ARTS . Arts Picks

Neal Gabler

Thu., Dec. 14, 7 p.m., free, Free Library.


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Published: Dec 13, 2006

READING

: Laurel gabler

There are several Neal Gablers in my life. Like the one who every Saturday, before I leave my house, does his liberal pundit shtick fighting off the right-wing media-mites of Eric Burns' Fox News Watch. That's a good Gabler — cutting, witty. I try to forget that Gabler did PBS's Sneak Previews after Siskel and Ebert left. I try. Then there's the Gabler who wrote the starkly sad Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity and the potent An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. Exhaustively researched and whimsically prismatic, these books allow no nook or cranny to go unexploited. Gabler's way of throttling the facts and keeping them (in Fox fashion) fair and balanced is what makes Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (Knopf) worth wading through. (At over 800 pages, it's a denser trip than Fantasia. ) As the first writer with complete access to Disney's archives, the author gathers some remarkable truths. Mickey Mouse's dad is painted as a sensitive, dedicated artist who chose perfection over personal financial gain and power over love in order to secure the position of the imagination above the doldrums of the everyday.

Thu., Dec. 14, 7 p.m., free, Free Library, Central Branch, 1901 Vine St., 215-567-4341.