An Indie Next Pick for July 2017
"7 Best Books of July," Men's Journal
"10 Titles to Pick Up Now," O, The Oprah Magazine
"Most Anticipated Books of 2017," The Millions
"A unique, poetic critical appreciation of Marcel Marceau.... A
fascinating book.... Readers will marvel not only at Marceau, but at the
book itself, which displays such command of the material and such
perfect pitch." --Kirkus Reviews, starred review
As a fledgling radio producer, Shawn Wen became fascinated by the one
subject who seemed impossible to put on air: French mime Marcel Marceau,
the internationally acclaimed "artist of silence." At the height of his
fame, Marceau was synonymous with Bip, the red-lipped, white-faced mute
in a sailor suit who conjured scenes, stories, and sweeping emotion
through the gestures of his body alone. Influenced by Charlie Chaplin's
Little Tramp, credited with inspiring Michael Jackson's Moonwalk,
Marceau attempted in his performances to "reveal the fundamental
essences of humanity."
Beyond Bip, Marceau was a Jewish Holocaust survivor and member of the
French resistance; a bombastic iconoclast; a collector of failed
marriages, masks, antique knives and doting fans; an impassioned
workaholic who performed into his eighties and died deeply in debt soon
after leaving the stage. In precise, jewel-like scenes and vignettes, A
Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause pays homage to the singular
genius of a mostly-forgotten art form. Drawing on interviews, archival
research, and meticulously observed performances, Wen translates the
gestural language of mime into a lyric written portrait by turns
whimsical, melancholic, and haunting.
Shawn Wen is a writer, radio producer, and multimedia artist. Her
writing has appeared in The New Inquiry, The Seneca Review, The Iowa
Review, The White Review, and the anthology City by City: Dispatches
from the American Metropolis (Faber and Faber, 2015). Her radio work
has been broadcast on This American Life, Freakonomics Radio, and
Marketplace. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships, including
the Ford Foundation Professional Journalism Training Fellowship and the
Royce Fellowship.
