Bernstein Books

These are works Johns selected for his own collection. Beautifully photographed with an intelligent commentary in English and German, this book is an elegant introduction to the full sweep of Johns' ouevre.

About the works themselves, what can one say? His originality; his passionate engagement with the concepts and materials. Johns sets the high watermark for modern art making over the past 50 years.

I saw this show at LACMA and wanted this catalog but it was way too expensive for me - especially for a softbound. The numbers show helped me understand Johns' wonderfully logical, creative, individualistic, lovingly obsessive world. While the printed photos are miles away from the flesh of the encaustic and layered torn papers, it keeps his inspirational pieces close at hand. Yes, it is a must for you.

I recommend this journal to those experiencing an illness and to their loved ones.

This is a good book. I had a lot of fun reading it, and learned a lot. Author gets inside the heads of many of these great coaches.

Bernstein was a great teacher, and along with his tremendous knowledge of Music he conveys a great enthusiasm for it. He says early on that reading music is a vital skill, and should be a part of the education of everyone. He says that the ability to play a piece oneself is to understand the music in a way one cannot simply by hearing it.
A number of these chapters are transcripts of five television talks he did.
Bernstein shows the way Music's complexity is built up from simple elements. He takes a subject like 'rhythm' and gives a whole host of musical illustrations. These will be very helpful to those who can read the music as at least half the text of the book is the notes of the music.
Speaking more generally Bernstein advocates a new development in American music. He wonders why the music written over the past half- century has not entered the concert hall in a true way. He notes that Classical music was primarily contemporary music, and educated audiences had enthusiasm for the latest things. He wishes to get to something like that in American music.
There are many insights given along the way about music by Bernstein. And these make the book a valuable one.

This is a biography of Lenny Bernstein, in the genre of non-fiction. From when he was a little child, he loved music. The book tells you about him growing up as a music teacher, a piano player, a composer and a conductor of symphony orchestras.

I enjoyed reading about Lenny because there were a lot of things that were hard for him in his life and that he overcame. For example, school - he never had time to do his homework because he took music classes after school. His father hated music because the only music players he knew played at bar mitzvahs and birthday parties, and they only got paid with their meal. They were very, very poor, and he wanted better for his son. But Lenny played music and took classes against his father's wishes. He got through all the problems and grew up to be what he wanted to be.

Yes, I would recommend this book to a friend if you like music. Even if you don't like music, but you are really passionate about something and want to do it all the time, I recommend you read this because it shows that if you love something and you don't stop trying to get it right, you can do the thing that you love all your life.

I learned that a conductor leads an orchestra and a composer writes the music. I'd like to read the books that Leonard wrote and listen to some of his music. Reviewed by Stuart

A delightful book for Bernstein fans. As the author says in his preface, it's not a biography. It consists of episode after episodes of Bernstein's genius work life. We, the general public, take his work for granted and be amazed by his genius, but we have no idea how much commitment and dedication were given to each work he has delivered. NOt just his dedication but everybody else who had collaborated with him. After reading this book, I can appreciate his work even more.
The author never loses good humor and he writes about the most difficult situations he and the maestro had faced with good spirits and wit. Bernstein was a great man, but so was Schuyler Chapin, I should say.
Humphrey Burton's Bernstein's biography is a good book to go with this one (it's a great book also, by the way). Just as some episodes made me laugh in Burton's bio, this one made me laugh and smile many times. The dinner party episode, visit with Japanese writer Mishima, the helicopter episode, and many more will tell you warmly and humrously about the man. The great maestro was not only a genius but quite a character.
It also tells what and how much effort it takes to put a great performace up on stage for us to enjoy. I shall not complain about concert tickets being expensive any more!
Easy read, relaxed and reader-friendly, great page-turner.
I didn't want to finish reading it.

Having admired Bernstein for many years, I have always felt that there was a lack of photos from his final years. Here, Seiler has provided a wonderful portrait of the master in his many moods. The close-ups reveal Bernstein in intense thought while his candid photos (eg playing ping-pong) allow us to see his more playful side. Rarely are there photos without the cigarette in hand but this surely is his trademark. The comments by those who knew him add to the mystique and wonder of a man who embraced life so intensely.

Living With The Dead is not just the story of a group of hippies coming of age; it is the story of an entire generation and the loss of that generation's innocence. Told from the first person perspective of narrator Toast Murphy, LWTD reads almost like a diary and, as such, the narrative often adopts a dreamy, trancelike quality that is befitting of the events being described.

The events that shape Toast's life are juxtaposed with the events that shaped the lives of an entire generation; the death of John Lennon, the Reagan years and the nuclear arms race all provide stark perspective to the story, and Bernstein's description of the social consequences of great events is both accurate and poignant in the context of the time in which the story is written.

As the chapters pass, Bernstein draws us into Toast's drug addiction and crisis of conscience with such subtlety that we don't even know we're there until it's too late. By the time we reach this point, Toast has become such a likeable character - despite his reckless disregard for conformity - that we find ourselves rooting for him.

The real heart to the story, however, is to be found in the inner conflict raging within Toast; a promise made to raise Jimi's son, and his increasing dependence on narcotic stimulation. Bernstein deals with this subject with extreme sensitivity, without ever having to resort to sentimental psychobabble, even when Toast's drug dependency leads to his divorce from the aptly named Burn Out.

Toast's separation from his son serves as the catalyst for him to change his lifestyle, and from that point on, we know everything might just work out for him.

Or will it?

Living With The Dead is peppered with lively and believable characters; the hot-tempered Burn Out, the spiritual Cheech, the spacey Sunshine and the tragic Jimi. On a purely dramatic level, it operates wonderfully, and will appeal not only to those who lived through the era described in the story, but to anybody interested in the events and lifestyles that shaped a generation.

This book came out the EXACT MONTH I happened to be reading Zukofsky: Man and Poet, a collection of appreciations and essays assembled just after his death in 1979. What's sad is that the essays all start from the assumption that Zukofsky is almost totally unknown except among poets, a fact that caused him some bitterness in his final years. He died just before his masterpiece, "A," came out in a single edition from UC Press.

Flash forward a generation to this handsome Library of America edition. The pros will quibble over the sense of excerpting Zukofsky, which Z. himself tried to prevent in his lifetime. But it's hard to see this book as anything less than a vindication of the quiet, steady devotion Zukofsky showed to poetry over his productive life. Charles Bernstein, who's about the best ambassador the avant-garde's got to the publishing mainstream, is a great choice for the project: his selections are sympathetic and smart, aware of the larger work while giving you enough tantalizing bits to satisfy a healthy curiosity. I doubt Zukofsky's work has ever reached as broad an audience as it will here: it may be just the end run around the growing Zukofsky industry his work needs to find fresh readers. The poems deserve it, and somehow I think he'd be tickled pink to know this is out there.