Duck This Book

What's this, a new book on the Marx Brothers?  Hail, Hail Euphoria!, all about Duck Soup?  Normally this would be cause for celebration.  But this, from The New York Times review, stopped me short:

To call this 144-page essay informal would be a Groucho-esque understatement. [Author Roy] Blount, by his own admission, opens up the movie in a window on his computer and, in essence, “live blogs” it, free-associating in the raggedly discursive style proper to that form. [....] An eagle-shaped logo that appears on screen for a few seconds before the movie begins — the symbol of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration — gets four pages, while whole scenes from the film rush by in a quick sentence or two.

This doesn't sound good.  I don't mind having a free-flowing discussion on the Marx Brothers, but buying a book of one?  I've read every book I could find on the team, but they usually weren't done on the fly.  The Marx movies, for all their seeming free-association, were painstakingly put together.  I expect a little effort from analysts as well if they want me to cough up money.

Sounds like I'll wait till my local library purchases it.