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Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times by Gregory Cowles, Senior Editor, Books.
Let’s celebrate
the eccentrics and obsessives this week, the visionaries and reclusive
cranks who spend decades on a single project or a singular body of work
and wait for the culture — that is to say, for you and me — to catch up.
We
have biographies: of the eccentric neo-Victorian artist Edward Gorey,
the elusive painter Cy Twombly (by a biographer who became a bit
obsessed in his own right) and the novelist Anthony Powell, whose
12-volume novel “A Dance to the Music of Time” was published over the
course of 24 years.
We have a graphic
novel about Weimar-era Berlin that was two decades in the making. We
have meditative essays by an experimental Danish writer; short stories
by an acclaimed master of speculative fiction; and glossy art catalogs,
ready for the coffee table, featuring the work of the painters Henry
Taylor and Bridget Riley. (Fair warning if the Riley is on your wish
list: It costs $700 and consists of five volumes. You might need more
than one coffee table.)
On the dark
side of reclusive genius, we have a popular history of the movie mogul
Howard Hughes and his unhappy influence on the women in his orbit.
You’ll also find a biography here of Lord Byron’s daughter, the amazing
Ada Lovelace, and her mother; and another of the crooner Bing Crosby, a
talent who didn’t need to wait for the culture to catch up because he
was very much in step with his time.
Source: New York Time
