The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard: A Library of America Special Edition - Perfect for Literature Lovers & American Art History Enthusiasts
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Product Description
Discover the works of Joe Brainard, whose quirky style earned him a reputation as a “recognizable American phenomenon” and “oddball classicist”—with a foreword by 4321 author Paul Auster (John Ashbery) An artist associated with the New York School of poets, Joe Brainard (1942-1994) was a wonderful writer whose one-of-a-kind autobiographical work I Remember has had a wide and growing influence. It is joined in this major new retrospective with many other pieces that for the first time present the full range of Brainard's writing in all its deadpan wit, madcap inventiveness, self-revealing frankness, and generosity of spirit. The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard gathers intimate journals, jottings, stories, one-liners, comic strips, mini-essays, and short plays, many of them available until now only as expensive rarities, if at all. “Brainard disarms us with the seemingly tossed-off, spontaneous nature of his writing and his stubborn refusal to accede to the pieties of self-importance,” writes Paul Auster in the introduction to this collection. “These little works . . . are not really about anything so much as what it means to be young, that hopeful, anarchic time when all horizons are open to us and the future appears to be without limits.” Assembled by the author’s longtime friend and biographer Ron Padgett and including fourteen previously unpublished works, here is a fresh and affordable way to rediscover a unique American artist.
Customer Reviews
I feel as though I had a small important love affair with this book. For weeks I carried it with me everywhere, clutching it, telling everyone about it, reading aloud from it as if from a scripture. I imitated it, I copied down its moves, I argued with it. More than once I got annoyed. Sometimes, particularly toward the end, I wish it tried a little harder. I admit I feel a little like I had an affair with Joe Brainard himself -- a liberty for which I hope he would forgive me. I think he would. I loved this book. I wanted it to go on forever.The first portion of the book, “I Remember”, has long been renowned. Brainard discovered that the phrase “I remember” was a magic key and since then memoirs (and creative writing classes) have never been the same. The other sections, gathered from Brainard’s notebooks, literary magazines and small press books are presented in such a way that it feels you are flipping through his notebooks -- a choice which seems to me correctly intimate, casual and inviting. (Really, it’s no wonder that I felt like I was having an affair. It’s designed that way, I swear.)More often than not, Brainard writes from the present moment and he seeks to do so in as simple and open a way as possible. Reading this book, I asked myself repeatedly if such writing could ever be done now, if it could ever be recognized and embraced -- or if we are too stuck in the pride of fancying ourselves incomprehensible, complicated, difficult. Could writing like this ever find readers now? Would the self-proclaimed avant-garde stick ever up for it? (If so, I admit I have a stack of pages I’d like to show. . .)I felt more than a little envious of how Brainard seems to have been surrounded by warm-hearted geniuses: Ron Padgett, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Anne Waldman, Joanne Kyger -- people I have idolized for a long time. If you are a fan of any of these writers, this time in history, or The New York School of Poetry -- this is a book you must acquire at once. If you are as yet uninitiated, you are still very likely to be smitten.
