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A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause
"Threading the subtle seam between what lives and what remains, A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause succeeds in conjuring the poetry of Marcel Marceau's performance as both a character on stage and in history. . . . Like pulling a ghost from a dark room, this is an accomplished work of historical portraiture: precise in its objects, complex in its melancholy, and insightful in its humor." —Thalia Field
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 two years after retiring from 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.
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 two years after retiring from 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.
136 pages, Paperback
First published July 11, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
September 17, 2018
Billed on its cover as an "essay," A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause is really a bender of sorts, mixing poetic like entries with lists with paragraphs -- all divided and given titles -- in an intriguing way.
How do I know? I started it without realizing it was a "biography" (see "essay" above) of Marcel Marceau. Oh, man. Like most Americans, the thought of Marcel Marceau in white face feeling invisible walls (in this respect, he shares something in common with The Donald, who goes to bed with his invisible wall stuffed toy every night) gives me the heebies (and, occasionally, the jeebies).
Still, it worked. I read. In silence. For Marceau. And man, was that guy a collector. Married three times, he wasn't the best of husbands or, for that matter, fathers. He left his family in debt. But he spent big time. (Debts are "invisible," too!) So it all had to be auctioned off upon his death in 2007.
Weird fact gleaned from this book: MM met Michael Jackson, who fashioned his famous moonwalk after Marcel Marceau's other-worldly mime movements.
Negative: Many entries were called "Collections" followed by a list of items MM had purchased. This came under the category of hashtag who cares for me, esp. considering he bought a lot of dolls (all together now: Ew).
I liked the list of books, however, but who knows if he read them? Maybe they were just "best shelvers," as they say. The man was seldom home, always touring, always onstage trying to find his way out of boxes. So how much do the titles really tell you about the man?
A for effort; A+ for uniqueness; B for entertainment.
How do I know? I started it without realizing it was a "biography" (see "essay" above) of Marcel Marceau. Oh, man. Like most Americans, the thought of Marcel Marceau in white face feeling invisible walls (in this respect, he shares something in common with The Donald, who goes to bed with his invisible wall stuffed toy every night) gives me the heebies (and, occasionally, the jeebies).
Still, it worked. I read. In silence. For Marceau. And man, was that guy a collector. Married three times, he wasn't the best of husbands or, for that matter, fathers. He left his family in debt. But he spent big time. (Debts are "invisible," too!) So it all had to be auctioned off upon his death in 2007.
Weird fact gleaned from this book: MM met Michael Jackson, who fashioned his famous moonwalk after Marcel Marceau's other-worldly mime movements.
Negative: Many entries were called "Collections" followed by a list of items MM had purchased. This came under the category of hashtag who cares for me, esp. considering he bought a lot of dolls (all together now: Ew).
I liked the list of books, however, but who knows if he read them? Maybe they were just "best shelvers," as they say. The man was seldom home, always touring, always onstage trying to find his way out of boxes. So how much do the titles really tell you about the man?
A for effort; A+ for uniqueness; B for entertainment.
July 25, 2017
Edit: here's my interview with Shawn for Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/feature...
Before I get into the actual review, can I just be effusive for a minute and say how much I fucking love Sarabande Books? They have an uncanny gift for finding and publishing work of such stellar and singular quality, year after year after year. When I look at my "favorite books" shelf, I see that so many of my favorite books have been given a life by Sarabande: Jenny Boully's The Book of Beginnings and Endings, Elena Passarello's Let Me Clear My Throat, On Looking and Rough Likeness by Lia Purpura, Mike Scalise's The Brand New Catastrophe. I'm never not excited to learn what they're putting out next. Which leads me to the actual review portion.
Rare is the book about which one can truly say, "I've never read anything like this," and mean it. Shawn Wen's A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause is such a book. Wen fashions a lawless space beyond categorization and unpoliced by genre to explore through her principal subject — Marcel Marceau — the limits of language, the grammar and possibility of a body, the meaning of silence, spectatorship. What's remarkable is how fresh, how new, and how polished her observations about these abstractions feel. It's as if they could only be reached by way of looking through the prism of mime. A fascinating book, and one which makes me very excited to see what Shawn Wen does next.
"The empty stage is a universe without laws. Up to the mime to conjure and rearrange, to make the dark space become alive with recognitions and quickenings. To him, absences can be transformed into a wall, a woman, a restaurant, a thief. The mime holds out his arms and motions that the world floats within the armspan of one man."
"Time passes. It sputters then stretches. What matters is not the speed of light, but the speed of thought. The mime refashions time, sculpting it with a precision instrument. He can suspend it or hasten it at will. He marches in place for three minutes and a lifetime has passed. In three minutes, eighty-four years."
Before I get into the actual review, can I just be effusive for a minute and say how much I fucking love Sarabande Books? They have an uncanny gift for finding and publishing work of such stellar and singular quality, year after year after year. When I look at my "favorite books" shelf, I see that so many of my favorite books have been given a life by Sarabande: Jenny Boully's The Book of Beginnings and Endings, Elena Passarello's Let Me Clear My Throat, On Looking and Rough Likeness by Lia Purpura, Mike Scalise's The Brand New Catastrophe. I'm never not excited to learn what they're putting out next. Which leads me to the actual review portion.
Rare is the book about which one can truly say, "I've never read anything like this," and mean it. Shawn Wen's A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause is such a book. Wen fashions a lawless space beyond categorization and unpoliced by genre to explore through her principal subject — Marcel Marceau — the limits of language, the grammar and possibility of a body, the meaning of silence, spectatorship. What's remarkable is how fresh, how new, and how polished her observations about these abstractions feel. It's as if they could only be reached by way of looking through the prism of mime. A fascinating book, and one which makes me very excited to see what Shawn Wen does next.
"The empty stage is a universe without laws. Up to the mime to conjure and rearrange, to make the dark space become alive with recognitions and quickenings. To him, absences can be transformed into a wall, a woman, a restaurant, a thief. The mime holds out his arms and motions that the world floats within the armspan of one man."
"Time passes. It sputters then stretches. What matters is not the speed of light, but the speed of thought. The mime refashions time, sculpting it with a precision instrument. He can suspend it or hasten it at will. He marches in place for three minutes and a lifetime has passed. In three minutes, eighty-four years."
September 18, 2017
If you were an editor or lit agent and someone pitched you a "meditation" on the life and work of Marcel Marceau, you would have to ask for pages just to see if the author could pull it off. Well, Ms. Wen more than pulls it off, she hits it out of the ball park. (The real kind, not the imaginary mime kind.) Using terse yet poetic language, even her cataloging of Marceau's extensive collections shine. She makes fascinating the roots of mime in la commedia dell'arte, brings life to Marceau's performance -- imagine this feat, transcribing a mime performance.
Wen's book defies format definition or easy categorization. It mixes poetry, essay, documentary, and biography. All at once. No doubt her work writing for public radio has informed her writing for the page in interesting and fortuitous ways.
At the time of this review, she appears to be reading around the country. I have not seen her read but look forward to the next chance I get.
Wen's book defies format definition or easy categorization. It mixes poetry, essay, documentary, and biography. All at once. No doubt her work writing for public radio has informed her writing for the page in interesting and fortuitous ways.
At the time of this review, she appears to be reading around the country. I have not seen her read but look forward to the next chance I get.
July 29, 2023
it took approximately an hour for me to decide I’d read about anyone if Shawn Wen wrote about them.
February 10, 2018
Terrific read on an unlikely character and topic: Marcel Marceau and mime. I learned a ton and enjoyed the genre-bending blend of poetry, biography, and screenplay.
Some gems:
"The mime keeps count in heartbeats and breaths"
"A telegram from the brain"
There are terrific poetic descriptions of dementia (p. 118) and of the circle of life (p. 131).
I had never heard of Pierrot and now realize how prevalent this white-faced sad clown has been across various art forms (mime, David Bowie, literature, etc).
Would make a superb gift.
The design of the book-- by Sarabande books-- is also a winner.
Some gems:
"The mime keeps count in heartbeats and breaths"
"A telegram from the brain"
There are terrific poetic descriptions of dementia (p. 118) and of the circle of life (p. 131).
I had never heard of Pierrot and now realize how prevalent this white-faced sad clown has been across various art forms (mime, David Bowie, literature, etc).
Would make a superb gift.
The design of the book-- by Sarabande books-- is also a winner.
August 11, 2017
I don't think I've ever read a book like this one. But really, writing about the genius of Marcel Marceau demands a description that is out of the ordinary. The author, Shawn Wen, has created a gem of a book. A Twenty Minute Silence Followed By Applause, described on the cover as an essay, is made up of one and two page pieces that describe a scene, a collection, or Marceau himself. After reading this I want to know more about Marceau, but I already feel like I know him. The spirit of the man and his work is in these pages.
September 8, 2018
First I want to say I love the title of this book. Then, more than that, the structure. At first I found it odd to call a 130-book an “essay,” it’s more a collection of multiple short, lyric essays on topics such as Marceau’s various collections of furniture or masks, his artistic routines, his experiences. Like his creation, Bip, he cuts a lonely figure who despite his love of abstraction might have been a bit of a hoarder, who might have overstayed his welcome on stage, who died with burdensome debts.
My favorite exploration was the meaning of (the mime’s) silence in the aftermath of WWII. Marceau’s enthusiasm for Michael Jackson was also a surprise — I should have but didn’t know that Jackson modelled his moonwalk on Marceau’s mime.
My favorite exploration was the meaning of (the mime’s) silence in the aftermath of WWII. Marceau’s enthusiasm for Michael Jackson was also a surprise — I should have but didn’t know that Jackson modelled his moonwalk on Marceau’s mime.
February 7, 2018
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February 17, 2018
To be so pleasantly surprised by a book is such a wonderful thing! In describing a person who cannot be bound by words, Wen did a beautiful job of capturing Marceau's movement and spirit.
February 2, 2019
Back in fall 2017 I went to the #fallforthebook festival and to several panel presentations there. Shawn Wen sat on a panel with another author that I had attended the panel to see and captivated me with her lyrical story of Marcel Marceau. I'm sure I had heard of MM before, but never really focused on his story, his art, or, well, him. This slim volume was a great introduction. Now I can't stop seeing references to him everywhere I look.
Part poetry, part prose, part list, this book is perhaps as disjointed and fluid as its subject. It is a unique look at a unique person, who inspired mimes and artists the world over. He himself was clearly inspired by artists spanning the whole of history and the entire globe and across genres. A Jewish Holocaust survivor, a member of the French resistance, an inventor, a performer, a hard worker, the reader gets glimpses of MM's life over short vignettes, much like the art form it portrays.
I'm so glad I took the time to track down this book, and to enjoy reading it slowly, savoring every carefully chosen word and expression. I may even stop and watch a mime the next time I encounter one, rather than rushing past.
Part poetry, part prose, part list, this book is perhaps as disjointed and fluid as its subject. It is a unique look at a unique person, who inspired mimes and artists the world over. He himself was clearly inspired by artists spanning the whole of history and the entire globe and across genres. A Jewish Holocaust survivor, a member of the French resistance, an inventor, a performer, a hard worker, the reader gets glimpses of MM's life over short vignettes, much like the art form it portrays.
I'm so glad I took the time to track down this book, and to enjoy reading it slowly, savoring every carefully chosen word and expression. I may even stop and watch a mime the next time I encounter one, rather than rushing past.
May 27, 2025
The format is a good idea, the execution is good, but Marceau is not my dude.
If Shawn Wen wrote an obituary/essay like this for someone different, I would pick it up. But I'm giving this three stars for the subject.
Marcel Marceau comes across as a one-dimensional person - just a performer married to the road, even as he marries and divorces his young wives, leaving them with no father and husband, really. Listing his collections and describing his pantomimes ends up being .a good way to go. I liked seeing a list of his pleasure reading. I didn't get much from seeing a list of the swords and masks he had collected.
I'm 50/50 on whether this is a failed attempt to make something longer: the project might have failed to turn up enough interesting material, so the author cut their losses, issuing this essay. It's spare - indistinguishable from a stack of cleaned-up notes from the project - so, quick reading.
By summarizing it, I feel like I made it longer than it was in its original form: I'm writing sentences about a bunch of lists and bullet points.
If Shawn Wen wrote an obituary/essay like this for someone different, I would pick it up. But I'm giving this three stars for the subject.
Marcel Marceau comes across as a one-dimensional person - just a performer married to the road, even as he marries and divorces his young wives, leaving them with no father and husband, really. Listing his collections and describing his pantomimes ends up being .a good way to go. I liked seeing a list of his pleasure reading. I didn't get much from seeing a list of the swords and masks he had collected.
I'm 50/50 on whether this is a failed attempt to make something longer: the project might have failed to turn up enough interesting material, so the author cut their losses, issuing this essay. It's spare - indistinguishable from a stack of cleaned-up notes from the project - so, quick reading.
By summarizing it, I feel like I made it longer than it was in its original form: I'm writing sentences about a bunch of lists and bullet points.
July 13, 2017
A glimpse into the life of a mime. The sections with scenes were well written; I could picture the action of a black-and-white, painted mime in my mind. The sections involving collections or reading lists grew a little tedious, especially without some overarching narrative theme to bring those into the rest of the book. It was likely the author's choice, but the format seemed a little disjointed.
One section I really enjoyed involved this world-famous mime being the only one to recognize and honor the aging Charlie Chaplin in an airport. If the book had more scenes like that, it would have warranted a higher rating.
I guess I wanted to see the heart and soul of this man more than his actions and collections.
One section I really enjoyed involved this world-famous mime being the only one to recognize and honor the aging Charlie Chaplin in an airport. If the book had more scenes like that, it would have warranted a higher rating.
I guess I wanted to see the heart and soul of this man more than his actions and collections.
November 8, 2017
Such a fantastic little book. The life of Marcel Marceau, but told in short poetic essays. Or maybe they're essay-style journalistic fragments. Or historical outtakes and quantum biographical waves of delight. His eccentricities and sadnesses come shining through in glorious fashion. We get more than several pages about all the zonked-out collections in his house -- paintings, Japanese dolls, masks, antique boxes or 285 kilos of silver. He was a genius, icon, master, silent raconteur and art collector. The role that silence played in his life was extraordinary, to say the least. Charlie Chaplin even makes an appearance more than once. So much inspiration reaped from this one. Gives me quite a bit of ideas.
November 11, 2017
I enjoyed it immensely, but also feel that I would not reread it, perhaps something to blame on the novelty of the genre risk-taking (was it risky? or correctly calculated and calibrated to please?), or the always-sneaking suspicion that anything novel is relying on its freshness for efficacy.
It has been tuned to a remarkably harmonious swath of poetic biography, along with a meditation on an aging artist and an aging art, a wisdom sat in form.
It has been tuned to a remarkably harmonious swath of poetic biography, along with a meditation on an aging artist and an aging art, a wisdom sat in form.
February 15, 2018
I didn’t ever think I’d read a short book on the life of Marcel Marceau, the famous mime, but this book drew my attention, and reading a short passage in the store hooked me instantly.
This book is lively and fascinating, from the opening reveal that Marceau forged documents to save French children from the Nazis (while only a child himself) to the fabulously vivid descriptions of his famous scenes, to his death. Utterly engrossing. Loved it.
This book is lively and fascinating, from the opening reveal that Marceau forged documents to save French children from the Nazis (while only a child himself) to the fabulously vivid descriptions of his famous scenes, to his death. Utterly engrossing. Loved it.
January 19, 2021
Now this is the kind of nonfiction I like—lyrical, poetic, and wildly interesting. I prefer nonfictions written about someone other than the author, as those can often come across as self-pitying, but while Wen’s book has a few add-ins of opinion, it is entirely exploring the life and art of Marcel Marceau, the famous mime performer. A beautiful essay, with beautiful and clever craft moves that really make it shine.
May 27, 2021
This is a lovely, odd book about Marcel Marceau that came out of left field for me. I only had a vague idea of Marceau and his craft, and this book does a deep dive into his life and work, though in an impressionistic, almost poetic form. It’s divided into very short sections that are as likely to be a list of objects or a description of movement as they are to be narrative or explication. It’s a transporting read.
July 29, 2017
An unique book about silence and mimes, but mostly a glimpse of Marcel Marceau. It is done a disjointed, collage like method and that worked. The description of mime works. At first I was annoyed by the endless sections of lists of items of collections that Marceau had. It felt like filler but by the end, it made sense. A lovely book.
December 22, 2018
I love books with lyrical prose style that carry you along on the language as much as the story. This book constructs a portrait out of various snippets from the subject's life. You're pulled along by uncovering this fascinating character from theatrical history and treated to beautifully constructed phrases along the way.
February 2, 2020
Extremely beautiful writing. Wonderfully researched. Formally speaking, Wen’s book is pleasing! But ultimately, this is not a book for me. I found myself losing interest after awhile. Of course, this is merely subjective. Im glad to have learned a little something about Marceau and miming along the way, I guess!
June 25, 2021
This was interesting. I've never read anything quite like it before - part poetry, part biography, part list, part performance. I enjoyed how the writing had the same blend of exaggeration and intricacy required in being a mime. I think the reason I'm not giving it more than three stars is because it was kind of sad.
January 13, 2025
This is a poetic biographical essay about Marcel Marceau. It might take you more than twenty minutes, but the applause is still justified.
It's not as deep as a typical bio, but we still get to see the drives and flaws that made this man who he was. Courageous and brash, yet self-aware and sensitive. A weird mixture that produced a phenomenon.
Recommended for collectors of clocks.
It's not as deep as a typical bio, but we still get to see the drives and flaws that made this man who he was. Courageous and brash, yet self-aware and sensitive. A weird mixture that produced a phenomenon.
Recommended for collectors of clocks.
February 9, 2022
3.5 stars—felt like I needed more background knowledge to fully understand and appreciate this book. Nonetheless, the paragraph descriptions and poignant insights were beautiful and a pleasure to read.
October 16, 2017
A great little book. I had the pleasure of seeing Marcel perform back in the 1970's and fondly remember Bip.
November 9, 2017
A brief segmented appreciation of Marcel Marceau. A unique and creative way of writing about one person's life.
December 19, 2017
Lovely, quiet, amusing portrait of Marcel Marceau told in brief scenes of lyrical writing.
January 17, 2018
An interesting collection of short essays about the professional life of Marcel Marceau. It was engaging and an interesting read.
April 2, 2018
Innovative essay format with focus on most famous mime ever. Right?
July 2, 2018
Very different from what I usually read, but very interesting and I absolutely adored the format.
May 7, 2020
2.5 stars. At times engaging, at times tedious.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews