The Anatomy of Harpo Marx

*The Anatomy of Harpo Marx* is a luxuriant, detailed play-by-play account of Harpo Marx's physical movements as captured on screen. Wayne Koestenbaum guides us through the thirteen Marx Brothers films, from *The Cocoanuts* in 1929 to *Love Happy* in 1950, to focus on Harpo's chief and yet heretofore unexplored attribute-his profound and contradictory corporeality. Koestenbaum celebrates the astonishing range of Harpo's body-its kinks, sexual multiplicities, somnolence, Jewishness, "cute" pathos, and more. In a virtuosic performance, Koestenbaum's text moves gracefully from insightful analysis to cultural critique to autobiographical musing, and provides Harpo with a host of odd bedfellows, including Walter Benjamin and Barbra Streisand.