What Is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man

by Art Garfunkel Narrated by Art Garfunkel

Overview

From the golden-haired, curly-headed half of Simon & Garfunkel--a memoir (of sorts): artful, moving, lyrical; the making of a musician; the evolution of a man, a portrait of a life-long friendship and collaboration that became one of the most successful singing duos of their time.

Art Garfunkel writes about his life before, during, and after Simon & Garfunkel . . . about their folk-rock music in the roiling age that embraced and was defined by their pathbreaking sound. He writes about growing up in the 1940s and '50s (son of a traveling salesman), a middle class Jewish boy, living in a red brick semi-attached house in Kew Gardens, Queens, a kid who was different--from the age of five feeling his vocal cords "vibrating with the love of sound" . . . meeting Paul Simon in school, the funny guy who made Art laugh; their going on to junior high school together, of being twelve at the birth of rock'n'roll, both of them "captured" by it; going to a recording studio in Manhattan to make a demo of their song, "Hey Schoolgirl" (for $7!) and the actual record (with Paul's father on bass) going to #40 on the national charts, selling 150,000 copies . . .
     He writes about their becoming Simon & Garfunkel, taking the world by storm, ruling the pop charts from the time he was sixteen, about not being a natural performer, but more a thinker . . . touring; sex-for-thrills on the road, reading or walking to calm down (walking across two continents--the USA and Europe). He writes of being an actor working with directors Nicolas Roeg (Bad Timing) and Mike Nichols ("the greatest of them all") . . . getting his masters in mathematics at Columbia; choosing music over a PhD; his slow unfolding split with Paul and its aftermath; learning to perform on his own, giving a thousand concerts worldwide, his voice going south (a stiffening of one vocal cord) and working to get it back . . . about being a husband, a father and much more.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

05/29/2017
Garfunkel, half of the folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel, loves singing, reading, performing, acting, walking, keeping lists, and his wife—as he writes in this meandering, sometimes incoherent memoir. Early on, Garfunkel pays tribute to his vocal talent: “These vocal chords... have vibrated with the love of sound since I was five and began to sing with the sense of God’s gift running through me.” As the narrative proceeds, Garfunkel wanders through his life, reflecting here and there on his complex relationship with Paul Simon; his love for and admiration of James Taylor; the suicide of his girlfriend Laurie Bird in the late 1970s; his walks across Japan, the U.S., and Europe; and his wife Kathryn Cermack’s breast-cancer diagnosis in 1996. Obsessed with lists, Garfunkel intersperses his rambling reflections with lists of the books he has read, songs on his iPod, and even 10 reasons why he’s in “awe of his wife.” Garfunkel seldom settles on one subject for long before he’s off to a related topic from his life. While Garfunkel reveals flashes of real insight about the transcendent power of music and the inner workings of a singer’s life, for the most part this slim volume feels tiresome. (Sept.)

From the Publisher

Acclaim for Art Garfunkel’s
WHAT IS IT ALL BUT LUMINOUS

"Captivating . . . Even before he met Simon, he found his voice, and not just any voice. It is perhaps one of the most magical, alluring voices in music history . . ."

—Michael Granberry, Dallas Morning News

"Charming and poetic; uniquely written and unconventional . . . Garfunkel can now add memoirist to his resume of singer/actor/pop culture icon."

—David Chiu, Huffington Post

"I was quite blown away with what a strong, beautiful and intimate memoir What Is It All But Luminous turns out to be. It is so well written and has so many wonderful little scenes and insights, delicious quirks of Art Garfunkel. I loved it; it's a very special pleasure."

—Jann Wenner

 “Garfunkel reveals flashes of real insight about the transcendent power of music and the inner workings of a singer’s life.”

—Publishers Weekly

SEPTEMBER 2017 - AudioFile

Art Garfunkel, who is known for both music and acting, has kept count of the books he’s read over the years. His love of words becomes obvious as he celebrates both his career and his life aloud. He even rhapsodizes about the shape of the "A" in his first name. Garfunkel's writing is a lot like lyrics, filled with rhymes and meant for the ear. His soft voice gives his words a gentle rhythm. Most of his stories and thoughts are joyous, although he touches on painful topics such as his girlfriend Laurie Bird's tragic suicide. Garfunkel's stream-of-consciousness style is enjoyable from the beginning and becomes even better as it goes along and listeners get into the rhythm of his life. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2017-06-27
The silky voiced singer looks back on his career and life.It would be hard to improve on the author's description of his younger self: "I live in my own rarified air. I put the ‘e' in ‘artist' every day." There have been few popular music memoirs with more literary references and less of a sense of self-deprecating humor. Though Garfunkel (Still Water: Prose Poems, 1989) knows that he is generally dismissed as the secondary partner to songwriter Paul Simon—"I was a ‘BOUNCE,' a sort of wall / and he of course had the ball"—this singular mixture of verse, doggerel, blog and diary entries, soul-baring confession, and lists of hundreds of books read is less about setting the record straight on Simon and Garfunkel than allowing readers to gaze into the poetic soul of an artist who variously sees himself as Don Quixote, James Joyce, Rimbaud, Odysseus, Whitman, and Prometheus. "I have these vocal cords. Two," he writes. "They have vibrated with the love of sound since I was five and began to sing with the sense of God's gift running through me." Simon may have written the songs, but Garfunkel had the voice, the hair, and the looks, and he got the girls. But all things must pass. "Does anyone notice the faint aroma of slowly decaying flesh?" he asks. "I'm depressed. All is vanity. Where is meaning?" Much of the book is about the joy he has found as a husband and a father, and some of it is about his acting career, which established him as a presence apart from Simon. "Before there was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, there was Simon and Garfunkel—an extraordinary, a singular love affair," he writes, though the relationship is as ambivalent as it is symbiotic. Now, many decades on, "I am an old boatman / I cast my net of pretense before me / Then I sail into it." There are many voyages here, some flashes of vision, and plenty of pretense.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172051906
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	09/26/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

On Saturday mornings, in 1953, in Keds sneakers, white on white, I took my basketball to P.S. 164. We played half-court ball, three on three. Or else I listened to Martin Block’s Make-Believe Ballroom on the radio. I loved to chart the top thirty songs. It was the numbers that got me. I kept meticulous lists — when a new singer like Tony Bennett came onto the charts with “Rags to Riches.” I watched the record jump from, say, #23 to #14 in a week. The mathematics of the jumps went to my sense of fun. I was commercially aware through the Hit Parade, as well as involved in the music. Johnny Ray’s “Cry,” the Crewcuts’ “Sha-boom,” Roy Hamilton ballads, “Unchained Melody” reached me. Soon the Everly Brothers would take me for The Big Ride.
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "What Is It All but Luminous"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Art Garfunkel.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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