This book is a collection or recollections of how different artists and writers work. Quite simply a description of their working day. When do they get up? What do they have for breakfast? For how long do they write or compose?
Every artist/writer/composer is awarded a page or two and this means that there isnt really time to get in deep but what emanates is a pattern of how similar people in general are. The wake up, have breakfast and work.
Stravinsky, Agatha Christie, Hemingway, Jackson Pollock are just a couple of the many artists featured in this fairly nerdy book. As somewhat of a fan I thought it was interesting to see how the Beatwriters werent in the book at all...perhaps because they had no rituals?
Also I find it kind of funny that when Im reading about someone I admire or I have read or listened to my attention perks up. The book has a tendency to fall into a slight rutt of men drinking coffee and eating eggs. Which obviously isnt the writers fault. Im a man and I drink coffee and I eat Eggs....so now you know my dirty secret.
Interesting bits that caught my attention.
Truman Capote couldnt begin or end anything on a Friday.
Kingsley Amis always stopped writing when he knew exactly what was to come next, just to simpilfy the next days work.
Truman Capote Writing
Throughout the book Im astonished of how drugs and alcohol see to be a vital part of most entrys daily regimen. I realize that this is part for chock effect. But I still find it very impressive that they get anything done at all. Gin, whiskey, wine, lunch martinis, amphetamines. One pattern is that appears is how the everyday life starts out fairly disciplined with a definite ratio of everything. 3 parts writing one part drinking....and then after a couple of years the scale starts tipping.
Also I realized while reading that I feel that Im envious of the lifestyle of some of the writers. Sleeping until 11 and the butler brings you coffee and the eggs. Beethoven apparently even had time to count his coffee beans everyday so its just right. I usually settle for black and as close to me as possible.
After I had read 74% of the book (I read it on my Kindle so I know exactly) I asked my wife. Isnt it weird how everyone in the book has their lunches, cocktails, breakfasts, exercises, cupboard gin down to a perfect science but noone in the book ever has sex. Not one mention of it.
Fast forward to 76%... George Simenon apparently had sex four times a day. Often with four different women. He estimated that he had had sex with 10 000 women in his life. His wife said it was an exaggeration....it probably was just 1200.
One afterthought you get from the book is that it makes you think of your own idiosyncracies. What do I need to get my creative juices flowing? For how long can I work? What do I need to wear to by at my creative peak?
Anyways...Is it a good read? I would say so. Its interesting and fun but Its not the kind of book you should read in one sitting but hit a favorite artist now and then.
Ill easily give it two of my halfassed pages in longhand and a lunch martini.
Now Playing (As I wrote this):
Sufjan Stevens: No mans land
Eels - Railroad man
Pajama Club - From a friend to a friend
Reminder - So Gently (Not my choice....Spotify on Random)
Bowerbirds - La denegracion
PJ Harvey - The last living rose
Richard Moult - The five daughters I
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