According to legends, rumors, and—at the time—the government of the state of California, silent-film comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was a debauched sex fiend and bootlegger who raped a young woman so savagely that she died from internal rupture. History has shown the accusation to be overblown, but Arbuckle privately acknowledged some of its truth: He did stay drunk or smacked-out pretty much all the time, and, in a moment of deranged charity, he did insert a cold champagne bottle into the vagina of the soon-to-be-dead woman. In the novel/memoir I, Fatty, Jerry Stahl adopts Arbuckle's voice, describing the scandal and the career that surrounded it in the words of a painfully insecure man who believes he may have deserved all he suffered.
I, Fatty is a stunt book, with Stahl using Arbuckle's jazz-age patter to comment on addiction, celebrity, and the fickleness of the American consumer, in ways intended to reflect the modern culture of gossip and hyped-up public scorn. On that level, the book may raise eyebrows: The last thing the 21st century needs is another show-business "poor me." But Stahl doesn't let shock and outrage swamp his larger purpose of walking around inside Arbuckle's clothes, and he doesn't let his alter ego off the hook. His Arbuckle narration remains humble and endearing, but he also makes off-the-cuff references to drunken rages, many directed at Arbuckle's wife Minta, and he lets his tone become suspiciously defensive when he describes how nobody really understood his shameful appetites. Stahl never forgets Arbuckle's profession, either, so he converts his story into one long performance, with the hero dancing nimbly around his shortcomings.
Stahl sometimes stumbles, especially in losing his character's voice when he recounts the details of the rape trial. He also occasionally lapses into anachronistic phrases, and language a little high-toned for Arbuckle, who was a grade-school dropout. Any inconsistency in style, though, is countered by Arbuckle's casually vivid descriptions of America in the 1910s and '20s. When Arbuckle embarks on a two-reeler career, Stahl trots out Mack Sennett, Charlie Chaplin, and Buster Keaton, and riotously details how Hollywood was built against a backdrop of post-WWI decadence. Throughout, Stahl shuffles back to how his sad, fat clown was a victim of a nascent publicity machine that required him to feel miserable so that he could keep his comic edge, but to act jolly so that the public could relax enough to laugh.