A Review of "What Art Does" by Brian Eno and Bette A.

 

At a mere 4.5 by 6.5 inches, only 122 pages long, with a cover that’s bright white and soothing flamingo pink, Brian Eno and Bette A.’s What Art Does beckons with an easy-going, “See? Manageable.” That’s even with its subtitle “An Unfinished Theory” dragging along like tin cans attached to a car, startling everyone. That said, a quick peek inside is even more welcoming. Bette A.’s deceptively naive, you could almost draw them yourself, just beyond line drawings are full of childlike whimsy. The typography is also playful, changing size, color, font, and even fading away. Given the ultra-creative natures of its authors—Eno is a British polymath musician, producer, artist, activist, A. a Dutch artist, novelist, and art school teacher—of course this book about art is art itself.

But then what is art? That’s where the aphoristic writing steps in, each sentence a barbed argument posed as indubitable statement. You find yourself bobbing your head in agreement page after page. Take this run of claims, “We all make art all the time, but we don’t really call it that;” art is “the name for a kind of engagement we have with something;” and, “the art engagement begins where functional engagement ends.”

Care to read the rest then do so at the California Review of Books.

Review also posted at the Santa Barbara Independent on May 2, 2025.

A Review of Neko Case's "The Harder I Fight the More I Love You"

 

Given she’s enchanted by fairy tales, it’s only fitting that Neko Case’s memoir The Harder I Fight the More I Love You leaves its readers following breadcrumbs tossed in a dark forest. Sure, many of the typical milestones of the rock ’n’ roll book get visited—childhood record purchases (Best of Blondie, “We’ve Got the Beat” 45), the agony and ecstasy of the road (on bad sound systems: “Your voice sounds like it’s being piped through a thrift store whale’s carcass into a pirate’s wet diaper. Ahoy, bitch!”), the tease and sleaze of a failed major label signing. But don’t come to the book expecting an album blow-by-blow or much dirt or gossip. This is really a book about art—how and why we make it and need it. That involves digging, a care to ever reconsider the past, a drive to outrun whatever hunts and haunts us, from the Green River Killer to familial trauma. And a hope to be fiercely feminist—at one point she rightfully laments, “How do women have any space left inside us with all the shit we swallow?”

Care to read the rest then do so at the California Review of Books.

Review also posted at the Santa Barbara Independent on February 5, 2025.