The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard by Ron Padgett, Editor; The Library of America, $35
Incredibly talented, gay American visual artist and writer Joe Brainard's career of poetry, prose, and pictures has been collected in a new volume produced by his longtime friend Ron Padgett, a poet and biographer. In the opening introduction, popular writer Paul Auster offers a gushing, informative homage to Brainard, whose 1975 memoir I Remember was a unique, 138-page defining work of art and is reproduced in its entirety as the opening section of this book. The candidly autobiographical piece is comprised of recollections and random musings on everything Brainard found interesting and revelatory from music, food, sex, and friends to jokes, private thoughts and intimate memories.
Within the main "Self-Portrait" section, Padgett chronologically collects more than 90 short, highly personal glimpses into Brainard's life and times. From a patchwork quilt of amusing, self-reflective, and introspective thought-pieces, readers will gain a new appreciation for this hyper-creative artist who came into power within the poetry and writers' scenes of New York City in the 1960s and 70s. Comic strips and cigarette butt drawings demonstrate Brainard's tongue-in-cheek sense of humor, along with his tributes to Andy Warhol and Nancy. Simply-written, sensitive diary entries paint Brainard as vulnerable and thoughtful. Of sex, he likes it best when "it's fast and fun, or slow and beautiful," and of dying, he muses "after you're dead, you won't even know it." There are also mini-essays that cover every subject under the sun from grass and gravity to the concept of what he considers a "loser" to really be: "He was at the airport when his ship came in."
Throughout his life, Brainard, who died in 1994 of AIDS-related pneumonia, created a wide, richly varied body of work. Many pieces were unpublished or considered hard-to-find until the publication of this book, and all of them are impressively and respectfully captured here. At over 500 pages, this is an uncommonly comprehensive amalgam of art, life and history. Both an artistic and financial boon for the estate of Joe Brainard, the book closes with a pair of verbatim interviews with the distinguished artist. One interview by Tim Dlugos becomes poignant at its conclusion when Brainard admits to "taking too much speed," and discusses the dissolution of a major gay relationship with Kenward Elmslie, a fellow writer and performer. The other interview by Anne Waldman is radically shorter, but by no means limits this amazingly overlooked artist's power to effortlessly entertain and influence others, even posthumously.