Things I Didn't Know
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Vintage Publishing
Published:27th Sep '07
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
What Robert Hughes did for the history of Australia in The Fatal Shore, he now does for his own life.
Gives us an account of the author's early life, up until the time he quit Australia for the United States. Part memoir, part history lesson, part philosophical tract, the author uses his own experiences to examine the nature of art, war, sex, religion-writing and life itself.
Robert Hughes, one of the most illuminating minds ever to have taken on the subjects of art and culture, uses his same critical abilities to give us a brutally intimate account of his early life, up until the time he quit Australia for the United States.
Part memoir, part history lesson, part philosophical tract, Hughes uses his own experiences to examine the nature of art, war, sex, religion, writing and life itself.
Piercing, razor-sharp, and above all, fearless, this is by far Hughes's most personal writing to date.
Entertaining -- Geoff Dyer * Mail on Sunday *
This is, as you'd expect, a hugely entertaining book -- Martin Gayford * Sunday Telegraph *
Edgy and engrossing memoir -- Waldemar Januszczak * Sunday Times *
Hughes...deftly intertwines personal and cultural history in this fiercely erudite memoir...it offers a fascinating examination of artistic patrimony and the formation of a critic * New Yorker *
Bracingly candid... There isn't a phrase that doesn't reward immediate rereading * New Statesman *
A natural raconteur, whose emotional and intellectual engagement with art is so compelling that any subject he touches upon... becomes a subject of immediate interest. His taut prose gleams with brightly polished, shard-edged mots -- John Adamson * Literary Review *
Again and again, Hughes expresses enthusiasm for high art that has absorbed something from low art or non-art...as a critic he avoids the jargon of the art world and the obscurities of the academy * London Review of Books *
A magisterial feat of inquiry, verve and style -- Rachel Cooke * Prospect *
Eloquent and fearless * Daily Telegraph *
ISBN: 9780099501435
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 26mm
Weight: 287g
416 pages