No more elegant writer ever wrote on film and film history than does David Thomson. His analyses (with his own special brand of insight and opinion) as well as his superb novels rooted in American movies (SUSPECTS and SILVER LIGHT) are remarkable in their poetic eloquence and original understanding of not just films themselves, but what films mean as a cultural phenomenon. GARY COOPER is a minor effort in his oeuvre, part of a series of monographs on four major stars of Hollywood's Golden Age (BETTE DAVIS, INGRID BERGMAN, and HUMPHREY BOGART are the other books). Thomson writes biographically but also analytically, investing the work with his lovely prose. It's not the full and deeply investigative biography Cooper deserves (and I don't think yet has), and one can complain that it isn't as rich an experience as it could be. But for a short work of this nature, it is a worthwhile effort, and Thomson's writing is so skillful as to enlarge the experience of reading it. ( )