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Need A Book Recommendation? Ask Art.
Monday, 31st March, 2008
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Woah there Art; so this is what you've been up to since you and Paul Simon broke up. The list itself is an exercise in reading and a random delve into it leaves one with the feeling that there's a lot of catching up to do. There's no embarrassing past here; no Adrian Moles' or Judy Blumes' in this archive; unless he read those pre The Library. In fact, the list exudes a kind of smugness that almost makes you want to find a book he won't have read; like something from your university syllabus 'American Movies and Their Cultural Antecedents in Literary Text.' But chances are, he's probably read it. In 2007 he read 'A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.'
Spanning 40 years the list boasts such titles as 'Behavioural Mechanisms in Ecology,' and 'Early Christian and Byzantine Art.'
It becomes a fun game to see if he's read all the literary classics from your own back-catalogue; I picked out my most recent, Turgenov's 'First Loves', and began to experience an odd sense of joy when, as I trawled chronologically through, it didn't seem to be there. Do I feel a suggestion for Mr G coming on? Alas, he read it in May of 1982. I don't think I saw Knut Hamsun's 'Hunger' and I think he read Nabokov's 'Lectures on Literature' without reading 'Lolita' (quel erreur) but to be honest, this is probably an oversight on my part.
He's even read 'Paul MCCartney-Many Years from Now' by Barry Miles; a bugbear because its many years from now since I began that one, and after about 8 false starts, I still haven't finished it. This man must make a great dinner-party guest with all this reading material to refer to; and then you remind yourself that he's also found the time to be a part of one of music's most successful and well-loved duos. I kind of have this image of him now as a wild-haired Willy Wonka type, sweeping across his bookshelves on a sliding step-ladder, dressed in a night-gown and silk slippers, surveying his literary kingdom.
Nonetheless, this is definitely impressive. We commend you Art Garfunkel; what a dude you must be. Rich and famous but still dedicated to the path of self-improvement.
http://www.artgarfunkel.com/library
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