What Is It All but Luminous; Notes from an Underground Man

The format is approximately 5.25 inches by 8.25 inches. [8], 241, [7] pages. Illustrations (color). The dust jacket is price-clipped. Arthur Ira Garfunkel (born November 5, 1941) is an American singer, actor and poet who is best known for his partnership with Paul Simon in the folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel. Highlights of Garfunkel's solo music career include one top 10 hit, three top 20 hits, six top 40 hits, 14 Adult Contemporary top 30 singles, five Adult Contemporary number ones, two UK number ones and a People's Choice Award. Through his solo and collaborative work, Garfunkel has earned eight Grammy Awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1990, he and Simon were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2008, Garfunkel was ranked 86th in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. Garfunkel's poetic career began in 1981 while on the Simon & Garfunkel 1981–1982 tour in Switzerland. He was riding a motorcycle and began writing a poem describing the countryside. In 1989, Still Water, Garfunkel's collection of prose poetry, was released to acclaim. Topics included his depression over the loss of his father; Laurie Bird, his companion who committed suicide; his friendship with Paul Simon; and the joy of returning to music. Garfunkel has undertaken several long walks in his lifetime, writing poetry along the way. In the early 1980s, he walked across Japan in a number of weeks. From 1983 to 1997, Garfunkel walked across the United States, taking 40 excursions to complete the route from New York City to the Pacific coast of Oregon. From the golden-haired, curly-headed half of Simon & Garfunkel, a memoir (of sorts)—moving, lyrical impressions, interspersed throughout a narrative, punctuated by poetry, musings, lists of resonant books loved and admired, revealing a life and the making of a musician, that show us, as well, the evolution of a man, a portrait of a life-long friendship and of a collaboration that became the most successful singing duo in the roiling age that embraced, and was defined by, their pathfinding folk-rock music. In What Is It All but Luminous, Art Garfunkel writes about growing up in the 1940s and ‘50s (son of a traveling salesman, listening as his father played Enrico Caruso records), a middle-class Jewish boy, living in a redbrick semi-attached house on Jewel Avenue in Kew Gardens, Queens. He writes of meeting Paul Simon, the kid who made Art laugh (they met at their graduation play, Alice in Wonderland; Paul was the White Rabbit; Art, the Cheshire Cat). Of their being twelve at the birth of rock’n’roll ("it was rhythm and blues. It was black. I was captured and so was Paul"), of a demo of their song, Hey Schoolgirl for seven dollars and the actual record (with Paul’s father on bass) going to #40 on the charts. He writes about their becoming Simon & Garfunkel, ruling the pop charts from the age of sixteen, about not being a natural performer but more a thinker, an underground man. He writes of the hit songs; touring; about being an actor working with directors Mike Nichols ("the greatest of them all"), about choosing music over a Ph.D. in mathematics. And he writes about his long-unfolding split with Paul, and how and why it evolved, and after; learning to perform on his own . . . and about being a husband, a father and much more. First Edition [stated]. Presumed first printing.…