Art & Literature
It doesn’t sound like something that would be that interesting, in fact it doesn’t even sound like something that’s even real, more like some over-extended McSweeney’s bit, but the list of every book Art Garfunkel’s ever read, as highlighted in The New Yorker* this week, makes for compelling reading. It feels at once like endorsed voyeurism and a public record.
I quite like the idea that, should I run into Mr. Bright Eyes himself, I can now go in for a series of conversational gambits armed with the knowledge that we’ve read some of the same books. I’ve certainly not read as extensively or profoundly as Paul Simon’s afroed sometime nemesis/confidant but just knowing that we could rap about Mao II or Bonjour Tristesse whilst strolling through Greenwich Village together makes me feel h’alright.
In many ways, this list is a middle-aged man’s version and forerunner of things like MySpace and Facebook. This is the kind of transparency we could share with the notable and talented without feeling tawdry. I’d sooner leaf through a list of every film Paul McCartney’s ever seen than be confronted with the minutiae of his divorce, for example.
Other lists I’d like to see would be Brian Eno’s record collection, every film Cary Grant ever watched, and every restaurant Elvis ate in. Maybe these could replace the surfeit of badly thought through autobiographies knocking about?
*(Further to what the article states, Garf has read three biographies of Simon & Garfunkel, something which I find charmingly human.)
Filed under: Art Garfunkel, Music | 3 Comments
Tags: Art Garfunkel, Don DeLillo, John Barrowman, Mao II, McSweeney's, Paul Simon, The New Yorker
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Have you had the obscure pleasure of Eno’s “Year with Swollen Appedices” [1995 diary] at all? It beats Eddie Jobson’s “I Was Roxy Music’s Other Apparent Hermaphrodite” memoir any day.
I haven’t. In fact this is the first I’d heard of it. I shall start a look out for a used copy reet now. I’m taken aback that something so specific exists, shame it’s ‘95 though, ‘81 would have been more up my alley.
Is that Eddie “Scored 100 episodes of Nash Bridges” Jobson? It’s like Bri doing the music for Walker: Texas Ranger.
Hey, ANY year when Bri tries drinking his own urine is worth reading about!
You’re blinding me a bit with (what I presume) are US TV references there, but I’m pretty sure we’re talking about the same androgyne: since his Prog bubble burst in 1980 or so, it’s definitely been a case of “Jobson’s the name; incidental music’s the game” for the spindly fellow. Look out – or be warned – though, for his return to the neo-Prog fray later this year, with his new group UKZ. I can’t believe I’ve just owned up to knowing that.
While I’m smearing myself publicly with shit, I might as well mention that I once picked up (at a gig at the Astoria) a flyer for THE DUTCH EDDIE JOBSON FAN CLUB. I never did find out if they were Netherlands-based fans of EJ’s work, or in fact followers of esoteric Tribute act The Dutch Eddie Jobson…