Love, Joe

Reviews / Votes

In these letters, you feel the force of a person fully met. * New York Times Book Review * Joe Brainard was the sweetest person I've ever known, and that sweetness radiates from these letters, which are also an essential record of New York's painters and poets from the 1960s to the 1990s. Famous for his writing in I Remember and for his thousands of beautiful collages, Joe was a passionate, original spirit, gifted with a serious naivete. -- Edmund White, author of <i>The Humble Lover</i> Readers of Joe Brainard's masterpiece I Remember wish they could have known him, and this book is the next best thing. Here is the same sharp, funny, openhearted, and utterly authentic Joe, in letters brimming with original insights about art, culture and creativity, love and friendship, and the simple but profound joys of everyday life. -- Sigrid Nunez, author of <i>The Friend</i> I read Love, Joe with great pleasure. A vibrant portrait of Brainard-charming, passionate, frank, antiheroic-emerges from these letters as we follow his artistic development and at the same time enter his social and cultural world, peopled by artists and writers formative not only to Brainard's times but also to our own. Utterly engrossing. -- Lydia Davis, author of <i>Our Strangers: Stories</i> We all know that Joe Brainard was a great artist, but fewer know that he possessed an exceptional talent for friendship. He kept up with a wide circle of brilliant pals. The letters gathered here, like his art, are intimate, newsy, affectionate, homoerotic, hilarious, and addictive, and they offer a fascinating portrait of a kid from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who became a prince of the New York art world. -- Deborah Solomon, author of <i>Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell</i> Sometimes published correspondence is uncomfortably revealing, but Joe Brainard's shows that he actually was kind, sweet, funny, generous, humble, intuitive, brilliant, and openhearted. The book's deft editing strategy, which clusters his letters to one friend at a time, shows all sides of his personality. Some friends are great for gossip; others get to the core of his art. At no time is he ever less than engaging. This is a rare compilation of letters you will read from one end to the other. -- Lucy Sante, author of <i>I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition</i> Friendship itself may have been the artist and writer Joe Brainard's most important medium. This delightful collection, expertly curated and framed by Daniel Kane, offers an irresistible portrait of not only Brainard's own amiable aesthetic but also the entire queer artistic milieu his galvanizing and optimistic presence helped make possible. Again and again, these letters demonstrate Brainard's surprising intelligence and insight, his rare combination of ambition and humility, and his compassionate embrace of his own imperfect life. Readers are sure to find a new appreciation of why everyone seemed to love Joe. -- Brian Glavey, author of <i>The Wallflower Avant-Garde: Modernism, Sexuality, and Queer Ekphrasis</i> Love, Joe [shows] how much Brainard's personal life overlapped with his art. Probably no other writer's letters so closely resemble his published work, and vice versa. The collection offers plenty of voyeuristic thrill. * New Yorker * As could be said of the whole of Love, Joe, these letters radiate the warmth of a companion who, once he committed himself to you, was in it for the long haul. This collection functions as a guidebook on how to be lovable, a lesson in the importance of withholding judgment, being abidingly present, and seeing one's friends-minutely, fondly, unblinkingly-for all that they are. * Bookforum * I confess that I leave this collection wishing that I'd known Brainard in real life-that I'd been lucky enough to receive one of these letters . . . I will have to do instead with Love, Joe and its imperative to love Brainard, with thanks to Kane for reminding us of all the reasons why we should. * Poetry * Brainard's trove of letters leads him down from Mount Olympus on a staircase of his own words. Love, Joe reveals a man who had faults, as well as desires that could be pragmatic and unsurprisingly ambitious. -- Daniel Felsenthal * The Baffler * A great addition to have for any creative needing regular inspiration (or consolation). * Observer * Love, Joe invites contemporary readers to inhabit the sprawling, self-made world of a great American artist. * Rain Taxi Review of Books * Kane's biographical notes are excellent and keep you well-oriented in time. * Gay and Lesbian Review * His letters readily invite readers in, deserving their complete attention as well as utter fixation. * Anarchist Review of Books *