Maybe too philosophical to my taste. Although the title book starts with "How to..." it's not really a manual. It's more like an exposition of the author's memories and her musings about art. Art like a critic of the status quo. There is a lot of talk about art. It was not my cup of tea.
Exhaustive and academic in style, it still manages to move at a brisk pace. I don't agree with every single argument, but it's great to learn some of the established language around topics I have been turning over in my head. Given its scope, I'm guessing it "pairs well" with many other books, but I kept thinking about three recent reads while reading this: "Fall, or: Dodge in Hell" by Stephenson, "Permutation City" by Egan, and "The Circle" by Eggers. The first two deal with identity, context, and bioregionalism from a tech-forward standpoint, and the latter deals with complete context collapse (a society in which rather than do nothing, everybody does everything all the time).
Putting this aside for now. I keep thinking, "Well that was a lot of words not saying much." I'm half-way through it so maybe it'll add up to something. So far it reads like an all-over-the-map academic hippy manifesto without benefit of an editor. I'll probably be accused of "not getting it" and so be it.
Captures so many of my interests this decade in a nuanced art crit approach to turning our attention away from divisive shallow advert-brand-social-media toward the people, land, and shared mental space we deeply inhabit.
