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Sep 14, 2016Mooseum rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
This book was a pleasure to read. Gornick's observations are astute. Many of us go through daily life not paying any attention to the details of our surroundings and how we choose to interact (or not) with the people around us on the street, on the bus, etc. Gornick takes all of it in and the small anecdotes she observes connects to her life and gives it meaning. She is constantly engaging with people, whether she knows them or not, and she connects all of these instances into a way of life, a philosophy from connections and observations, and importantly, understanding. That she can look at a photograph of Francois Gillot and Picasso and observe their present and their future shows the depths of Gornick's feelings for people and how they live their lives, and she can relate it to her own experiences. There were many deeply touching incidents. Her visit to the Metropolitan Museum when she sees the statue of Selket and how she implicitly felt, speaks to the powers of art when the right person is looking. That she deeply understood this work in a way that brought her to tears "from somewhere deeper down" is something we should all strive for. Her story about John Dylan reading Beckett in his Westbeth apartment resonated "somewhere deeper down." I happened to watch Agnes Varda's film, Daguerréotypes while reading this book. Varda's film looks at her neighbors on Rue Daguerre in Paris. It is an intimate portrait of the people on her block, her observations of what they do every day and the people who interact with them. It is another intensely personal and inclusive view of life.