2 vaudvilians's lives ( )

What an amazing book. It reminded me in style of Any Human Heart, which I was totally swept up into. This was much the same, reading a memoir of a fictional person who felt so real and alive to me that I kept wanting to look him up. I think the real genius of the novel is that it drops into episodes in Mose/Mike's life, the way you would recall your own life to someone, but it gives the whole person. I felt his joys and sorrows so vividly, it would be light-hearted and goofy and then suddenly such sadness. Such a wonderfully good read.

Life story of a vaudeville straight man and his partner, lovers, wife, and children. ( )

Mose Sharensky, better known as Mike Sharp, is an ex-vaudeville straight man looking back on his life and career from extreme old age. Despite his father’s expectations that Mose would follow him into the family dry goods business, Mose and his sister Hattie have plans to escape Des Moines to the vaudeville stage as a double act. But Hattie’s unexpected death at eighteen puts an end to their dreams. Mose decides to continue on his own and barely ekes out a living until fortune brings him into the sights of Rocky Carter, a fat funny man in need of new straight man for his act. He takes Mose (by this time, Mike) under his wing and together they make a winning combination. First vaudeville, then Broadway, then Hollywood and some way off in the future, even the youthful medium of television. For a time it all works out and then it goes a bit sideways and then it fizzles entirely. Meanwhile, Rocky cycles through a seemingly endless series of ‘the current Mrs Carter’ and Mike settles down to married bliss with his dancer wife, Jessica, and their growing family.

Although it isn’t obvious from the outset, this is a story of a long life — more than 70 years. But in a way it is surprisingly uneventful. Tragedy, as you might expect in any story about comedians, abounds. But it doesn’t always move us as readers. I think it is because we never get fully on board with Mike, who is also our narrator. Or maybe it’s because Mike is quintessentially a straight man. It is rather Hattie who is funny and tragic, or Mimi who is funny and tragic, or Rocky, or Penny, or any one of the other characters who people these pages. Enough so that when Mike experiences truly tragic circumstances such as the death of his young daughter, we find ourselves looking to the others around him to reveal the meaning of this event rather than him.

McCracken’s writing is steady and workmanly. She keeps the story ticking along but never seems to generate either the raucous laughter that a tale of comedians might offer or the sadness that all too often underlies comedy. In the end we are left with a curiosity, a tale about comic men told in a voice that is not entirely believable. Sadly, not recommended. ( )

As a young boy growing up near Des Moines, Iowa, Mose Sharp dreams of being in vaudeville. That dream is stoked by Mose's sister, Hattie. And although it does not happen the way that he planned, Mose becomes the straight man in the comedy duo Carter and Sharp and goes on to fame on both the big and small screens. Like any good straight man, it is impossible to know Mose alone, and in this book, we come to know Mose through his relationships - with his partner Rocky Carter, his sisters, his dad, and his wife. At times, I wished that there was more momentum driving this story forward, but all in all, I enjoyed this study of a life and the times in which it was lived. ( )