The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard

by Joe Brainard, Ron Padgett (Editor), Paul Auster (Introduction)

Overview

An artist associated with the New York School of poets, Joe Brainard (1942-1994) was a wonderful writer whose one-of-a-kind autobiographical work I Remember ("a completely original book" -Edmund White) has had a wide and growing influence. It is joined in this major new retrospective with many other pieces that for the first time present the full range of Brainard's writing in all its deadpan wit, madcap inventiveness, self-revealing frankness, and generosity of spirit. The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard gathers intimate journals, jottings, stories, one-liners, comic strips, mini-essays, and short plays, many of them available until now only as expensive rarities, if at all. "Brainard disarms us with the seemingly tossed- off, spontaneous nature of his writing and his stubborn refusal to accede to the pieties of self-importance," writes Paul Auster in the introduction to this collection. "These little works . . . are not really about anything so much as what it means to be young, that hopeful, anarchic time when all horizons are open to us and the future appears to be without limits." Assembled by the author's longtime friend and biographer Ron Padgett and including fourteen previously unpublished works, here is a fresh and affordable way to rediscover a unique American artist.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781598531497
Publisher:	Library of America
Publication date:	03/29/2012
Pages:	450
Product dimensions:	5.82(w) x 8.34(h) x 1.42(d)

About the Author

RON PADGETT, editor, is the author of many books of poetry including How To Be Perfect, You Never Know, The Big Something, and Great Balls of Fire, as well as Joe: A Memoir of Joe Brainard.

Table of Contents

Editor's Preface Ron Padgett xiii

Introduction Paul Auster xvii

I Remember 5

Self-Portrait

Self-Portrait on Christmas Night 137

Back in Tulsa Again 147

Saturday July 21st 1962 153

Diary Aug. 4th-15th 155

The China Sea 158

Picnic or Yonder Comes the Blue 160

A True Story 162

I Like ["A happy glory to sky!"] 170

I Like ["I Joe"] 172

The People 175

Andy Warhol: Andy Do It 178

The Man 180

Marge 182

Johnny 185

Nancy ["It was coffee time"] 186

Nancy ["Nancy was always handing me"] 189

May Dye 193

Colgate Dental Cream 196

Brunswick Stew 198

Sick Art 199

Sunday, July the 30th, 1964 200

Saturday, December the 11th, 1965 204

Van Gogh 206

People of the World: Relax! 207

Ron Padgett 215

January 26th, 1967 216

Pat 217

August 29th, 1967 218

Jamaica 1968 221

What Is Money? 225

Little-Known Facts about People 228

Diary 1969 232

Diary 1969 (Continued) 239

Sex 250

A Special Diary 251

Some Drawings of Some Notes to Myself 255

Death 263

Autobiography 265

Some Train Notes 266

Diary 1970-71 269

December 22, 1970 274

1970 277

Queer Bars 278

Art 279

Short Story 280

Life ["When I stop and think"] 281

Rim of the Desert 282

How to Be Alone Again 283

Bolinas Journal 28s

Wednesday, July 7th, 1971 334

Selections from "Vermont Journal: 1971" 353

Fear 356

White Spots 357

My Favorite Quotations 358

Selections from "Self-Portrait: 1971" 359

from N.Y.C. Journals: 1971-1972 363

Friday, June 16th, 1972 375

Tuesday, July 11th, 1972 380

What I Did This Summer 381

Washington D.C. Journal 1972 382

The Gay Way 389

Matches 391

Self-Portrait (As a Writer) If I Was Old and Fat and Wore Hats 392

Dirty Prose 393

Fantastic Dream I Had Last Night! 394

If 395

The Friendly Way 397

The Friendly Way (Continued) 406

If I Was God 409

Ponder This 410

Grandmother 411

Night 412

Neck 413

30 One-Liners 414

The Cigarette Book 417

Poem ["Sometimes"] 435

No Story 436

Journals 437

Before I Die 446

Right Now 447

Life ["The life of a human being is"] 448

Stoned Again 450

A Depressing Thought 451

Thirty 452

Ten Imaginary Still Lifes 453

from 2.9 Mini-Essays 455

The Outer Banks 458

Towards a Better Life (Eleven Exercises) 461

Twenty-three Mini-Essays 464

Religion 467

Out in the Hamptons 468

Nothing to Write Home About 470

A State of the Flowers Report 482

Jimmy Schuyler: A Portrait 484

January 13th 485

Interviews

The Joe Brainard Interview Tim Dlugos 489

An Interview with Joe Brainard Anne Waldman 509

Chronology 519

Note on the Texts 523

Glossary of Names 529

What People are Saying About This

John Ashbery

It is wonderful, and singularly fitting, that Joe Brainard's collected writings are being published by The Library of America. Brainard's subject was memory, that is, the things that memory remembers. In his case these were as quirky as anybody's, which is why so many readers have responded to them. Brainard was that recognizable American phenomenon, the oddball classicist.

From the Publisher

“ Beautifully designed, Collected Writings reproduces the improvised, homemade feel of Brainard’s journal writings by including drawings and handwritten notes and memos and cartoons and flyers.”
—Mark Ford, The New York Review of Books
 
“ This is a really fun book, one that will win over old friends and new fans alike.”
—Patrick James Dunagan, Rain Taxi

Editorial Reviews

Uncommonly versatile and uncommonly funny, Brainard (1942–1994) might be best-known for I Remember (1968–1975), a disarming, beautiful, experimental memoir made from hundreds of largely unconnected sentences, each one beginning the same way: “I remember the sound of the ice cream man coming./ I remember once losing my nickel in the grass before he made it to my house./ I remember that life was just as serious then as it is now.” Brainard was more prolific, and at least as influential, in visual art, which he usually saw as his primary work, including book covers, oil paintings, postmodern cartoons and comic strips, and collaborations on artists’ books. Along with the last, longest version of I Remember, this volume gathers ample diaries from the 1960s and 1970s, composed in New York City, Vermont, and Bolinas, Calif.; two interviews; selected sketches, cartoons and hand-written pieces; and short aphoristic, or mock-aphoristic, verse and prose. Brainard is usually grouped with the second generation of New York School writers: some readers will seek, and find, gossip about them here, while others will take to the quirky and moving one-liners: “I don’t have an inferiority complex or anything like that, but for some reason I’m always trying to prove myself”; “The only thing that ever bothered me about being queer was that I thought maybe people wouldn’t like me if I knew.” (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Nearly every page of Brainard is…mysterious, inconsequential and fun…a superbly engaging bedside book, full of springlike exuberance, energy and wit.
—The Washington Post

Michael Dirda

Beautifully designed, Collected Writings reproduces the improvised, homemade feel of Brainard’s journal writings by including drawings and handwritten notes and memos and cartoons and flyers.”
—Mark Ford, The New York Review of Books
 
“ This is a really fun book, one that will win over old friends and new fans alike.”
—Patrick James Dunagan, Rain Taxi

From the Publisher

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