Small town libraries don't seem to be the repositories of history any more. The digital push brushes past tangible artifacts that have slipped from the thin vapor of memory and are no longer deemed significant.
This afternoon I found a volume in the local library's "discard bin." It may have been remaindered from a local estate sale, it may have been donated and rejected for fund raising purposes.
The title immediately caught my attention, having recently attended a showing of the Jim Schaub/Ron Pesch documentary, Keaton:Home in Muskegon. The General is frequently cited among the best silent films ever made, and in terms of comic timing and visual composition, a likely contender as one of the best films ever made in any category.
I never heard of the author, Joseph Warren, and opened it, expecting to see the exploits of some European count or Great War honcho. Instead, the cover page told a completely different tale - The General was a contemporary novelization of the 1927 Keaton masterpiece, an expensive epic that, to jazz age eyes, wasn't all that much to get enthused over (the Raymond Griffith film Hands Up! had better reviews), with the dark humor of the battle scenes regarded as positively repelling.
I'll be scanning the pages in the days ahead to preserve this version of the film, lest my own eventual estate sale be equally incapable of finding the original volume a proper, appreciative custodian.
Thus far, I have only come upon one other novelization by Joseph Warren (of Long Island, according to his prologue to The General): What a Widow! was a novelization of an early Gloria Swanson talkie of the same name in 1930. Will continue to explore the rabbit hole!
(note her producer's name)
Click here for The General (archive.org 4K file - if it takes too long to "fire up" you can just download the file and enjoy it when and where-ever you wish!)
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