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Paperback The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art Book

ISBN: 1584350660

ISBN13: 9781584350668

The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays on Art (Semiotext(e) / Active Agents)

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Format: Paperback

Condition: Very Good

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Book Overview

A poet and post-punk heroine writes on subjects ranging from Bj rk to Robert Smithson, from traveling in Iceland to walking in Thoreau's footsteps on Cape Cod

Poet and post-punk heroine Eileen Myles has always operated in the art, writing, and queer performance scenes as a kind of observant flaneur. Like Baudelaire's gentleman stroller, Myles travels the city--wandering on garbage-strewn New York streets in the heat of summer, drifting though the antiseptic malls of La Jolla, and riding in the van with Sister Spit--seeing it with a poet's eye for detail and with the consciousness that writing about art and culture has always been a social gesture. Culled by the poet from twenty years of art writing, the essays in The Importance of Being Iceland make a lush document of her--and our--lives in these contemporary crowds. Framed by Myles's account of her travels in Iceland, these essays posit inbetweenness as the most vital position from which to perceive culture as a whole, and a fluidity in national identity as the best model for writing and thinking about art and culture. The essays include fresh takes on Thoreau's Cape Cod walk, working class speech, James Schulyer and Bj rk, queer Russia and Robert Smithson; how-tos on writing an avant-garde poem and driving a battered Japanese car that resembles a menopausal body; and opinions on such widely ranging subjects as filmmaker Sadie Benning, actor Daniel Day-Lewis, Ted Berrigan's Sonnets, and flossing.

Customer Reviews

1 rating

A TREASURE

This book is a triumph. Don't let the seemingly scattered table of contents fool you. All of the subject matter relates in that it is alive, in the world, available to be considered, argued, enjoyed. The Importance Of Being Iceland is a treatise, a line in the sand, a breaking-open, a heartbreak and a glittering heart. The essays build a matrix of critique and personal anecdote, creating a portrait of the artist yet also functioning as art, itself. The writing is full of profound observation that cuts through rote academic critique to truly examine and investigate art, artists, and nature of life itself (god that sounds so corny but its true!). I have owned this book only two weeks and I've read it cover to cover twice. It is a work that I will quote, share, re-read, and question for some time. Bravo, Eileen!
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