Stahl's interest in Roscoe is based upon a fascination concerning the murder which never took place and the terrible trials rather than his importance as a comedian during the childhood of motion-pictures.
The main incidents from Arbuckle's life are here: the heavy boy who was abused by his father as a child, hired at Keystone in 1913, and quickly became one of the most popular comedians on the screen, until an awful scandal destroyed his career in 1921. He was declared innocent a half year later, but by then the audiences had already abandoned him.
Yes, most of the incidents in the novel are actually true; what's seldom true is how the incidents are described. After Roscoe's mother died while he was a child, his brutal father William began abusing him terribly; during a period he even wisped him. But no biography I've read covering the life of Arbuckle has mentioned that William screamed to him that he had "ruined her womanhood" and that he was guilty in her death.
Another imporant factual error is Roscoe's relation to drugs. While at the peak of his success, he got a serious sickness in his legs, which gave him enormous pains and his doctor feared that he could never be cured(which, fortuantely, turned out to be wrong). He was recommended by his doctor to use morphine a while to smother the pains, which he did; however, when declared healthy again he stopped and, as far as we know, never tried it again. In Stahl's book, on the other hand, "Fatty" is a serious abuser of drugs until his death.
It didn't surprise me then, that the comedian in I, FATTY died of an overdose of, exactly, drugs, which is far from true. According to his third wife Addie, he died quietly of a heart attack in his bed.
I didn't find Stahl's "Fatty" to be very sympatethic, either; he's constantly sarcastic and rarely says anything good about neither himself or anyone else when, in fact, the real Arbuckle actually described Charlie Chaplin as "the only comic genius of our time" and was overall a lovely person, according to most soures; a man with flaws, but one you'd like to be friends with.
Johnny Depp called this book "the true skinny on Fatty." Depp is a very good actor, but I doubt he knows very much about Arbuckle inasmuch as he claims this; I must admit I hope he doesn't make a movie about the comedian based on this book, which he says he'd like to.
This, however, doesn't make Stahl a bad writer. The book has some very clever lines and is overall a highly enjoyable novel, absolutely. But one must not take it as a biography about Roscoe Arbuckle, because it isn't. To you who want to know the true story, I recommend Stuart Oderman's biography; to you who simply are in the mood of fascinating entertainment, I recommend Jerry Stahl's I, FATTY.
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