Smile! with the Family Circus [Mass Market Paperback]

Bil Keane (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Fawcett (November 12, 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0449128067
• ISBN-13: 978-0449128060
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,787,198 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cathartic classic, October 22, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Smile! With the Family Circus (Mass Market Paperback)

Though universally popular with critics, Smile! has never been commercially successful. It's been in and out of print -- mostly out -- so this hardcover 30th anniversary edition is an especially welcome event to discerning FC readers.

Along with his day job with United Features Syndicate to produce the more commercial Family Circus strips we know and love, Keane labored on Smile! on evenings and weekends from 1966 through 1972 in a cathartic period when he confided to friends that he had to complete Smile! before the effort killed him.

Smile! is Keane's FC adaptation of the legendary unreleased Beach Boys album of the same name. Keane met Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks at the Fillmore West in late 1966 and quickly the three became inseperable. The next six months were a happy, artistically productive time for the three, and it's during this time that most of the widely-bootlegged Smile! demos were recorded. Unfortunately Parks and Wilson had a falling out in February 1967, after each discovered that Keane had been sleeping with the other, and the lovers' betrayal ended the Beach Boys' Smile! sessions. Wilson spent the next year in solitude, finally giving up on Smile! without giving a public explanation. Keane, having been spurned by both Wilson and Parks, returned to the comfort of the Family Circus to lick his wounds.

Some critics have derided Keane as "the Beach Boys' Yoko Ono" for his unfortunate role in the Smile! sessions. Nevertheless, Keane's book remains the only fully-realized version of the work that the three men envisioned together in late 1966. Music historians trying to guess how the bootlegged Smile! demos would have been pieced together need look no further than this book.