What Is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man

What Is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man

"Poetic musings on a life well-livedâ€”one that is still moving forward, always creating, always luminous. This isn't your typical autobiography. Garfunkel'sÂ history is told in flowing prose, bounding from present to past, far from a linear rags-to-riches story."
â€”Bookreporter

"It'sÂ hard to imagine any single word that would accurately describe this book . . . an entertaining volume that's more fun to read than a conventional memoir might have been."
â€”The Wall Street Journal

Â "A charming book of prose and poetry printed in a digitalized version of his handwriting . . . witty, candid, and wildly imaginative . . . A highly intelligent man trying to make sense of his extraordinary life."
â€”Associated Press

From the golden-haired, curly-headed half of Simon & Garfunkel, a memoir (of sorts)â€”moving, lyrical impressions, interspersed throughout a narrative, punctuated by poetry, musings, lists of resonant books loved and admired, revealing a life and the making of a musician, that show us, as well, the evolution of a man, a portrait of a life-long friendship and of a collaboration that became the most successful singing duo in the roiling age that embraced, and was defined by, their pathfinding folk-rock music.

In What Is It All but Luminous, Art Garfunkel writes about growing up in the 1940s and â€˜50s (son of a traveling salesman, listening as his father played Enrico Caruso records), a middle-class Jewish boy, living in a redbrick semi-attached house on Jewel Avenue in Kew Gardens, Queens.

He writes of meeting Paul Simon, the kid who made Art laugh (they met at their graduation play, Alice in Wonderland; Paul was the White Rabbit; Art, the Cheshire Cat). Of their being twelve at the birth of rockâ€™nâ€™roll (â€œit was rhythm and blues. It was black. I was captured and so was Paulâ€), of a demo of their song, Hey Schoolgirl for seven dollars and the actual record (with Paulâ€™s father on bass) going to #40 on the charts.

He writes about their becoming Simon & Garfunkel, ruling the pop charts from the age of sixteen, about not being a natural performer but more a thinker, an underground man.

He writes of the hit songs; touring; about being an actor working with directors Mike Nichols (â€œthe greatest of them allâ€), about choosing music over a PhD in mathematics.

And he writes about his long-unfolding split with Paul, and how and why it evolved, and after; learning to perform on his own . . . and about being a husband, a father and much more.
Country USA
Brand Knopf
Manufacturer Knopf
Binding Hardcover
ItemPartNumber 9780385352475
ReleaseDate 2017-09-26
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780385352475

Country	USA
Brand	Knopf
Manufacturer	Knopf
Binding	Hardcover
ItemPartNumber	9780385352475
ReleaseDate	2017-09-26
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780385352475

What Is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man

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