The Review of Contemporary Fiction
Niagara Falls All Over Again by Elizabeth McCrackenNicole Lamy
Elizabeth McCracken. Niagara Falls All Over Again. Dial, 2001. 308 pp. $23.95.
McCracken presents a quirky love story between two physically mismatched misfits: Rocky Carter, fat funny man, and his comedy partner Mike (né Mose) Sharp—Abbott to Mr. Carter’s Costello. The tale of their rise to stardom and thirty-year partnership—from the waning days of vaudeville to the golden age of Hollywood—is styled as a memoir told by arch straight man Sharp. Finally, the straight man has the chance to upstage the wag, and this time he gives himself all the best lines. Sharp’s reminiscences—from his humble beginnings in Valley Junction, Iowa, as a serious boy with dreams of stardom to the excesses of Hollywood—have all the hallmarks of a celebrity tell-all. Luckily, though, McCracken’s narrative gifts lift Sharp’s story far above the familiar ghostwritten dross with glossy pictures in the middle. With her ear for snappy dialogue, she re-creates and invents Who’s-on-First-type routines for Mose and Rocky, which are a pleasure to read. She breaks all the rules of writing funny: she breaks down the jokes, she explains gags. She even makes pratfalls and mugging read funny. Furthermore, she lends lyricism to the schtick: the physical ease between Mose and Rocky is an affecting dramatization of their deepening friendship. Her affectionate treatment of stage business enlivens the world of vaudeville and illuminates a close partnership between two men who depend on each other to deliver the jokes. Unfortunately, success allows Carter and Sharp to get lazy and to make a string of forgettable movies, which recycle the same jokes that made them famous. What was a subtle and sharp story of friendship between two men becomes a series of tragedies and triumphs. In the end, the men’s success on the big screen is no match for the offbeat appeal of vaudeville as told in the first half of the book. [Nicole Lamy]