Wednesday, May 01, 2019

Five top books to help you think like a visual artist

Myla Goldberg is the bestselling author of Feast Your Eyes, The False Friend, Wickett’s Remedy, and Bee Season, which was a New York Times Notable Book, winner of the Borders New Voices Prize, and a finalist for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN award, the NYPL Young Lions award, and the Barnes & Noble Discover award. It was adapted to film and widely translated. In addition to her novels, she has written an essay collection, a children’s book, and short stories that have appeared in Harper’s.

At LitHub Goldberg tagged five books to help you think like a visual artist, including:
Julio Cortázar, Blow-Up: And Other Stories

Cortazar changed the title of this short story after Antonioni adapted it for his famous movie, which (surprise) bears very little resemblance to what Cortazar wrote. Reading it puts you inside the mind of a photographer—finely attuned to the details of his camera, his environment, and his craft—who has captured something unsettling on film and grapples with what he’s discovered. Spoiler alert: the discovery in the story is more interesting and subtle than the one in the film version, though both versions address an issue of consent once relegated to street photography, which is now relevant to anyone with a cellphone: When is it okay to take someone’s picture?
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue