travsd

For World Book Day: My New One on the Marx Brothers

For obvious reasons, I was going to wait and launch promotion of my newest book at Marxfest next month, but, like a thief in the night, sales have already begun online, and today being World Book Day it seemed an appropriate time to inform the world (and also we’ll be giving away some free copies to lucky winners at Surf Coney Island this Saturday).

The Marx Brothers Miscellany: A Subjective Appreciation of the World’s Greatest Comedy Team (2024) is comparable in length to my first two books (No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous and Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube) yet more comparable in structure to my third one (Rose’s Royal Midgets and Other Performing Little People of Vaudeville). It’s basically a collection of essays combined with a biographical dictionary, containing all my writings about, on, and around the Marx Brothers. I cover them from every angle — including some cuckoo enough to have originated with this correspondent. Some is drawn from the pages of Travalanche, but a large proportion of it is brand new and available nowhere else but the book. Plus it has a beautiful cover design by Noah Diamond, and an original foreword by Austin Pendleton (What’s up, Doc?, The Muppet Movie).

A far better description of the book, and how to get it, may be found at the BearManor Media website here.

And as I say, we’ll be giving away free copies, along with copies of books by Lady Aye and Michele Carlo, free tickets to shows at Coney Island USA, movie DVDs, music CDs and more all at the Surf Coney Island show this Saturday! More about that here.

Then more again on episode #68 of the Marx Brothers Council Podcast in a few days!

And don’t forget Marxfest, starting May 17!

Published by travsd

Writer and performer Trav S.D. (www.travsd.com) is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013). He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. In 2014 he produced and directed the smash-hit "I’ll Say She Is", the first ever revival of the Marx Brothers hit 1924 Broadway show in the NY International Fringe Festival.