| Joe:
A Memoir of Joe Brainard
Reviews
About.com Best of the Year
Bookforum:
“Delightful.”
New York Sun:
“Ron Padgett’s high-school friendship with Joe Brainard created a tightly enclosed sphere of serious artistic endeavor that lasted a lifetime. . . . Joe is about not only the man but the friendship the two men made up as they went along.”
American Book Review:
“Joe is our most important source material for understanding Brainard as a marvelous crossover poet who came from the visual arts . . . The light touch Padgett uses in his presentation makes one realize the greatness of Brainard.”
Oklahoman:
“Paul Auster says of Padgett’s book that it ‘is a deeply moving and tender portrait of one of the most original artists and writers who ever graced the New York scene.’ I would add he also was one of Oklahoma’s gifts to the world.”
Brooklyn Rail:
“Ron Padgett has written more than just a moving memoir of his friend Joe Brainard . . . In his effort, the testament of true friendship also touches upon the strength and wisdom of how one should live one’s life as a creative individual, hence elevating the book in the minds of its readers to an invaluable tonic for inspired men of good will.”
Boston Phoenix:
“Padgett’s prose is see-through clear, and with it he renders this good, thoroughly decent, modest, extravagantly generous man and first-rate artist as interesting as he was in life. . . . Joe is bright with friendship and a loving attention that releases its subject into the reader’s imagination.”
Rain Taxi Review of Books:
“Ron Padgett’s Joe is not simply, as the subtitle would have it, a memoir of Joe Brainard, but a compelling account of an artistic community through the context of Brainard’s life and work. . . . The emotions are honest, the scenarios real, and the love strong.”
Buffalo ArtVoice:
“In generous, unadorned prose, Padgett presents us with an earthly view of his lifelong friend and collaborator. . . . What most often compels people to read memoirs is the promise of lurid tales of sex, drugs and premature death. While these attributes are quite present in Joe, what one takes away from this book as a reader is the more hopeful possibility of long-lasting and devoted friendships between people, friendships that outlast even the legends born of sex, drugs and premature death.”
Books to Watch Out For:
“Biographies written by best friends often deny hard truths. Not so poet Padgett’s conversational remembrance of Joe Brainard, who, years before his 1994 AIDS death, retreated from the community of artists that energized New York’s art scene in the 1960s: twice gone but, thanks to this unflinching book, not forgotten.”
Kirkus:
“A fond chronicle of the nearly 40-year friendship between poet Padgett and artist Brainard . . . written with profound admiration and affection.”
Publishers Weekly:
“Padgett deftly captures the feel of mid-1960s New York, with its endless parade of celebrities, near-celebrities, hangers-on, has-beens and never-wases.”
American Poet:
“Ron Padgett and Joe Brainard are both hugely influential figures in what is often called the second generation of New York School poets. They were also, from their initial childhood escapades in Tulsa, Oklahoma, until Brainard’s death in 1994, devoted friends. Padgett’s ‘memoir’ of Brainard details their intertwined lives by way of, as Paul Auster writes, ‘a deeply moving and tender portrait of one of the most original artists and writers who ever graced the New York scene.’”
Ron Silliman, Silliman’s Blog:
“In addition to being a super poet & great translator [Padgett] has evolved into the finest memoirist of a generation. . . . Joe is Padgett’s fourth venture into the form. It’s a lengthy, rich, elegant portrait of painter and writer Joe Brainard.”
About.com:
“Clarity and purpose shine in every line. [Padgett’s] productivity is extraordinary, the writing exquisite . . . Brainard was a wonderful, odd, sensible, brilliant artist, and Ron’s memoir gets all the edges right.”
Splendid:
“It’s hard to think of a better author to chronicle Brainard’s active, varied, and often complicated life. . . . Padgett’s Joe overflows with affection for its subject, but it’s also filled with insights on Brainard’s life and work.”
Calamus Bookstore Newsletter:
“A charming and affectionate memoir of a friend.”
Watermark Books Newsletter:
“A wonderful ramble through the streets of Greenwich Village and the parties and lofts and cafes and bars that housed [that] crowd of writers, musicians, and artists.”
John Ashbery:
“The poet Ron Padgett knew Joe Brainard from their childhood in Tulsa until Joe’s tragic death in 1994. He was no doubt predestined to write his shy and brilliant friend’s biography and has done so with exemplary grace, humor, and insight.”
Paul Auster:
“Part biography, part memoir, Ron Padgett’s Joe is a deeply moving and tender portrait of one of the most original artists and writers who ever graced the New York scene. Ten years after Joe Brainard’s death, we need this book to remember the man who remembered everything, who followed his own unique path into the hearts of those who loved and continue to love his work. And who better to tell this story than poet Ron Padgett, Brainard’s lifelong friend? The book he has written is a precious gift to all of us.”
Edmund White:
“Joe Brainard was an innovative artist who gradually stopped working altogether, a stutterer who gave masterful readings, someone insecure about his lack of education who wrote I Remember, a book of lasting importance. His lifelong friend, the poet Ron Padgett, has given us a limpid memoir of Brainard that captures his saintly gentleness, overwhelming generosity and deep originality. This is a precious portrait of one of the key figures of the New York art scene during its glory days in the 1960s and 1970s.”
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