Artists Books

I must agree with the above reviews. I picked up this memoir on a remainder table a year or so ago. I started it but put it down. I suppose I was not in the mood for it. Thankfully, it turned up in a pile somewhere a few days ago and I find myself absolutely engaged. I studied Frank O'Hara in college and always admired his matter-of-fact attitude toward his being gay (or queer as the term was then). JL's book reconfirms that point. O'Hara never was the doomed queen, a persona so common for that time (Tennessee Williams being the reigning royalty of that court). JL, it appears, had the same attitude toward his homosexuality: it simply was his preference. Beyond the queer studies angle, JL brings a wonderfully engaging voice to his memoir. It is, by turns, poetic, conspiratorial, wistful, humorous. So if you want to know more about O'Hara and his circle, read this book

Joe LeSueur's memoir of his friend and companion, is a truly illuminating portrait of the artist. What makes these digressions so rich and rewarding for the reader, is the unique perspective LeSueur is able to bring to this material. These are LeSueur's memories of experiences and events shared with O'Hara and their myriad of friends and acquaintances. I found this book to be compelling, intimate and inspiring (indeed, "Lunch Poems" and "Selected Poems" were never too far out of reach, and both read from cover to cover). By virtue of having been a participant or, at the very least having been an eye witness to the events depicted, LeSueur has captured not just a time and place, but the essence of a cherished friend. I found myself reading slowly, savoring each passage. By the end of the book I felt I had really gotten to know O'Hara and his circle of friends, and found myself in tears as I read the last few pages. LeSueur's memoir is a tribute to Frank O'Hara as both an artist and a beloved friend.

At Frank O'Hara's funeral, composer Virgil Thomsom turned to the poet's longtime friend Joe LeSueur and said, "Baby, I hope you kept a journal." Though clearly not drawing upon stale journal entries, LeSueur's memoir of his relationship with O'Hara (which survived the vicissitudes of its ever-changing status...friends to lovers to friends, etc.) is a nice blend of personal memories and feverish impromptu research (Brad Gooch's biography seems to have been ever at his elbow). LeSueur is neither vindictive nor pointlessly benign. He truly understood and appreciated O'Hara's central position in the explosion of art that was happening in New York in the 50s and 60s. Unlike Ginsberg and the Beat poets, O'Hara was equally at ease among literary folk, musicians, and painters (especially the abstract expressionists). To read about O'Hara is to read about the greatness of post-war New York.

DIGRESSIONS is actually helpful, too. Because O'Hara often adopted a casual, off-hand, personal approach when writing his poems, it is great to have someone who was intimate with the poet to explain "who's who" and "what's what." LeSueur, however, is equally comfortable admitting when he's baffled by an O'Hara reference, and explanations (and reminiscences) are never forced.

One other thing--DIGRESSIONS is an enlightening portrait of gay life in New York prior to the Stonewall riots. O'Hara and LeSueur were both openly gay, though they had quite different approaches to meeting their sexual needs. O'Hara seems to have had fewer partners, usually choosing them from his circle of friends and aquaintances. LeSueur seemed to favor one-night stands and casual sex. Perhaps this difference is one reason their friendship continued long after their sexual intimacy ended. If only LeSueur had lived long enough to write DIGRESSIONS ON GAY LIFE BEFORE STONEWALL.

This is a remarkable book. If you ever loved Frank O'Hara's poetry, the book is really a necessity. It gives personal reminiscences about the writing of some of the famous poems: 'The day Lady died', 'A true account of talking to the Sun...', etc. It brings many of the more obscure and personal poems into remarkable focus. It also illumines many of names and references that appear throughout the poems. All of this from probably the closest witness to O'Hara's life, creative and otherwise. For these reasons, it is a quite an unusual treasure.

But beyond its usefulness to O'Hara's poetry, the book is the story of a friendship. And an account of a special time in American arts and letters - told from one of the members at the party. LeSueur's presence in O'Hara's life might have been partly due to charm and good lucks (which he discusses), but that apparently never stopped him from being important to O'Hara. (The famous 'Lunch Poems' is dedicated to him.) We are fortunate that he was a careful observer and was blessed with a remarkable memory. Apparently he died shortly before the book was published, which is poignant, because the book is also a tribute to LeSueur's life, and a celebration.

Joe LeSueur has provided the cultural history of American arts in the mid-20th Century with this seamlessly interesting and informative inside perspective on the important role of Frank O'Hara - poet, art critic, champion of the visual, musical, and literary arts par excellence. DIGRESSIONS ON SOME POEMS BY FRANK O'HARA is not only a clever and viable means to writing a memoir: it provides insights into the growingly important works of O'Hara who some are now ranking as the 20th century version of Walt Whitman as Poet of the City. While many of the poems introducing each chapter are well known to us, it is the window to the world of O'Hara's life and times that is so well served by Joe LeSueur's writing. Frank O'Hara was bonded with such luminaries as Willem de Kooning, Elaine de Kooning, Larry Rivers, Joan Mitchell, Jackson Pollock, Grace Hartigan, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Lincoln Kirsten, WH Auden, Kenneth Koch - the list is endless. O'Hara was a behind the scenes observor, never hogging the limelight and in fact avoiding it, always with his keen eye on good art, good music, good writing, and always turning out poems that only now are being read seriously by the general public. Joe LeSueur live with O'Hara, joining O'Hara in his flagrantly 'Out' gay life, hobnobbing with all the other gay artists of his time in a way that makes him the recorder of that important preStonewall age, a time when even the giants such as Aaron Copeland, Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, etc were closeted. At times LeSueur borders on the gossipy side, but that only enhances his subject. What we are left with here is a wonderfully composed tribute to a great artist and supporter of the arts. The overall effect of this book is monumental, and at the same time exceedingly conversational. Very Highly Recommended.

you can't please all of the people all of the time, all the Neoist-revolutionaries, Christian-Bible-fundamentalist & the post-structuralist atheist xenomorphologists but Laruocco comes close in her Masterpiece. Laroque is an art of thinking outside the wig, once she calibrates the wig -to- contextual box ratio at 0. ref. Zippo p.159, & `Linguistics 101, meaning & proximity' p.116.

if you can get past all the Ass, & "the crack in the constipated spine of the book," & sustain the Literal & metaphoric overlaps & the `Dantéfication' © 1999 of language into the trinity of the fat, protein & the carbohydrate -- into calorie & the identity complexity... it is an amazing & entertaining journey,
written when La Ruocco used normal sentences & paragraphs which she diverges from in her later Work: "Xero, turn-of-the-millenia."

Zippo is about compulsion, it starts out about an obsession w/ underwear, & bodily functions that includes sex, masturbation & coffee drinking, & writing in the café w/ Gabriel Lockwood who lets her use his typewriter
& ends w/ the escape through the Bowels of the planet when she finally finds a flushing toilet in Morocco.

Document Zippo is a glossy paged book filled with diagrams & drawings & photos that may keep enlightening & refreshing to a mind caught-up in decision & consumerism.

[...]

Miss Ruocco writes as if she is reporting on the demise of sex, and yet manages to turn the subject upside-down and make it more interesting than usual. In her capable hands this book becomes a catalog of taboo secrets and fantasies. Compelling stuff.

Like any great bathroom book, you can start at any point in the book and read as much as time allows. It could turn into a few hours though. Then, spend another hour looking at yourself naked in the mirror.

Ruocco is obsessed with her rear end, to the point of mania. Quite a scatological book -- at least the first third. Recommeded for those interested in the 21st century wave of avant-pop, avant-porn, post-pos-post-modernist writing. Ruocco is the new Kathy Acker.

LA Ruocco is one of the greatest artists of the 20th century

My 2-year old daughter loves this book! We've read it every night for the past month and she's still entertained by it. The pages and cover are thick and durable.

My daughter is 22 months and LOVES Dora. She loves reading tis book before bedtime and saying good night to all the animals ans characters. This was an excellent buy!

My daughter is 16 months and this book is a bedtime must-have. The first story is great but the second is a bit long and wordy to keep her attention.

Wonderful book for bedtime! The stories are not too exciting that they work the children up. They teach lessons and are such fun to read. I enjoy this book as much as my Grandkids.

My 12 month old daughter loves this book, I bought it to read to her before bed and she loves it .. she especially loves the little owl in the second story. She has sat in her crib with this book and looked at it for over 20 minutes! quietly! and without noticing mommy got up and left. Excellent book!!

As an artist interested in Marcel Duchamp and his works, I foud this book to be very informative. It's a book that will fascinate even those who have little interest in modern art.

I wholeheartedly recommend this wonderful book to everyone who knows how to read English. Marcel Duchamp was perhaps the premier iconclast of the twentieth century, and the runners up might be Buckminster Fuller & Le Corbusier. The book is NOT a boring monograph; it is a lot of fun to read. Tompkins is a Duchamp enthusiast but manages to wade through the mythology and bull to present the reader with the rosetta stone of Duchamp's life and art. Whether you took a twentieth century art survey in college and only know Duchamp as the guy who wrote R. Mutt on an upside-down urinal or you have read any number of books about the artist you should read this book! Tompkins sucks the reader right into the mind of Duchamp on the first page with a discussion and analysis of The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even, one the the greatest and most misunderstood and unappreciated works of the last century. I was an Art History major in college and hence suffered through so many authoritative, pretentious, dry, bland, misinformed, prejudiced and yawn-inducing books that it was such a pleasure to stumble onto Tompkin's Duchamp, which is a reader's book, totally apt since Duchamp was a man's man, a genius, not a theorizing weasal. This book is important because it inspires everyone to question everything you take for granted, and enjoy puns and jokes and the lighter side of life, and that art is there for everyone, not for patrons and the elite, for you and me, and that the contrary notion is absurd.

You don't have to like modern art to enjoy this remarkable biography about the most influention and controversial artists of the twentieth century. Tompkins explores the various interpretations of the art of Marcel Duchamp, most amusing of which is that of the artist himself (he was very laissez-fair when it came to expounding upon his own art). If the reader is not a fan of modern art (least of all the Dada movement) he or she will still find pleasure in reading about the life and times of this man of extreme wit and humor. The book reads like a who's-who of the pre and post world war II art world. Dealers, artists, and collectors who filled Duchamps world are just as amusing as characters in a comical work of fiction. The day to day life of people like Peggy Guggenheim and Max Ernst, Francis Picabia and Gabrielle Buffet-Picabia, Katherine Dryer, and Andre Breton, and the ever popular and exclusive members of the surrealist group is explored in comical detail. This book can also be looked at as a crash course in twentieth art history. Duchamp is explored in the most scholarly manner, but Tompkins keeps his study on a level that makes it easy to read.

DUCHAMP: A BIOGRAPHY is a wonderful biography of the artist whom, Tompkins argues persuasively, is the most influential of our almost-completed century. That the art work must be a mental act (a 'cosa mentale,' Leonardo da Vinci had argued many years before); that to be truly creative we need to work AGAINST our esthetic expectations; that art should aspire to be 'non-retinal': these are only some of Duchamp's major perceptions included in this book. What is particularly enjoyable is the way in which Tompkins meshes DuChamps' remarkable life -- one of the most sexually attractive of men, a chess player at the highest levels, an extraordinarily charming and easy person (yet a man who, not matter how much he tried to avoid the repetitive patterns involved in 'art,' was always the consummate artist)with the works of art and 'readymades' which emerged in and from that life. Duchamp's life makes for wonderful reading. What I most recommend about the book is that it stimulates one's own thinking, challenging so much of our conventional beliefs -- in art, in convention, in the concepts of both accomplishment and genius.

The fantastic New Yorker art critic turns his eye towards one of his favorite artists. This book balances both a traditional historical biography of Duchamp along with a critique and examination of his art. A good read of an artist with an interesting (and pleasantly surprisingly un-tortured) life.

Terrific reproductions, great bio and lovely feel to this handsome volume. I admire Vuillard for his ability to use what are generally dank tonals to achieve such melodious, satiny and harmonized compositions. As a painter I look for the best repros to help me in my own training. A fellow painter friend's borrowed it and I'm still not sure if I've gotten it back.

i've only found one vuillard collection bigger (better) than this one. it's the complete collection: a 3 volume set (same page size as this book). i've only seen it in art libraries in large universities; it must cost hundreds. for us mortals, Cogeval's selection will satisfy 99.99% of the vuillard fans out there. the image quality is quite good -- i've seen them framed. and the text is well written.

I had the opportunity to see this show at the National Gallery in Washington D.C. and am amazed at how well everything was represented both in the book and at the show. At first I wasn't going to buy the book but, after speaking with my painting professor, who has been collecting Vuillard books for over 30 years, state that this is THE most comprehensive book of Vuillard's work and probably has more information and work than all his other Vuillard books combined, well, that clenched it and I had to get the book. I am very, very glad I did.

it is really a wonderful book, with very many very beautiful illustrations, many of not always known them. really much more of which it hoped, it contains whole work catalogues of very important museums for the lovers of the painting of Vuillard, it contains 463 beautiful illustrations to color

The career of this French painter and photographer spanned the first four decades of the 20th century and produced a wealth of works. Edouard Vuillard represents the most comprehensive and authoritative study of Vuillard's art, with over a hundred works covering the wide range of his creations and enjoying essays by the authors, who explore his career and influences. Though it's the catalog for an exhibition in Washington DC, Edouard Vuillard will also earn its own rightful place as an authoritative coverage of Vuillard's vast body of art.

A fine introduction to the extraordinary art of an Austrian painter doomed to a short but productive life.

Professor Rudolf Leopold is a master of explaining the style of Egon Schiele, while revealing to the reader the physical origin of the specific impulse behind many of Schiele's land- and cityscapes.

I urge those with any interest in modern art to buy this book, and, if at all possible, visit the originals in the great museums of Vienna, especially the Leopold.

This book is centered on a hitherto less well-known aspect of Egon Schiele's art, i.e. his landscapes. The catalogue for a 2004 exhibition held at the Leopold Museum in Vienna (the largest Schiele collection in the world), it was written by Rudolph Leopold himself (the founder of the museum and largest Schiele collector in the world). It lists most of the landscapes painted by Schiele chronologically, whether painting or drawing, and describes each of them very thoroughly. Some works which at the time (2004) were believed lost (a magnificent Krumau landscape and a beautiful sunflower painting) have since then reappeared on the art market and made headlines as they sold for record prices.

The illustrations are of a good quality, even though not as perfect as the ones that grace another available book on the same subject, "Egon Schiele's landscapes, between ruin and renewal" which is a more literary and less purely factual work.

Of all the Schiele monographs I own, this is my favourite one. I love Schiele's drawings and watercolors, I can get lost in them, mesmerized by a single casual line that defines a thigh or an arm; I love his portraits, his oils... but most of all I love his townscapes and landscapes, so this book as an absolute treasure.
Great quality reproductions, wonderful b/w photographs of places/towns/buildings he painted (taken from the same perspective as they appear in his paintings).
Highly recommended.

The credit for the first notion of publishing a book strictly devoted to Schiele's landscapes (and cityscapes) deservedly goes to Kimberly A. Smith/Yale University Press. One might say that it was a bit sneaky of Rudolf Leopold & the Leopold Museum, after having been interviewed and providing reproductions for said effort to in the same year mount this comprehensive exhibition and publish this sumptuous catalogue.

I'm not saying that, because the reproductions are better and the text doesn't suffer from the pompousnous of Deconstructionism. This is a gorgeous book. As well, some of the paintings are paired with period photos/postcards of the actual scenes Schiele painted. Leopold vastly expounded upon this conceit by researching and seeking out with camera a large number of photographs of Schiele's motifs. It's hugely interesting to see how little certain corners of Austria have changed in nearly a hundred years.

Of particularly poignant, and instructive, note, is the volume's side-by-side reproduction of Schiele's "Autumn Trees I" of 1911, held in a private collection. The original, as widely reproduced--indeed in the Smith/Yale book, albeit poorly--has been ruined by a "restorer" who decided that the pink striations in the sky had been added by a later hand.

If you're interested in Schiele's landscapes, buy this book. Buy this book and turn to pages 84-5 and weep with me.

A chronological presentation of Egon Shielle's landscape paintings, commencing with works produced when he was only sixteen. Each painting is reproduced in colour on one page with brief informative explanatory notes on the facing page, and invariably with additional photographs usually of the actual scene depicted in the painting, and occasionally Shielle's own preliminary sketches. The book concludes with a brief illustrated biography, and bibliography. A most informative and beautifully illustrated publication with text kept to a minimum and free from pompous waffle.

I found the images in this little book breathtaking. The color and expression was so exciting and the history was fascinating. This tiny little volume is packed with beautiful images of Nolde watercolors. I'm so glad I found it.

Nolde, though sympathetic to the Nazi Party, was included among the artists who were exhibited in the "Degenerate Art Show". He was also banned from painting throughout the war which he spent in the north German town of Seebüll. Being the artist he was he was unable to halt the creative process and began to paint watercolor pictures on small torn sheets of paper - these paintings, the "unpainted pictures" are the subject of this book. The paintings are quite beautiful and the viewer can see how Nolde played with the rich watercolors to create pictures of people, fantastic portraits, and landscapes and seascapes. They are heavily expressionistic as Nolde used dark colors and india ink to delineate figures, give depth, and provide shadow. At their best the pictures are akin to stained glass with a backlighting sun emphasizing the rich colors. If you're a fan of expressionism it's a must book to have. For an art historian there there is a concise text which explores Nolde's relationship with the Nazi Party and those Nazis (Goebbels among them) who attempted to intercede on his behalf.

it is a really beautiful book, in spite of being small, contains watercolors of this great artist, gorgeous, very good quality of illustration, that I make on paper Japanese, in small format, all are like small jewels, that display the great colorista that was. I am enchanted with the book.

Emile Nolde's Unpainted Pictures is a reminder that the Nazi regime affected everyone, not just the groups targeted for persecution. This is an example of one artist's adaptation to those horrible circumstances. It is a book of beautiful reproductions of watercolors done in secret and distributed to friends to keep them safe. Even the format of the book is small, implying that the paintings had to be hidden. It is not a book for generalists; it is for a specific audience, those who are interested in Expressionist paintings.

I liked, though did not love, this book. I think that perhaps there are too many reproductions, some of which are inferior to the others. I hope that when I die and become a famous artist (well, one can hope, can't they?) someone will edit my work with more care.
Still Nolde is always interesting and this book is worth it for fans of his work.

Ms St. John's style of writing had me turning page after page wondering just what happened next. I would put the book down for a moment thinking I could just walk away and do the things that needed to be done. I was wrong. I found myself drawn back to Southern Illinois and the St. John family. It brought back memories of my own dysfunctional family. I highly recommend this book, not just for those that may have lived through a similar upbringing, but for anyone that wants a good read and a glimpse into how one woman overcame so much.

haven't read it yet but can't wait. i actually saw on powells.com this book offered for $8.50 and no special order fee. just an fyi. look forward to an enchanting and engrossing read - it's been awhile...

Linda St. John is a wonderful talent and tells her remarkable story of surviving a stark upbringing with wit and insight in the package of a really good read. The story moves along. Her characters are tremendously vivid and orginal.

Memoirs of a terrible childhood marred by poverty, alcoholism and abuse in Southern Illinois. Later on the abused children look after their dying father, a WWII veteran with a PhD, and seek his love. These terrible childhoods always make good stories when told by their survivors. The worse the childhood the better the story because we know that the writer survived to become a person who could write a book. It's always a question as to how much is true (I've heard that Frank McCourt's mother was a New York secretary) but this one could stand on its own as fiction. We're given a lot of jacket biography, and even a cover designed by the author, that form an intrinsic part of the story. I share the other reviewers' irritation with the apostrophes on the gerunds but I guess them white trash aint gonna mind that none.

The author has taken an artful look at her painful family
background in a way that is amazing. The sincerity and poignant detailing suggest that the author has not borrowed trouble to write about, but does in fact know it very intimately, and has used the power of creativity to rise above and even flourish.
No one can read this book and not be inspired to look with more colorful curiosity at any trouble in their life.
All people in Alcohol and abuse programs would take heart from reading this. This book suggests tools for taking a liberating apprach to life. A beautiful book of love and understanding.

I started this book knowing nothing about this important painter and finished it with a great understanding of both the man and his art.

Justin Spring's biography on Fairfield Porter, A Life In Art, is one of the most difficult and disturbing biographies I've read in some time. It's incredibly thorough, as if no piece of information was left out.

Most biographies are bound to reveal new information, but the amount here is overwhelming. Other reviews here on Amazon bring out the detail, so there's no point repeating it. If you're only familiar with Porter from an artisitic standpoint the biography of his family life, lifestyle, manners, and politics will be shocking and difficult to bring together.

While in the middle of reading this book I had to let it go for a few months and read other things then go back to it. Porter's activities in the late 1940's to the mid 1950's were especially difficult to reconcile considering the subject matter of his output.

It seems the frankness in tone of the biography is totally in tune with Porter's ways of communicating. I suspect if Porter had lived longer then such an autobiography probably would have been as revealing.

This book displays great beauty: the paper is beautiful, the writing is flawless and the subject matter (the art work) is cool and elegant. But the artist's life was a difficult & complex equation of contractions: he was born patrician, yet he was a leftist (he attended Socialist demonstrations in a chauffeur driven limousine); he was highly verbal and intellectual, yet he painted the coolest (visually abstract) emotion; he made realist art in an abstract art time; he was married yet he had sex with men; he was surrounded by a loving family, yet he remained remote and distant; he lived in the country, yet he was always running to the city; he was bright and balanced, yet his best (lifelong) friend was mentally deranged; he made the most stable art from the most unstable life; he was slender and active, yet he died early of a surprise heart attack; he was on the verge of greatness (and nearly penniless much of the time), but cared little for fame and less for money. This assortment of profound conflicts make for a great story, and the art works themselves tower above everything in their lofty remove, quiet dignity, and timeless spirit. Find out why that is so (and what it may mean for the history of 20th century art criticism) and read this haunting and very personal book you'll not forget.

Fairfield Porter's paintings have a strange pale quality, and they are flooded with light.His subjects are upper class domestic,and many of them are pale and etherial. He painted his family friends,and their pvt haunts beautifully. Little did most people realize he was a torn person,and probably can be better understood by this reading.I think what amazed me the most about this book was the incredible latent homosexual exsistence that paralled and co-existed within Porter's very homey and simmering homogenous realism.The bio details his social, artistic and private relationships with a younger generation of artists. This book is a portrait of a man at war with his sexuality. His ptngs are beautifully orchestrated, sensual, understated. A must for those that want to know more about Porter's life, and the different sides that lived inside him. A good read!I love artist bios.This is a worthy effort.

Justin Spring's Fairfield Porter: A Life In Art provides an excellent literary and intellectual biography, drawing important connections between Porter's social, artistic and personal lives and considering both his art and his position in the art world. Black and white and color photos pepper this in-depth biographical and artistic coverage.

Rebecca Solnit has created what is in my mind what we all seek. Peace. In the notion of accepting that we are all "Lost", and that is where we are meant to be she has captured what the human condition is. Her prose is exceptional and thick. Her attachment to the natural world is a beacon of light in a society that is truly hopelessly lost. Lost from what is real. Brilliant work


Ken Wylie

Calgary Canada

The first question is, what is a field guide to getting lost? Field guides help us with finding, not losing or getting lost. We use them to classify the unfamiliar and figure out what surrounds us. They reassure us that the bewildering array of natural phenomena has an underlying order. Solnit's title suggests we might also want our schemas to break down. Can we catalogue the various ways of getting lost as we might catalogue songbirds? The paradox feels whimsical, mocking, alluring. Like the title, the tone of the book will hover between the urge to know and the urge not to know, between rationality and mystery.

In the middle of the first chapter, Solnit gives us a manifesto: "Never to get lost is not to live, not to know how to get lost brings you to destruction." "Lost," for her, means we lack a narrative for what we are experiencing. Getting lost is a kind of Zen rebirth because "to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty." Getting lost also has connotations of spiritual longing. Solnit titles every other chapter "The Blue of Distance." Blue "represents the spirit, the sky, and water, the immaterial and the remote, so that however tactile ansd close-up it is, it is always about distance and disembodiment." Voila the tone of the book--grand, abstract, sensual, yearning and inexorably aloof.

With a topic like the beauty of longing and loss, it is surprising how rarely Solnit lapses into cliché. Her prose is as smooth and bare as polished stone. It creates the feeling of waking from a dream and encountering the world, dazed and receptive. If Thoreau is the most cerebral of the philosopher-poets and Whitman the most sensual, Rebecca Solnit belongs at the midpoint. She does not allow herself academic verbal tics, or excess verbiage, but neither does she shy away from the syntactical complexity of acadmic writing. She integrates lyric sensuality and philosophizing as if these modes belong together, as if western civilization had never tried to separate mind and body. I admire her poise and authority a little as I admire Susan Sontag's. Solnit's is a supremely self-possessed voice, which may be the same thing as a voice that has abandoned the antic whining of the self. She draws deeply on experience, yet she resists the confessional mode.

You might say that Solnit offers an optimistic way to confront the globalized, alienated world of the twenty-first century, a sort of "If God gives you lemons, make lemonade," or "If God gets you lost, revel in it." You could argue that she offers a sophisticated alternative to the self-help genre, though I imagine Solnit would look down on self-help. She likes slipperiness and paradox too much. Still, she is interested in finding a way forward for the soul, and I, for one, am glad because my little soul is often bewildered.

I think Solnit dances between lostness and foundness. She notes that "nomads have fixed circuits and stable relationships to places," and her own wandering through the west is ritualized, repetitive. She doesn't need to go to Antarctica; she gets lost in America. Her home territory is simply vast and ambitious, her spirals broad. Still, in order to lose herself time after time, she has to find herself in between.

Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide To Getting Lost discusses experience and getting lost in the everyday, examining how people move from cities to wilderness, how they search for sense of self in an uncertain life, and how her own explorations in the world have changed her life. At once an autobiography and introspective examination, A Field Guide To Getting Lost surveys connections, ancestry, history, and modern culture in a personal odyssey of exploration.

With a prodigious breadth and fearless depth, she takes the segue to a high art. Anything can be the occasion for connection. Any sentence can break your mind or heart wide open. Her most personal, and my personal favorite. Reading this book makes me feel alive.

A mesmerizing book that is three separate tales told at the same time. At times humorous and sometimes it made me want to cry, this story was hard to put down. I would highly recommend it.