Reading Deadwood: A Western to Swear By (Reading Contemporary Television) [Paperback]

David Lavery (Editor)

Book Description

Release date: September 19, 2006 | Series: Reading Contemporary Television

With the debut of Deadwood on HBO, a vision of the "Old West" emerged that was unlike anything done before on TV. David Milch, also the creator of NYPD Blue, imbued the series with his signature use of harsh language, complex storylines, and shocking acts of violence. The characters he created redefined the hackneyed stereotypes of the Western genre, from the harassed but defiant "Chinaman," Mr. Wu, to the murderous, ferociously funny Al Swearengen, to the whiskey-drinking Calamity Jane who's only too happy to help her friend run the new brothel in town. Reading Deadwood offers an entertaining and eye-opening look into everything from the use of profanity, the characters, and the way the show bends the genre, to subjects like prostitution, race, and the making of American civil society. Complete with episode and character guides, no fan of Deadwood--and no one interested in Westerns--should be without this book.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David Lavery is a world authority on television drama whose books include the recent Reading the Sopranos (2006), as well as This Thing of Ours: Investigating The Sopranos, Fighting the Forces: What's at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and is also co-editor of Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies. He is a professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: I. B. Tauris (September 19, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1845112210
• ISBN-13: 978-1845112219
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #323,261 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Lavery is the author of over one hundred and twenty published essays and reviews and author/co-author/editor/co-editor of twenty books published or under contract: Late for the Sky: The Mentality of the Space Age (Southern Illinois U P, 1992), Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks (Wayne State U P, 1994), "Deny All Knowledge": Reading The X-Files (Syracuse U P, 1996), Fighting the Forces: What's at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slaye(Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), Teleparody: Predicting/Preventing the TV Discourse of Tomorrow (Wallflower, Columbia U P, 2002), This Thing of Ours: Investigating The Sopranos (Wallflower, Columbia U P, 2002), Seinfeld, Master of Its Domain: Revisiting Television's Greatest Sitcom (Continuum, 2006), Unlocking the Meaning of Lost: An Unauthorized Guide (Sourcebooks, 2006, 2007), Reading Deadwood: A Western to Swear By and Reading The Sopranos: Hit TV from HBO (in the Reading Contemporary Television Series, I. B. Tauris, 2006), Dear Angela: Remembering My So Called Life (Lexington Books, 2006), Lost's Buried Treasures (Sourcebooks, 2008, 2009, 2010), Saving the World: A Guide to Heroes (ECW, 2007), Finding Battlestar Galactica (Sourcebooks, 2007), The Essential Cult TV Reader (U P Kentucky, 2009), Screwball Television: Critical Perspectives on the Gilmore Girls (Syracuse U P, 2010), Joss Whedon: Conversations (U P Mississippi, 2010), On the Verge of Tears (forthcoming from Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), and Joss: A Creative Portrait of the Maker of the Whedonverses (forthcoming from I. B. Tauris/St. Martin's). The organizer of international conferences on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Sopranos, and Lost, a founding co-editor of the journals Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies and Critical Studies in Television, he has lectured around the world on the subject of television (Australia, Turkey, the UK, Portugal, New Zealand, Ireland, Germany) and has been a guest/source for the BBC, NPR, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, The New York Times, A Folha de Sao Paulo (Brazil), Publica (Portugal), The Toronto Star, USA Today. To learn more about him, visit his home page at http://davidlavery.net/. His C.V (in PDF) is available here: http://davidlavery.net/CV/Lavery_Curriculum_Vitae.pdf.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 71 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Weak and herniated. October 6, 2006

By cannotlogon

Format:Paperback

Like so many Lavery-edited works, the essays are works of hyper-extension, in which the essayists try ever so hard to find subliminal and subtextual meaning where there is none. It is the blight of popular culture studies that the so-called academics who endeavor to give extraordinary signficance to "art" that is meant more to entertain than to edify. I am not saying that "Deadwood" isn't one of the greatest shows ever to be sent over the airwaves (cable waves?), because it is every bit deserving of the attention this book presumes to give it. Unfortunately, the essays here focus more on the putative "hidden meanings" of the show instead of simply examining why "Deadwood" is, in fact, a great show. I have no trouble with an academic or intellectual approach to TV; in point of fact, James South's "[name of show, e.g., Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files and The Simpsons] and Philosophy" series is a brilliant exercise in interpreting TV, because it takes the shows at face value, then applies various philosophical disciplines to the actual text of the show. Lavery's collection, here, endeavors, instead, to dig below the surface of this outstanding show, and mine for that which, very well, may not be there at all. In short, he fails to "find the color."

(I am reminded of the student who asked William Faulkner what the significance of the large pillars in front of the plantation house in one of his novels, to which, Faulkner replied, "Oh, by all means, the pillars have tremendous significance...they hold the roof up." Sometimes, the text is just the text, and that can be enough if you are imaginative enough to enjoy it and analyze it as is.)

And to the reviewer who touted Ms. Klein's essay on the opening credits, I thought her entire thesis was undermined by the fact she mistakened a prospector biting into a nugget to see if it was gold (gold is soft, and will dent when bitten) for a man pulling a rotted tooth out of his mouth. It is hard to give much credence to an essayist who bases her thesis upon such blatantly mistaken impressions of the material upon which she opines. Sloppy academics, indeed.

I gave the book two stars instead of one simply because there were a few bits of information about the show of which I was unaware.

18 of 24 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Another great book in the Reading Contemporary Television series September 21, 2006

By Charles S. Houser VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

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.

5.0 out of 5 stars Reading Deadwood March 14, 2012

By Mary C. Pavia

Format:Paperback

This Book is just awesome if you are a fan of DEADWOOD. Nice to have all of the essays in one place. I highly recommend it.