Reviews"Ordinary people brood over their failings and try to correct them; talent puts its failings to work. John Cage is not a powerful logician or rigorous thinker in the linear sense, but that has not kept him from being widely regarded, at age 60, as the most disturbingly original musical mind (if not the best composer) that America has produced since Charles Ives....Cage's most characteristic compositions probably stand slight chance of outliving him by much. They are in essence conceptual: uncollectable and unpreservable, gaily but deliberately writ on water. Not so his books. In 'Silence,' 'A Year From Monday' and now 'M,' the latest installment in his diary series, we have the solid, seizable stuff of art, whether the antiartist likes that or not: Cage caught." -- Donal Henahan, The New York Times Book Review, "A fascinating, maddening, charming miscellany . . . set in over 700 different typefaces, with illustrations and word-drawings adding an esoteric zest . . . It all seems abstruse, but attuned readers could enjoy Cage's high humor while soaking in his penetrating insights and anecdotes intended to 'unstructure' bourgeois society."-Publishers Weekly, "Ordinary people brood over their failings and try to correct them; talent puts its failings to work. John Cage is not a powerful logician or rigorous thinker in the linear sense, but that has not kept him from being widely regarded, at age 60, as the most disturbingly original musical mind (if not the best composer) that America has produced since Charles Ives....Cage's most characteristic compositions probably stand slight chance of outliving him by much. They are in essence conceptual: uncollectable and unpreservable, gaily but deliberately writ on water. Not so his books. In 'Silence,' 'A Year From Monday' and now 'M,' the latest installment in his diary series, we have the solid, seizable stuff of art, whether the antiartist likes that or not: Cage caught."--Donal Henahan, The New York Times Book Review "A fascinating, maddening, charming miscellany . . . set in over 700 different typefaces, with illustrations and word-drawings adding an esoteric zest . . . It all seems abstruse, but attuned readers could enjoy Cage's high humor while soaking in his penetrating insights and anecdotes intended to 'unstructure' bourgeois society."-- Publishers Weekly, "Ordinary people brood over their failings and try to correct them; talent puts its failings to work. John Cage is not a powerful logician or rigorous thinker in the linear sense, but that has not kept him from being widely regarded, at age 60, as the most disturbingly original musical mind (if not the best composer) that America has produced since Charles Ives....Cage's most characteristic compositions probably stand slight chance of outliving him by much. They are in essence conceptual: uncollectable and unpreservable, gaily but deliberately writ on water. Not so his books. In 'Silence,' 'A Year From Monday' and now 'M,' the latest installment in his diary series, we have the solid, seizable stuff of art, whether the antiartist likes that or not: Cage caught."--Donal Henahan, The New York Times Book Review "Ordinary people brood over their failings and try to correct them; talent puts its failings to work. John Cage is not a powerful logician or rigorous thinker in the linear sense, but that has not kept him from being widely regarded, at age 60, as the most disturbingly original musical mind (if not the best composer) that America has produced since Charles Ives.Cage's most characteristic compositions probably stand slight chance of outliving him by much. They are in essence conceptual: uncollectable and unpreservable, gaily but deliberately writ on water. Not so his books. In 'Silence,' 'A Year From Monday' and now 'M,' the latest installment in his diary series, we have the solid, seizable stuff of art, whether the antiartist likes that or not: Cage caught."--Donal Henahan, The New York Times Book Review "A fascinating, maddening, charming miscellany . . . set in over 700 different typefaces, with illustrations and word-drawings adding an esoteric zest . . . It all seems abstruse, but attuned readers could enjoy Cage's high humor while soaking in his penetrating insights and anecdotes intended to 'unstructure' bourgeois society."-- Publishers Weekly, "Ordinary people brood over their failings and try to correct them; talent puts its failings to work. John Cage is not a powerful logician or rigorous thinker in the linear sense, but that has not kept him from being widely regarded, at age 60, as the most disturbingly original musical mind (if not the best composer) that America has produced since Charles Ives….Cage's most characteristic compositions probably stand slight chance of outliving him by much. They are in essence conceptual: uncollectable and unpreservable, gaily but deliberately writ on water. Not so his books. In 'Silence,' 'A Year From Monday' and now 'M,' the latest installment in his diary series, we have the solid, seizable stuff of art, whether the antiartist likes that or not: Cage caught."-Donal Henahan, The New York Times Book Review, "Ordinary people brood over their failings and try to correct them; talent puts its failings to work. John Cage is not a powerful logician or rigorous thinker in the linear sense, but that has not kept him from being widely regarded, at age 60, as the most disturbingly original musical mind (if not the best composer) that America has produced since Charles Ives....Cage's most characteristic compositions probably stand slight chance of outliving him by much. They are in essence conceptual: uncollectable and unpreservable, gaily but deliberately writ on water. Not so his books. In 'Silence,' 'A Year From Monday' and now 'M,' the latest installment in his diary series, we have the solid, seizable stuff of art, whether the antiartist likes that or not: Cage caught."-Donal Henahan, The New York Times Book Review, A fascinating, maddening, charming miscellany . . . set in over 700 different typefaces, with illustrations and word-drawings adding an esoteric zest . . . It all seems abstruse, but attuned readers could enjoy Cage's high humor while soaking in his penetrating insights and anecdotes intended to 'unstructure' bourgeois society., "Ordinary people brood over their failings and try to correct them; talent puts its failings to work. John Cage is not a powerful logician or rigorous thinker in the linear sense, but that has not kept him from being widely regarded, at age 60, as the most disturbingly original musical mind (if not the best composer) that America has produced since Charles IvesÉ.Cage's most characteristic compositions probably stand slight chance of outliving him by much. They are in essence conceptual: uncollectable and unpreservable, gaily but deliberately writ on water. Not so his books. In 'Silence,' 'A Year From Monday' and now 'M,' the latest installment in his diary series, we have the solid, seizable stuff of art, whether the antiartist likes that or not: Cage caught."ÑDonal Henahan, The New York Times Book Review, "Ordinary people brood over their failings and try to correct them; talent puts its failings to work. John Cage is not a powerful logician or rigorous thinker in the linear sense, but that has not kept him from being widely regarded, at age 60, as the most disturbingly original musical mind (if not the best composer) that America has produced since Charles Ives....Cage's most characteristic compositions probably stand slight chance of outliving him by much. They are in essence conceptual: uncollectable and unpreservable, gaily but deliberately writ on water. Not so his books. In 'Silence,' 'A Year From Monday' and now 'M,' the latest installment in his diary series, we have the solid, seizable stuff of art, whether the antiartist likes that or not: Cage caught."--Donal Henahan, The New York Times Book Review, "A fascinating, maddening, charming miscellany . . . set in over 700 different typefaces, with illustrations and word-drawings adding an esoteric zest . . . It all seems abstruse, but attuned readers could enjoy Cage's high humor while soaking in his penetrating insights and anecdotes intended to 'unstructure' bourgeois society."ÑPublishers Weekly, "Ordinary people brood over their failings and try to correct them; talent puts its failings to work. John Cage is not a powerful logician or rigorous thinker in the linear sense, but that has not kept him from being widely regarded, at age 60, as the most disturbingly original musical mind (if not the best composer) that America has produced since Charles Ives .Cage's most characteristic compositions probably stand slight chance of outliving him by much. They are in essence conceptual: uncollectable and unpreservable, gaily but deliberately writ on water. Not so his books. In 'Silence,' 'A Year From Monday' and now 'M,' the latest installment in his diary series, we have the solid, seizable stuff of art, whether the antiartist likes that or not: Cage caught."-Donal Henahan, The New York Times Book Review, Ordinary people brood over their failings and try to correct them; talent puts its failings to work. John Cage is not a powerful logician or rigorous thinker in the linear sense, but that has not kept him from being widely regarded, at age 60, as the most disturbingly original musical mind (if not the best composer) that America has produced since Charles Ives....Cage's most characteristic compositions probably stand slight chance of outliving him by much. They are in essence conceptual: uncollectable and unpreservable, gaily but deliberately writ on water. Not so his books. In 'Silence,' 'A Year From Monday' and now 'M,' the latest installment in his diary series, we have the solid, seizable stuff of art, whether the antiartist likes that or not: Cage caught., "A fascinating, maddening, charming miscellany . . . set in over 700 different typefaces, with illustrations and word-drawings adding an esoteric zest . . . It all seems abstruse, but attuned readers could enjoy Cage's high humor while soaking in his penetrating insights and anecdotes intended to 'unstructure' bourgeois society."- Publishers Weekly
Table Of ContentForeword Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) Continued 1968 (Revised) 62 Mesostics re Merce Cunningham 36 Mesostics Re and Not Re Marcel Duchamp Mureau Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) Continued 1969 Song Six Mesostics (Present; On the windshield of a new Fiat for James K. and Carolyn Brown; In Memoriam S.W.; July 13, 1972; For A.C. on his 70th birthday; Ten years before sixty-seven) Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) Continues 1970-71 Mushroom Book 25 Mesostics Re and Not Re Mark Tobey Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse Continued 1971-72