An unusual memoir. It’s a semi-chronological combination of memories, personal photos, poetry, and poetical bits and pieces that may be drafts of song lyrics. It’s weird, but good. And definitely worthwhile.

(Just to add something that may not be important for most people but is for me. it’s a great feeling book: hardcover but small and lightweight; it feels wonderful in your hand as a thing to hold. So just in the tactile sense I’d give it 5 stars.) ( )

I wrote a review on my blog. In short I did not like the book because it was not interesting. Read my review herehttps://macymakesmagic.com/2022/11/28/what-is-it-all-but-luminous-notes-from-an-underground-man-by-art-garfunkel/ ( )

Unlike many of the other reviewers, I really enjoyed this book. It’s not a typical memoir, more of a stream of consciousness. It’s basically a book of poetry. I listened to the audiobook instead of reading it, which I think had an impact on my enjoyment as it’s read by Art Garfunkel. ( )

I grew up listening to (casette tapes of) Simon and Garfunkel on family car trips and somehow my parents' musical taste followed Paul Simon's solo career rather than Art Garfunkel's so I was curious to know more about the lesser known (to me) half of the duo. For straight up information, this was not the source, but it definitely gave insight into Garfunkel's creative mind and process. This is more of a compilation of some of his journals - even using a typeface based on his handwriting, which is kind of cool. Here are snippets of poems, reflections, observations, memories, with very little linear narration. Also included are some original photos. It was kind of like looking through his personal scrapbook, but as such, I felt there was a lot I didn't understand or wasn't privy to. I love the title, and it is referenced several times in the book. What I learned: top titles of the favorite books he has read, favorite songs on his ipod, 2 great loves of his life, 2 sons, a bit about his parents, that he has walked across America and several other countries, that he "lost" his voice for over 2 years, that he has read the entire Random House dictionary, that he and Paul Simon met in Jr. High and started singing together then, that he was in a couple movies in the 70s and is good friends with Jack Nicholson, that he truly sees his voice as a gift. Here's what I didn't learn: why Simon & Garfunkel split up, much about Garfunkel's solo career, any clear trajectory/timeline of his life. I think this was more an exercise in appreciation than understanding and that's luminous too. ( )

4 stars: Very good.

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From the back cover: ARt Garfunkel writes about growing up in the 1940s and 50s , a middle class Jewish boy, living in a redbrick, semi attached house in Queens, playing chess by day, watching the Brooklyn Dodgers by night, feeling his vocal cords "vibrate with the love of sound" from the age of five when he "began to sing with the sense of God's gift running through him." He writes of meeting Paul Simon, the funny guy who made Art laugh. Of their being twelve at the birth of rock n roll... He writes about their becoming Simon & Garfunkel, ruling the pop charts from the age of sixteen, about not being a natural performer but more of a thinker, an underground man. He writes of the hit songs, sex on tour for the thrills, reading books to calm it down, the road to walk it off... he writes of his wife to ease his soul and children to end the aloneness, and about choosing music over a PhD in mathematics. And he writes about his long unfolding split with Paul, and how and why it evolved, and after, learning to perform on his own. About his voice going south (a stiffening of one of the vocal cords) and working to get it back. And much, much more.

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More than most books, I find it hard to review this one. Like Garfunkel’s concerts, it is an amalgam of his poetic, musical remembrances, and his spoken word poetry. He roughly moves the book chronologically, although not totally. There will be one paragraph, a break, a poem, an anecdote, seemingly unrelated, but by the end, tell the picture of this true genius, the underground man.

And therefore more than most, the best way I can describe it is to provide quote from it.
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[Before truly making it big, Art found out that Paul had also recorded a song with other people, not just himself]. He was releasing a record behind my back. Or so it felt. Perception? He’s base, I concluded in an eighth of a second, and the friendship was shattered for life. All else is finding forgiveness. Who have *I* hurt while in my stride?

One night at a noisy party in London in a crowded club George [Harrison] appeared behind my ear. Simon and Garfunkel had just done an outdoor concert at Wembley. I guess he had seen our show. Sweetly, intimately, he spoke of the vibe her perceived. “Your Paul is to you exactly as my Paul is to me.” I can’t get past this disclosure from George Harrison.

To me, it comes down to this: one and one can coexist, or add up to two, or in our case, they can affect each other like electric energy, resulting in this Grammy honor tonight.

At the start of the 21st century, the whole world and its collective consciousness had moved to fear—if you are unsure of it, fear it. If you see someone singing with an iPod in the airport is it yellow alert? Once America needed an act of provocation to invade another country, now only suspicion and paranoia are required. All for a reason and care, all effort to understand differences among nations, and their shades of gray, seem to have been swept aside by the second Bush administration. Simplistically, shockingly, it all became a war of oil and religion (Muhammad vs. McDonalds) and it dropped civilization back five hundred years. ‘If you fear it, attack it.”

To my “partner’s” son:
Though the challenge, the direction, is as blinding as the sun, aim toward your father’s heart and just take one baby step toward it. A little is a lot. Let your true inner self be warmed. His is the heart that needs to melt. Let cracks precede the awe-full task. Then recede, slip back, go cloudy like the weather, whatever. But please persist before he dies. See him as the lonely one-a poet turning prosaic. You are the rising sun.

We give one sixth their worth to those alive; afterward the other five.

Be a better Buddhist. Do all I do now with increased ‘ichinen’. If it’s all in the eye of the beholder, then enrichen the beholder.

Robin Gibb recovers from a coma. What brought him back from the edge—his mother, his doctor, the power to pray? I heard they played him pieces of the album he was making at the time he slipped away. Did he say, in the climb from a very deep hole, ‘I gotta get back to my rock n roll’? ( )