Tex Avery: King of Cartoons

By Joe Adamson

Big Apple Books, Da Capo Press, 1975

8" x 10¾", 240 pages

I was expecting much more from this book. Tex Avery is a very important cartoon director who directed some of the silliest and exagerated early cartoons. I was expecting insights in how Avery developped his cartoons stories, how he worked with his animators, how his cartoons became to be so wild, etc. The book gives some of that but way too little of that.

Most of the book is a long serie of cartoon descriptions with comments. Not much to learn there. Given that those cartoons are mostly inaccesible, a description could be considered better then nothing but instead, I found it frustrating that I could not just watch them. Fortunately some of those cartoons, like the riding hood serie are now available on the Internet but most aren't.

I had to browse through the book as I wrote this review in order to remember what was in there. I could not recall anything vividly interesting from that book. There is one section that I could remember easily though, it is an interview with Tex Avery. More than 40 pages of interview. This is where we get the most insights about Avery's thought process and how he operated. Tex Avery is not very vocal about his methods though. This is cngruent with his personality as a director where he would not attempt to explain what he had in mind to the animator but instead would supply them with detailed drawings, sketches and frames.

Fortunately, the book contains a lot of drawings, frames from cartoons, model sheets, etc. so it is interesting to look at them and at the same time it reduced the amount of text so it is a quick read even though rather disapointing read. Is this a book you buy for the pictures? Not sure. For pictures treat alone, "Tex Avery" by John Canemaker is the book to get. But if for nothing else, read the interview.