Contemporary Authors

• Still Water: Prose Poems E.P. Dutton (New York, NY), 1989
• What Is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man Alfred A. Knopf (New York, NY), 2017

1. Still water : prose poems https://lccn.loc.gov/89001091 Garfunkel, Art. Still water : prose poems / Art Garfunkel. 1st ed. New York : E.P. Dutton, c1989. viii, 119 p. : ill. ; 22 cm. PS3557.A7154 S75 1989 ISBN: 0525247955 : 2. What is it all but luminous : notes from an underground man https://lccn.loc.gov/2016037296 Garfunkel, Art, author. What is it all but luminous : notes from an underground man / Art Garfunkel. First edition. New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2017.©2017 241 pages : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 22 cm ML420.G2514 A3 2017 ISBN: 9780385352475 hardcover

• Art Garfunkel - http://www.artgarfunkel.com/bio.html

  Biography

  Although it has been over 40 years since Bridge Over Troubled Water was recorded, Art Garfunkel's image and signature vocal remain among the most instantly recognizable in popular music. His "beautiful countertenor," as Neil Strauss described Art's voice in The New York Times, is clear and resonant, surely one of the finest instruments in all of popular music, and a time-honored friend to a world of listeners.

  The dialogue began for Art at age four, when his father brought home one of the first wire recorders. "That got me into music more than anything else," he recalls, "singing and being able to record it." Seven years later he was singing Everly Brothers songs at school talent shows with a partner, Paul Simon, from his Forest Hills neighborhood in Queens, New York. "Then rhythm 'n blues, rock 'n roll came along." He and Paul set their sights on the Brill Building. "We practiced in the basement so much that we got professional sounding. We made demos in Manhattan and knocked on all the doors of the record companies with our hearts in our throats." In 1957, 'Tom and Jerry' (as they were called then) landed a recording contract. Their first 45, "Hey, Schoolgirl" (which they wrote together) scored a moderate hit and they appeared on "American Bandstand" as high school seniors. "We got a quick education in the record business," Art recounts.

  "But I left and went to college. I was the kid who was going to find some way to make a 'decent' living." He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree at Columbia College, majoring in Art History; later he earned his Masters degree in Mathematics at Columbia University. But he never stopped singing, and even recorded several solo singles (as 'Artie Garr') while in school. When he met up again with Simon in 1962 and they began to rehearse, the decision was clear to get back together as a duo.

  They started performing as Simon & Garfunkel at the height of the folk music boom in late-1963, and within a year were signed to Columbia Records, who paired them with producer/engineer Roy Halee. Simon & Garfunkel maintained a tireless pace in the recording studio and on the road, reaching a wide and loyal international audience. From 1964 to 1970 they recorded a groundbreaking string of classic albums (Wednesday Morning 3 A.M., Sounds Of Silence, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, The Graduate, Bookends, and Bridge Over Troubled Water) and an equally impressive body of songs, many of which became pop standards, among them; "The Sound Of Silence," "Homeward Bound," "I Am a Rock," "Kathy's Song," "April Come She Will," "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her," "At the Zoo," "A Hazy Shade of Winter," "America," "Scarborough Fair/Canticle," "Mrs. Robinson," "The Boxer," "Bridge Over Troubled Water," "Cecilia," "El Condor Pasa," and "My Little Town."

  Simon & Garfunkel won five Grammy awards together, two in 1968 (Record of the Year and Best Contemporary Pop Performance/ Duo or Group for "Mrs. Robinson"); and three in 1970 (Record of the Year, Album of the Year, and Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists for "Bridge Over Troubled Water," which also won Song of the Year and Best Engineered Recording). In 1977, "Bridge Over Troubled Water" received the prestigious Britannia Award for "Best International Pop LP and Single, 1952-77," as voted by the music industry of Great Britain. In 1972, Simon & Garfunkel Greatest Hits was released, remaining on the charts for 131 weeks in the US and a staggering 179 weeks in the UK. The album has since sold 14 million units - the largest selling album of all time for a duo. In 1990, Paul and Art were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

  "They were fabulous years," Art remembers warmly. "I'll always be happy to say a little on behalf of the duo. I'm proud of singing those great songs. Now they teach Paul Simon songs in churches and schools as part of the curricula... it seems that part of good citizenship is the knowledge of the songs we did. How can I grasp that?"

  Having already worked with director Mike Nichols on The Graduate soundtrack, Art went on to feature acting roles in Nichols' movies Catch-22 (1969) and Carnal Knowledge ('71), opposite Ann-Margret, Candice Bergen and Jack Nicholson. Art also garnered acclaim for his roles in films such as Nicholas Roeg's Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession ('80) with Theresa Russell and Harvey Keitel, Good to Go ('86) and Jennifer Lynch's controversial film, Boxing Helena ('93).

  Art Garfunkel's first solo album, Angel Clare, was released in 1973 to critical and commercial acclaim. The album contained the smash-hit Jimmy Webb penned tune "All I Know" and was produced by long time Simon & Garfunkel engineer and co-producer, Roy Halee. Halee also produced "Second Avenue," which became a hit single in 1974.

  Breakaway, co-produced with Richard Perry was released in 1975 and contained the mega-hit "I Only Have Eyes For You." In addition to the title song, the album contained a treasure trove of hits including, "Looking For The Right One" (background vocals by David Crosby, Graham Nash and Steven Bishop), "Rag Doll," 99 Miles From LA," the ex-Beach Boy Bruce Johnston's "Disney Girls," as well as a reunion with Paul Simon on "My Little Town."

  In 1976, Garfunkel recalls, "I went to Muscle Shoals, Alabama for my third album, Watermark (1977), an entire album of Jimmy Webb songs with the exception of Sam Cooke's timeless "What a Wonderful World," produced by Phil Ramone, with vocals by Art, Paul Simon and James Taylor.

  "Bright Eyes," written and produced by Mike Batt and heavily featured in the animated film version of Watership Down, topped the UK charts in spring 1979. The single sold over a million copies. Fate for Breakfast was released in 1979 and included the hit single "Since I Don't Have You" featuring the brilliant Michael Brecker on tenor saxophone. The album reached #2 on the UK charts.

  Named one of the best albums of 1981 by Rolling Stone Magazine, Scissors Cut included the Gallagher & Lyle hit, "A Heart In New York." Stephen Holden in Rolling Stone wrote, this is "Art Garfunkel's finest album, easily justifies his unfashionable formal approach to pop music by its sheer aural beauty." Shortly after the release of Scissor Cut, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel reunited for a concert in New York's Central Park before a crowd of 500,000. Following up on the success of the concert, HBO special and live album (Platinum), the duo undertook a worldwide tour in 1982-83.

  The Animals' Christmas, recorded with Amy Grant and the London Symphony Orchestra, was released in 1986. Written by Jimmy Webb and engineered and co-produced by Jeff Emerick (former engineer for The Beatles). Art said at the time, "It's a gothic cathedral of an album, very ambitious. It was the type of project that would have been done by papal commission long ago." Emerick continued to work with Art on his sixth solo album, Lefty, released in 1988. It includes a startling remake of Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman" and a duet with Kenny Rankin on "I Wonder Why."

  In the mid-1980's, Art's obsession with long-distance walking began to come into focus, starting with a three week hike across the rice paddies and back roads of Japan in 1982. By 1984, his walk across America was a major part of his annual schedule. Concurrently, "I became a writer for the first time in my life," he says, "not a songwriter, but a literary guy." A collection of his prose poetry, Still Water, was published in 1989.

  In the spring of 1990, at the request of the US State Department, Art performed before 1.4 million people at an outdoor rally to support and promote democracy in Sofia, Bulgaria. Enjoying the experience of live performances, Art began touring Europe, Asia and the United States in the early Nineties. "I had horrible stage fright, but just going out there and doing it night after night has brought my adrenaline down to a manageable place. Now I feel I'm just coming into my prime as a stage performer."

  Art's eighth solo album, up 'til now, offered up a compilation of old Simon & Garfunkel rarities, live Garfunkel recordings, and new studio ballads including Art's beautiful duet with James Taylor on "Crying In The Rain," and both the theme for the television series, "Brooklyn Bridge" as well as "Two Sleepy People" from the film A League of Their Own. The albums release in October coincided with a series of 21 sold-out reunion shows with Paul Simon at New York's Paramount Theater.

  Having completed his walk across the United States in 1996, Disney released a documentary-style video that chronicles Art's 12-year walk as well as a celebratory concert at the Registry Hall on Ellis Island, where Art's ancestors had first stepped onto American soil. Across America, a live CD of the concert was released later that year. "My goal," says Art, "was to feel my connection with America, one step at a time."

  Getting a bit restless, Art began his walk across Europe in 1998. Beginning in County Clare on the western coast of Ireland, Art will continue his trek eastward until he eventually reaches Istanbul. Art says he is "not a treadmill guy... this is my way of getting exercise."

  On the heels of Across America, Art recorded Songs From a Parent to a Child, which was nominated for Best Musical Album for Children (1997). The album, inspired by his son James, features renditions of songs by Cat Stevens, Marvin Gaye, Lovin' Spoonful, James Taylor and Lennon/McCartney.

  Everything Waits To Be Noticed, marked Art's debut as a songwriter, as he collaborated with Buddy Mondlock and Maia Sharp on songs inspired by Still Water. Reviewing the album, Jan Wenner wrote, "I hear elements of everything from the surging folk pop of Buckingham/Nicks-era Fleetwood Mack to the crisp folk-rock sorcery of the Mamas and the Papa to the deft vocal-jazz diction of the Manhattan Transfer. But, above all, I discern a startlingly original chemistry."

  In 2003, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel accepted the Grammy's Lifetime Achievement Award and performed "Sound of Silence" to open the live broadcast. Paul and Art decided the time was right for a reunion and announced a worldwide tour that would continue into 2004.

  Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel performed together at Madison Square Garden on September 20, 2005 in "From The Big Apple to The Big Easy," a concert for long term relief and rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The duo sang "Bridge Over Troubled Water," Homeward Bound" and "Mrs. Robinson." The concert raised $9 million for long-term relief from the hurricane.

  Art Garfunkel released his 12th solo album, Some Enchanted Evening in January 2007. The CD is a musical celebration of material from the 20th century’s greatest songwriters, including Rodgers & Hammerstein, Irving Berlin, Antonio Carlos Jobim and George Gershwin. “I’ve been loving this stuff all my life,” Art says. The album is the organic next chapter in Art’s life, as he reflects on fatherhood and the chaotic world we live in: “In this nervous world I want to soothe. It’s a great time for moderation, for thoughtfulness, for dialogue, for the great Exhale, for humor. A great time for a sweet sound, a visceral, charming, prayerful sound.”

  In teaming with his friend and producer, Richard Perry, Art found a forum for his revered vocal style, recapturing the spirit of their Breakaway sessions, which produced the hit “I Only Have Eyes For You.” “In a sense, Richard and I picked up where we left off. This album is Richard’s elegant production, it fits me good, and I am especially proud of it” says Art. “Some of the songs I brought in like ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ and Harold Arlen’s ‘Let’s Fall In Love.’ I had my favorites and he had his, like ‘Life Is But A Dream’ and ‘Quiet Nights.’ We both love Johnny Mathis and Chet Baker.”

  "I feel somewhat different from many people in the extraordinary amount of good fortune that fell into my lap and made up my life," Art muses. "I rehearsed a lot in my teenage years and really sought after what this country holds, good fortune for those who go after it with hard work. But I do feel as I pass through the country, it's a charmed life. I grew up with a lot of love in my family, so I have the five senses with which to glean the richness of this land as I pass through it."

• Biography - https://www.biography.com/people/art-garfunkel-17191580

  Art Garfunkel Biography.com
  Singer(1941–)
  Art Garfunkel is a singer and actor who rose to fame as half of the '60s folk-rock duo Simon & Garfunkel.
  Who Is Art Garfunkel?

  Art Garfunkel was born on November 5, 1941, in Forest Hills, New York. He met fellow musician Paul Simon while in school and went on to form a band called Tom and Jerry. Though the duo didn't find much success with the Tom and Jerry moniker, they began to gain a following after changing their name to Simon & Garfunkel and releasing songs that spoke to the generation of the 1960s and '70s, such as "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and "The Sound of Silence." Garfunkel is a singer, an arranger, an actor, and a poet.
  Early Life, Childhood Friendship with Paul Simon

  Singer Arthur "Art" Garfunkel was born in Forest Hills, New York, on November 5, 1941, to Rose and Jack Garfunkel. Sensing his son's enthusiasm for melody, Jack, a traveling salesman, bought Garfunkel a wire recorder. Even as young as four, Garfunkel would sit for hours with the gadget, singing, listening and fine-tuning his voice, and then recording again. "That got me into music more than anything else, singing and being able to record it," he recalls.

  At Forest Hills Junior Elementary School, the young Art Garfunkel was known for belting out songs in empty hallways and performing in plays. In sixth grade, he was in a school production of Alice in Wonderland along with classmate Paul Simon. Simon knew Garfunkel as the singer who was always surrounded by girls. The two lived only blocks from each other in Queens, but it wasn't until Simon heard Garfunkel sing that their fates aligned. Soon, the duo began singing in school talent shows and practicing long hours in basements.

  During their high school years, the future Grammy winners performed as Tom Landis and Jerry Graph, fearing that their real names sounded too Jewish and would hamper their success. They performed original music by Simon and pooled their money to make their first professional recording. Their Everly Brothers-influenced track "Hey Schoolgirl" was a minor hit, and secured the duo a recording contract with Big Records in 1957. They became frequent visitors to the Brill Building, offering their services as demo singers to the songwriters who were churning out hits like they were in music factory. Their hit single scored them an appearance on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, going on right after Jerry Lee Lewis. After that, their musical careers quieted down, and they worried that they'd hit their peak at age 16.
  Simon & Garfunkel

  When high school was over, Simon and Garfunkel decided to go their separate ways and attend college. Garfunkel stayed close to home and attended Columbia University, where he studied art history and joined a fraternity. He later earned a master's degree in mathematics, also at Columbia. Just as he would continue his academic work throughout his career, Garfunkel continued to sing while in college, releasing a handful of solo tracks under the name Artie Garr while becoming ensconced in the growing folk scene. Once again, their parallel talents and interests brought Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel together. In 1962, the former Tom and Jerry reunited as a new, more folk-oriented duo. No longer worried about how anti-Semitism might affect record sales, they used their real names, and became Simon & Garfunkel.

  In late 1964, they released the studio album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. Nothing much happened with it commercially, and Simon headed off to England, the duo having decided to go their separate ways professionally. Producer Tom Wilson remixed the song "The Sounds of Silence," from that album and released it, and it went to #1 on the Billboard charts. Simon headed back to Queens, where the duo reunited and decided to record and perform more music together. With Simon writing the songs, and Garfunkel providing vocal arrangements and harmonies, they released one hit album after another, each record taking their music and lyrics to a new level. Critical and commercial success came—and increased—with each of their releases: Sounds of Silence (1966), Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966), and Bookends (1968). Around the time they were working on Bookends, director Mike Nichols asked them to contribute songs to the soundtrack of the 1967 movie The Graduate. As part of the seminal movie that addressed alienation and conformity, the duo furthered their reputation as the voices of a generation. The only original song, "Mrs. Robinson," became a #1 hit, appearing on both The Graduate soundtrack and on the Bookends album.

  A year later, Nichols was directing Catch-22, and offered Garfunkel a role. This delayed production on their next album, and started to sow the seeds of their future break-up. They were both moving in new creative directions.

  In 1970 they released their biggest hit album yet, Bridge Over Troubled Water. Recorded with innovative — and makeshift — studio techniques, and featuring influences from a wide variety of musical styles, the album was a massive commercial hit and won them six Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, Song of the Year and Record of the Year for its title track.

  It was their last studio album. Initially, they planned to get back together after a break, but once they’d been apart for a while, continuing their creative pursuits separately seemed to make more sense. Simon & Garfunkel were no more.

  Two years after their break-up, Simon & Garfunkel's Greatest Hits was released and stayed on the American charts for 131 weeks. That same year, they appeared together at a benefit for Presidential hopeful George McGovern.
  Solo Career: 'All I Know,' 'I Only Have Eyes For You' & More

  Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel parted ways in 1970, but they remained tied to each other personally and professionally. On-again-off-again friends and collaborators, they reunited several times in their careers only to discover they couldn't work together after all, certainly not beyond short-term projects. For years, Garfunkel remembered their time together warmly (although that would change). "I'll always be happy to say a little on behalf of the duo. I'm proud of singing those great songs. Now they teach Paul Simon songs in churches and schools as part of the curricula... it seems that part of good citizenship is the knowledge of the songs we did. How can I grasp that?" (Decades later, feeling slightly less warm about their relationship, he would give a vitriolic interview to The Telegraph, describing Simon as an insecure narcissist.)

  In the meantime, he gave his full attention to his own solo career. His first album, Angel Clare (1973), featured the hit "All I Know," written by Jimmy Webb, produced by longtime Simon & Garfunkel producer Roy Halee. (The song got a new life in 2005 when it was covered by Five For Fighting on the Chicken Little soundtrack.)

  His next album, Breakway (1975) gave him another hit, a cover of the classic "I Only Have Eyes For You." The album featured guests like David Crosby, Graham Nash, and Stephen Bishop, as well as the first new track from Simon and Garfunkel in five years, "My Little Town," which also appeared on Simon's solo album Still Crazy After All These Years.

  With his next album, Watermark (1977), Garfunkel focused on collaborating with one songwriter. Jimmy Webb wrote all of the songs with one exception: a cover of the Sam Cooke hit "What a Wonderful World," sung by Garfunkel, Simon, and James Taylor, which went to #17 on the charts.

  Garfunkel scored another hit off of Watermark, with help from the song "Bright Eyes," which became the sad, beautiful theme song to the movie adaptation of Richard Adams' Watership Down. It topped the charts in the U.K.
  Art Garfunkel & Paul Simon in 1981 Photo By Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

  Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon perform in 1981. (Photo: Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)

  His 1981 album Scissors Cut was a critical success but a commercial flop. A year later, Simon & Garfunkel played a concert in Central Park together, breaking all existing records by pulling in an audience of 500,000 people. After that they went on a world tour, and released a double album and an HBO special of their Central Park show. But the reunion was not to last. They scrapped plans for an album of new material together, and Simon kept the songs for his own solo album.

  Back on his own again, Garfunkel peppered his music career with forays into acting. He had already done several movies with director Mike Nichols, including Carnal Knowledge (1971), and he guest starred on TV shows as well, including an episode of Laverne & Shirley. In 1998, he appeared on the children’s TV show Arthur as a singing moose.
  Later Career: Solo Projects and Reuniting with Paul Simon

  Garfunkel continued to perform on stage and record new material. In 1990, he performed in front of 1.4 million people at the request of the U.S. State Department, at a rally to promote democracy in Sofia, Bulgaria. That year, Simon & Garfunkel were also inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

  Three years later, he released the album Up 'Til Now, which included his duet with James Taylor on “Crying in the Rain,” along with the theme song for the show Brooklyn Bridge, and “Two Sleepy People” from the hit movie A League of Their Own. That October, he and Simon played 21 sold-out shows at the Paramount Theater in New York City. In 1997, he recorded an album for children inspired by his son James, covering songs by Cat Stevens, Marvin Gaye, and John Lennon-Paul McCartney, among others. Then, in 1998, he made his songwriting debut on his album Everything Wants to Be Noticed.

  In 2003, he was on stage with Simon again, accepting a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and playing “Sounds of Silence” on the live show. They toured again after that, and in 2005, performed “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “Homeward Bound,” and “Mrs. Robinson” at a benefit for victims of Hurricane Katrina at Madison Square Garden.

  Speaking of an artistic high he felt during one of their reunion concerts, Garfunkel said, "I knew we did something right in the 60s, but I didn't know how right."

  In 2007, he re-teamed with producer Richard Perry (Breakaway) on the album Some Enchanted Evening, recording standards he had loved his entire life.

  In 2010, he started to experience problems with his vocal chords, which became apparent when he was performing with Simon at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. It was a struggle to sing anything at all. He had “paresis” of his vocal chords, and started to lose his middle range. It took about four years for him to recover, and he told Rolling Stone magazine in 2014 that he was back to 96% capability, and still getting stronger. He also spoke candidly about his relationship with Simon, “We are indescribable. You’ll never capture it. It’s an ingrown, deep friendship. Yes, there is deep love in there. But there’s also shit.”

  In 2016, the Simon & Garfunkel song “America” was used — with their permission — by Bernie Sanders in his unsuccessful campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for President. “I like Bernie,” Garfunkel told the New York Times. “I like his fight. I like his dignity and his stance. I like this song.”

  Today, Art Garfunkel continues to record and perform solo projects, while also teaming up with famous artists such as James Taylor and Bruce Springsteen. He also continues to appear in movies. In the 1980s, long-distance walking became one of his passions; he crossed both Japan and the United States on foot. During his walks, he started writing poetry, and published a collection in 1989 called Still Water. In 2017, he added another published work with an autobiography, What Is It All But Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man, a eccentric mix of poetry, lists, travel and musings about his wife.

  Garfunkel has continued his passion for long distance walking for several decades. Having now walked across a significant portion of the world, he still considers his life experiences to be less about what he has achieved, and more about what he has been blessed with, saying, "I feel somewhat different from many people in the extraordinary amount of good fortune that fell into my lap and made up my life."
  Art Garfunkel Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

  Art Garfunkel at the 45th Annual Grammy Awards in 2003. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)
  Personal Life

  While the 1970s proved to be full of success, the 1980s were a challenge for Garfunkel both professionally and personally. After a brief marriage to Linda Grossman in the early 1970s, Garfunkel dated actress Laurie Bird for five years. In 1979, she committed suicide, leaving Garfunkel heartbroken. He credits his brief but happy relationship with Penny Marshall for helping him recover from his loss, and channeled his depression into his 1981 album Scissors Cut, which was dedicated to Bird. In 1985, he met model Kim Cermack on the set of the movie Good To Go. The couple married three years later, and have two sons.
  Related Videos
  Simon and Garfunkel - Sound of Silence
  Simon and Garfunkel - Sound of Silence(TV-14; 1:14)
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  Citation Information
  Article Title
  Art Garfunkel Biography.com
  Author
  Website Name
  The Biography.com website
  URL
  https://www.biography.com/people/art-garfunkel-17191580
  Access Date
  January 28, 2018
  Publisher
  A&E Television Networks
  Last Updated
  November 3, 2017
  Original Published Date
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What is It All but Luminous: Notes
from an Underground Man
Ben Segedin
Booklist.
113.22 (Aug. 1, 2017): p12. From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
What Is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man. By Art Garfunkel. Sept. 2017. 256p. illus. Knopf, $27.95 (9780385352475). 782.
At an early age, Garfunkel wowed his classmates, including Paul Simon, with the voice of an angel. The two spent a lot of time listening to records and singing, scoring a national hit as Tom & Jerry in 1957 while still in high school. Later, they achieved stellar fame and fortune as Simon & Garfunkel. "My life, so far, is a two-act play," Garfunkel writes, "Bridge over Troubled Waters ended Act I." This covers Act II, from Garfunkel's substantial solo career to his many meditative walks across America and Europe and his intense love for his family. Instead of a conventional memoir, he presents lists and prose poetry in an impressionistic, lyrical, and sometimes whimsical take on fame, singing, and aging. "I walk for simplicity, to empty out, to come about," he writes, and he sings, "'Ol' Man River" to cows. He reveals a sibling-like rivalry with Simon and claims that they were "conceived at the same instant," pondering, "who will speak at whose funeral?" Sensitive, soulful, sharp-tongued, and serious, Garfunkel vies for a place in the pantheon of singers.--Ben Segedin
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Segedin, Ben. "What is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man." Booklist, 1 Aug.
2017, p. 12. PowerSearch, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A501718686 /GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=3cf451ae. Accessed 28 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A501718686
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Garfunkel , Art: WHAT IS IT ALL BUT LUMINOUS
Kirkus Reviews.
(July 15, 2017): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Garfunkel , Art WHAT IS IT ALL BUT LUMINOUS Knopf (Adult Nonfiction) $27.95 9, 26 ISBN: 978-0-385-35247-5
The silky voiced singer looks back on his career and life.It would be hard to improve on the author's description of his younger self: "I live in my own rarified air. I put the 'e' in 'artist' every day." There have been few popular music memoirs with more literary references and less of a sense of self-deprecating humor. Though Garfunkel (Still Water: Prose Poems, 1989) knows that he is generally dismissed as the secondary partner to songwriter Paul Simon--"I was a 'BOUNCE,' a sort of wall / and he of course had the ball"--this singular mixture of verse, doggerel, blog and diary entries, soul-baring confession, and lists of hundreds of books read is less about setting the record straight on Simon and Garfunkel than allowing readers to gaze into the poetic soul of an artist who variously sees himself as Don Quixote, James Joyce, Rimbaud, Odysseus, Whitman, and Prometheus. "I have these vocal cords. Two," he writes. "They have vibrated with the love of sound since I was five and began to sing with the sense of God's gift running through me." Simon may have written the songs, but Garfunkel had the voice, the hair, and the looks, and he got the girls. But all things must pass. "Does anyone notice the faint aroma of slowly decaying flesh?" he asks. "I'm depressed. All is vanity. Where is meaning?" Much of the book is about the joy he has found as a husband and a father, and some of it is about his acting career, which established him as a presence apart from Simon. "Before there was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, there was Simon and Garfunkel--an extraordinary, a singular love affair," he writes, though the relationship is as ambivalent as it is symbiotic. Now, many decades on, "I am an old boatman / I cast my net of pretense before me / Then I sail into it." There are many voyages here, some flashes of vision, and plenty of pretense.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Garfunkel , Art: WHAT IS IT ALL BUT LUMINOUS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 July 2017.
PowerSearch, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A498344889/GPS?u=schlager& sid=GPS&xid=be3049ee. Accessed 28 Jan. 2018.
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What is it all but Luminous: Notes from
an underground man
Art Garfunkel
Library Journal.
142.11 (June 15, 2017): p14a. From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
From the golden-haired, curly-headed half of Simon & Garfunkel--a memoir (of sorts): artful, moving, lyrical; the making of a musician; the evolution of a man. a portrait of a life-long friendship and collaboration that became one of the most successful singing duos of their time.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
978-0-385-35247-5 | $27.95/$36.95C | 100,000 Knopf | HC | September
* 978-0-385-35246-8 | * AD: 978-0-525-49992-3 | * CD: 978-0-525-49991-6
MEMOIR/MUSIC
Social: Facebook.com/OfficialArtGarfunkelPage; ArtGarfunkel.com RI: Author lives in New York, NY
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Garfunkel, Art. "What is it all but Luminous: Notes from an underground man." Library Journal,
15 June 2017, p. 14a. PowerSearch, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495668232 /GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=b5850417. Accessed 28 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495668232
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What Is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man
Publishers Weekly.
264.22 (May 29, 2017): p55. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
What Is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man Art Garfunkel. Knopf, $27.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-385-35247-5
Garfunkel, half of the folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel, loves singing, reading, performing, acting, walking, keeping lists, and his wife--as he writes in this meandering, sometimes incoherent memoir. Early on, Garfunkel pays tribute to his vocal talent: "These vocal chords ... have vibrated with the love of sound since I was five and began to sing with the sense of God's gift running through me." As the narrative proceeds, Garfunkel wanders through his life, reflecting here and there on his complex relationship with Paul Simon; his love for and admiration of James Taylor; the suicide of his girlfriend Laurie Bird in the late 1970s; his walks across Japan, the U.S., and Europe; and his wife Kathryn Cermack's breast-cancer diagnosis in 1996. Obsessed with lists, Garfunkel intersperses his rambling reflections with lists of the books he has read, songs on his iPod, and even 10 reasons why he's in "awe of his wife." Garfunkel seldom settles on one subject for long before he's off to a related topic from his life. While Garfunkel reveals flashes of real insight about the transcendent power of music and the inner workings of a singer's life, for the most part this slim volume feels tiresome. (Sept.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"What Is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man." Publishers Weekly, 29 May
2017, p. 55. PowerSearch, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A494500743 /GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=8e3ee29e. Accessed 28 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A494500743
4 of 6 1/28/18, 4:11 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
Book World: Art Garfunkel opens up,
and what spills out is a fascinating mess
Sibbie O'Sullivan
The Washington Post.
(Sept. 14, 2017): News: From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Full Text:
Byline: Sibbie O'Sullivan
What Is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man By Art Garfunkel
Knopf. 256 pp. $27.95
---
The subtitle of Art Garfunkel's new memoir "Notes From an Underground Man," echoes Dostoyevsky's "Notes From Underground" and Richard Wright's story "The Man Who Lived Underground" - both serious works of literature.
Garfunkel's book, however, is a splattering of 30-plus years of handwritten thoughts, lists, travel notes, bad poetry, confessions, snarky digs, platitudes and prayers gussied up for publication in different fonts and sizes.
Reading it is like rummaging through a huge junk drawer of the mind. You (BEGIN ITAL)might(END ITAL) find something useful. Garfunkel himself seems doubtful of his endeavor: "Maybe my unusual book (BEGIN ITAL)does(END ITAL) communicate." Or maybe it doesn't, which is sad because Garfunkel, the angel-voiced half of Simon and Garfunkel, and a successful solo act, is a talented, educated and seemingly loving man. Unfortunately, the singer - who at age 75 continues to tour - is more successful behind the microphone than he is on the page.
Rock memoirs are often full of sex and snark. Garfunkel's is no exception. "Paul [Simon] won the writer's royalties. I got the girls ... Fabulous foxes, slim-hipped, B-cup, little Natalie Woods." His boasting is matched by innuendo. When he and Simon were younger, "We showed each other our versions of masturbations ... (mine used a hand)." Imagine that! When Garfunkel was in George Harrison's "castle ... the space in the turret was tight. George and I were very close. Disturbing? Thrilling?" What are we to make of such declarations?
The book is also filled with such gnomic statements as: "You can't discover fuchsia twice."
5 of 6 1/28/18, 4:11 PM

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MA...
"Morality played to win is a/plate of tin." "My poetry bits are organs. What is the least connective tissue that sets them in a body?"
Whether as poetry, or as lines popping up willy-nilly to fill empty space or to display another typeface, sentences like these appear with aggravating frequency. Unfortunately, some of Garfunkel's longer passages are also aggravating. In a poem to his wife, Kathryn, he calls himself her "love pest," the "fungus underneath her nail," "her old bed linen" and "her underwear." Later, in prose, he is "moved to speak of Janice Zwail, the colonics queen. A Chelsea chick, she cleans your colon for cash or check." Here you might be begging for the of sound silence.
Garfunkel's writing isn't all bad, though it hardly follows a chronology. Dates are often vague or nonexistent. Sometimes his use of pronouns is confusing, and we never get one sustained take on his decades-long and wavering relationship with Paul Simon, though one running joke seems to concern who will speak at the other's funeral, so even dying is a competition. An avid walker, Garfunkel's descriptions of his travels through the United States and abroad sometimes give readers a sense of place, both geographic and psychological. We're moved as he sporadically recollects the difficulties of losing and regaining his voice. In an undated poem he writes that "These days I sing 'Bridge Over Troubled/Water'/for a full arena with fear of hernia."
Readers might get a better sense of Garfunkel through his long and varied reading lists, which include Montaigne, Edith Wharton and E.L. James. Garfunkel has given several candid media interviews about his struggles with vocal cord damage and made controversial comments about Paul Simon, but here he addresses these subjects fleetingly, obliquely - or not at all.
Finally, what can one say of a man who announces that first he was Achilles and now he's Odysseus? For a fan, this might be a forthright assessment. For someone else, it's one more silly pronouncement from a man who's anything but underground.
---
O'Sullivan, a former teacher in the Honors College at the University of Maryland, has recently completed a memoir on how the Beatles have influenced her life.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
O'Sullivan, Sibbie. "Book World: Art Garfunkel opens up, and what spills out is a
fascinating mess." Washington Post, 14 Sept. 2017. PowerSearch, http://link.galegroup.com /apps/doc/A504501454/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=bacc2ef4. Accessed 28 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A504501454
6 of 6 1/28/18, 4:11 PM

Segedin, Ben. "What is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man." Booklist, 1 Aug. 2017, p. 12. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A501718686/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=3cf451ae. Accessed 28 Jan. 2018. "Garfunkel , Art: WHAT IS IT ALL BUT LUMINOUS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 July 2017. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A498344889/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=be3049ee. Accessed 28 Jan. 2018. Garfunkel, Art. "What is it all but Luminous: Notes from an underground man." Library Journal, 15 June 2017, p. 14a. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495668232/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=b5850417. Accessed 28 Jan. 2018. "What Is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man." Publishers Weekly, 29 May 2017, p. 55. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A494500743/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=8e3ee29e. Accessed 28 Jan. 2018. O'Sullivan, Sibbie. "Book World: Art Garfunkel opens up, and what spills out is a fascinating mess." Washington Post, 14 Sept. 2017. Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A504501454/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=bacc2ef4. Accessed 28 Jan. 2018.

• The Washington Post
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/art-garfunkel-opens-up-and-what-spills-out-is-a-fascinating-mess/2017/09/13/469927b8-97a1-11e7-82e4-f1076f6d6152_story.html?utm_term=.7edd1ce0b5f6
  Word count: 831

  Art Garfunkel opens up, and what spills out is a fascinating mess
  By Sibbie O'Sullivan September 13, 2017

  The subtitle of Art Garfunkel’s new memoir, “ Notes From an Underground Man,” echoes Dostoyevsky’s “Notes From Underground” and Richard Wright’s story “The Man Who Lived Underground” — both serious works of literature.
  “What Is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man,” by Art Garfunkel (Knopf)

  Garfunkel’s book, however, is a splattering of 30-plus years of handwritten thoughts, lists, travel notes, bad poetry, confessions, snarky digs, platitudes and prayers gussied up for publication in different fonts and sizes.

  Reading it is like rummaging through a huge junk drawer of the mind. You might find something useful. Garfunkel himself seems doubtful of his endeavor: “Maybe my unusual book does communicate.” Or maybe it doesn’t, which is sad because Garfunkel, the angel-voiced half of Simon and Garfunkel, and a successful solo act, is a talented, educated and seemingly loving man. Unfortunately, the singer — who at 75 continues to tour — is more successful behind the microphone than he is on the page.

  Rock memoirs are often full of sex and snark. Garfunkel’s is no exception. “Paul [Simon] won the writer’s royalties. I got the girls . . . Fabulous foxes, slim-hipped, B-cup, little Natalie Woods.” His boasting is matched by innuendo. When he and Simon were younger, “We showed each other our versions of masturbations . . . (mine used a hand).” Imagine that! When Garfunkel was in George Harrison’s “castle . . . the space in the turret was tight. George and I were very close. Disturbing? Thrilling?” What are we to make of such declarations?

  [Reading Steely Dan: The lyrical genius that helped define a decade]

  The book is also filled with such gnomic statements as: “You can’t discover fuchsia twice.” “Morality played to win is a/plate of tin.” “My poetry bits are organs. What is the least connective tissue that sets them in a body?”

  Whether as poetry, or as lines popping up willy-nilly to fill empty space or to display another typeface, sentences like these appear with aggravating frequency. Unfortunately, some of Garfunkel’s longer passages are also aggravating. In a poem to his wife, Kathryn, he calls himself her “love pest,” the “fungus underneath her nail,” “her old bed linen” and “her underwear.” Later, in prose, he is “moved to speak of Janice Zwail, the colonics queen. A Chelsea chick, she cleans your colon for cash or check.” Here, you might be begging for the sound of silence.
  Art Garfunkel with his son James in 2002. (Art Garfunkel)

  Garfunkel’s writing isn’t all bad, though it hardly follows a chronology. Dates are often vague or nonexistent. Sometimes his use of pronouns is confusing, and we never get one sustained take on his decades-long and wavering relationship with Simon, though one running joke seems to concern who will speak at the other’s funeral, so even dying is a competition. An avid walker, Garfunkel’s descriptions of his travels through the United States and abroad sometimes give readers a sense of place, both geographic and psychological.

  We’re moved as he sporadically recollects the difficulties of losing and regaining his voice. In an undated poem, he writes that “These days I sing ‘Bridge Over Troubled/Water’/for a full arena with fear of hernia.”

  Readers might get a better sense of Garfunkel through his long and varied reading lists, which include Montaigne, Edith Wharton and E.L. James. Garfunkel has given several candid media interviews about his struggles with vocal cord damage and made controversial comments about Simon, but here he addresses those subjects fleetingly, obliquely — or not at all.

  Book Club newsletter

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  Finally, what can one say of a man who announces that first he was Achilles and now he’s Odysseus? For a fan, this might be a forthright assessment. For someone else, it’s one more silly pronouncement from a man who’s anything but underground.

  Sibbie O’Sullivan, a former teacher in the Honors College at the University of Maryland, has recently completed a memoir on how the Beatles have influenced her life.

  At 7 p.m. on Oct. 2, Art Garfunkel will be appearing at St. Paul’s Church, 4900 Connecticut Ave. NW. This is a ticketed event.

  Read more:

  Five famous musicians who are also science stars

  I saw the Beatles live, but no, I didn’t scream.
  What Is It All but Luminous
  Notes from an Underground Man

  By Art Garfunkel

  Knopf. 256 pp. $27.95

  We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

• Rollingstone
  https://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/art-garfunkel-on-new-book-the-end-of-simon-and-garfunkel-w510794
  Word count: 2466

  Art Garfunkel on His Unusual New Book, the End of Simon and Garfunkel

  The singer explains how he wrote 'What Is It All But Luminous' and why he doesn't expect to sing with Paul Simon ever again
  Art Garfunkel breaks down his new book 'What Is It All But Luminous,' and explains why he won't tell what caused his latest rift with Paul Simon. GIL COHEN MAGEN/Getty
  By Andy Greene
  November 2, 2017

  More News
  Flashback: Simon and Garfunkel Perform 'Old Friends' in 1977
  Art Garfunkel Lashes Out at Paul Simon in New Interview
  Art Garfunkel: The Rolling Stone Interview
  Flashback: Simon and Garfunkel's Lost Song
  Paul Simon's Early Years: 10 Fascinating Pre–Simon and Garfunkel Songs
  All Stories

  In the spring of 1983, Art Garfunkel stepped out of his New York apartment building and began a walk across North America. The journey was conducted across 40 installments (always picking up exactly where the last one ended) and took him 14 years to complete. The whole time, he had a small notepad and pen in his back pocket. "I'd stay at two-star inns during the night," he says. "And when inspiration struck me, I'd write little bits. There must have been a thousand of them." Those bits included poems, lists, scattered thoughts and pointed anecdotes from his long career. He never gave much thought to publishing them until he showed them to literary agent Dan Strone a few years back. "He said, 'You have a book here,'" recalls Garfunkel. "I then shaped them chronologically and said, 'It's my life.'"
  Related
  Art Garfunkel Details New Memoir 'What Is It All But Luminous'

  Musician to continue "In Close-Up" world tour in 2017

  The end result is What Is It All But Luminous: Notes From an Underground Man, which is unlike any book ever released by a rock star. There are segments about the formation and ultimate bitter dissolution of Simon and Garfunkel, along with other passages about his long life, but they are mixed in with lists of books he's read and songs on his iPod, quotes from the likes of Shakespeare and Marvin Gaye, and set lists from his concerts. There are also numerous poems, including one about getting a colonic by a woman from Queens. ("After the evacuation behind the bathroom door, I mention the clickety sound of colonics, so she tap dances on the hardwood floor.")

  Right now, Garfunkel is perched on a chaise lounge on the roof of a luxury New York apartment building overlooking a picturesque, panoramic view of the skyline. He just returned from a U.S. book tour and he's resting up before flying off to Japan for a series of solo dates. A grey, floppy hat rests on his head, a packet of Lifesavers peeks out of his front pocket, and in his hand is his book. Over the next hour, he happily fielded any question Rolling Stone threw his way, though, unsurprisingly, he didn't feel like sharing why he's no longer on speaking terms with Paul Simon.

  I read about the fire at your apartment a couple years back. Are you living here now?
  For now. [The smoke damage] led to a major fixing up of our place. My wife took over and I stepped back, so I've been living here. It's been two years, but very shortly I get to move back in.

  How bad was the damage?
  Not so bad. We have three floors. The top floor is a library. I like to be up there to make my phone calls and do my writing. I love my books. I have 1,165 of them spread around the walls. Every one I read. In order. They're good books. It's Darwin, Origin of the Species, the good stuff. They are all there. Well, I lost one of the walls in the fire. There went a hundred of them. So I replaced them. Every damn one of them.

  I've always been fascinated by your perfect handwriting. Did you write the whole book out by hand?
  Yeah. When I was 11, Paul Simon, my fast friend, would say to people, "Look at my friend Artie, he's the human typewriter." It was sweet. But I hate to disappoint you, though I did write the whole book top to bottom with my left hand. And then Vicky Wilson, my great editor at Knopf, said to me, "Here's what I want you to do. Give me your perfect A, B, C, D ... and we will digitize that and we will have the ability to manipulate [and turn it into a font for the book.]"

  Did you read books by other musicians while preparing for this one?
  Well, there's the famous Keith Richards book and the Clapton one. These books are giant sellers. I did not read either of them. I don't put myself into the category of "rock star writing his biography." That's because we live our lives by falling into experiences. Things happen to us. Something you do takes hold of you and then you do a lot of it. And it has a name. And then it wraps itself around you and then an interviewer asks you, "When did you start this endeavor?"

  Did you ever think about writing a traditional memoir without the poetry and lists and everything?
  Well, you're starting from the starting point as if a person begins with a desk and a clean piece of paper. But your premise is wrong. We don't start with any beginning. We never know what we're doing. We fall into it. I fell into these scraps of paper and I was told, "You may have a book here." I started shaping it up. Dan Strone shopped it around. I fell into the experience. I knew it was different from other things. I'm always different. I'm an eccentric man.

  There's a bunch of books about Simon and Garfunkel. Have you read any of them?
  I read one many years ago. What can I say? It didn't capture ... I think the main thing about us is that we're good. We're very good. We take two very different people, Artie and Paul, who have very different natures and found a fusion. It's a cute trick.

  You wrote in the book that your friendship with Paul was "shattered" in 1958 when he made a solo deal behind your back.
  [Puts up his hands like a boxer] Now, watch out for Andy. He's going to come in on you now. It's what Muhammad Ali did.

  "Shattered" is a pretty strong statement. You guys were just kids when that happened.
  So you read my book properly. It's a strong statement. Ask me your precise question, Mr. Greene.

  I was just taken aback that you felt things were shattered that early. Did everything feel differently after that?
  Yes.

  Hmmm ...
  Notice that I'm not helping you much.

  That's OK.
  But yes, it's a very strong statement. You were wise to pick up on it and go, "Well, that upsets the whole Simon and Garfunkel thing." I'm not going to fight that.

  So how did you maintain your friendship with him during the Simon and Garfunkel days in the Sixties if you felt he shattered it before it even started?
  You mean I should be a perfectionist and hope that friendships have no blemishes? Isn't that compulsively ... isn't that too perfectionist? Everything has blemishes. I'm fooling around now with the answer. I'm saying, "Well, of course there's stains. There's stains in everything." We try and accept them and carry on. It's a mixed bag. You're talking about a man who's a tremendous talent. It's a real turn-on to sit in the same room and make music with a tremendous talent.

  I spoke to him about a year and a half ago. He told me you guys were no longer on speaking terms.

  [Stares into my eyes and doesn't respond]

  May I ask what happened?
  I don't think you can because there are things that are personal and deep between us, instead of the Internet, your readers. ...

  That's fair.
  Good. I'm glad you see that.

  In 2015 you called him a "jerk" and said that you "created a monster" by becoming his friend in the first place. Do you regret saying all that?
  Yes. I do. [Smiling] You press people, you get stuff out of us. You're going to come with one any minute. You're going to find me relaxing and you're going to come with the left hook.

  Are you hopeful you two will patch things up and maybe sing together again one day?
  Not particularly.

  Why?
  Now, the word "enough" just flew into my mind. ...

  OK. I'll move on. I know I was pushing my luck there. How is your solo tour going now? I know that you've been back on the road now for a few years.
  I love my show. I lost my voice in 2010. That's seven years ago. Tragic. I had come off an arena tour with Pauly – [whispers] he goes, "Pauly? That sounds pretty friendly with me. They're not that angry with each other. ..." – in the Far East. When I got home a month later my voice went south. I couldn't speak. I couldn't sing. It was all froggy. When I saw the doctor, he said, "Yeah, the camera shows one of your two vocal cords is fat and stiff." That's what it felt like. But I was determined to not accept it's gone. I don't know how to be an Art Garfunkel that doesn't sing. I was dedicated to my own recovery. And it took years. I would book a hall that was empty and sing to an empty hall.

  It was terrible. 2012, no voice. I would fall to my knees and look up at God and say, "Oh, man, this is tough. I don't know how to be a person." And finally I would sing some shows where the voice crapped out. There were people in the audience. I did my best. I saw that there was lots of love and support. Here's the insider [tip]: If you pretend that you are recovered and go onstage and do your best and take the bravery of being a little crappy, but also a little there, you pull your recovery along. And by 2014 I was singing again and I was grateful to God.

  You have some tough songs to sing. The climax of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" would be tough for anybody.
  I don't do [sings] "Like a bridge. ..." You went right to the one part of my recovery I haven't gotten to. [Sings again] "Like a bridge ..."

  That's just one little moment of one song.
  One. The other 99.9 percent is there, but I rewrote the end of "Bridge." It's beautiful. Once my voice came back, I designed a "less is more" show." I called my friend Tab Laven. He's been my brother all the way through. He's been playing Paul Simon. Not easy to do. We do half Simon and Garfunkel, because it would be coy to turn my back on it. And we do songs from my 12 solo albums. In the past year, we've picked up Dave Mackay, fabulous piano player. Boy, this is an exciting thing for me. Now we have piano in a whole bunch of songs. I'm captivated by my new show. I love it so much.

  A lot of people lose their voice and never recover it. You must be so grateful.
  You bet. I finish my show with a little prayer. "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pay the Lord my soul to keep. God will save me." When I was five I realized I had a singing voice. It was pretty. It delighted me. So it's a great gift in my throat. When you have a gift, you think about the giver. Who gave this to me? And this takes you to a spiritual sense of God. That has captivated me all through my life, serving that lucky gift.

  Not a lot of people that were singing professionally in 1956 are still out there doing it.
  I was a weird kid, a special kid.

  It's a shame there's no film of you guys in the Tom and Jerry days. I'd love to see you on American Bandstand.
  I would love to see Dick Clark ask Paul Simon where he was from. He said, "Macon, Georgia." I would love to see my face.

  It's insane you had to go on after Jerry Lee Lewis singing "Great Balls of Fire." It's like a scene in a movie or something.
  Yeah. It was great. I was a fan of American Bandstand. I would come home from school and watch those dancing kids.

  Then you were on it.
  My life spun around. It's because at age five I realized I could sing good. Then at age 11 I met this guy, Paul Simon. We fused our talents. Never forget this: Allen Freed brought this new, subversive music to New York in 1954. And we were 12, 13, a great age to be impressionable. Same as John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan. This is our age group. Rock & Roll, that was Alan Freed's phrase, was born in the Western world.

  It's always amazed me that so many of you guys were born in this tiny window of time in the early 1940s. A few years earlier you would have been too old when rock hit. Before that, you would have been fighting in World War II. You had perfect timing.
  America was sitting pretty. We won World War II. We were rich. We were benevolent. We were charitable, the Marshall Plan. As God gave me a singing voice, America gave the Western world the means to get back on their feet. That's why I look at today as such a tough time.

  I like to think it's temporary. It's a bad chapter that will end in a few years, if not sooner.
  So we're not falling off a cliff together? That's the theory and its so tempting.

  I think we have to view it as a few big steps backwards, but progress will continue.
  Yes. We must think that.

• Rollingstone
  https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/art-garfunkel-preps-new-memoir-what-is-it-all-but-luminous-w464282
  Word count: 359

  Art Garfunkel Details New Memoir 'What Is It All But Luminous'

  Musician to continue "In Close-Up" world tour in 2017
  Art Garfunkel will release his new memoir, 'What Is It All But Luminous,' in September and continue his "In Close-Up" world tour this year. Samir Hussein/Getty
  By Jon Blistein
  January 31, 2017

  More News
  Flashback: Simon and Garfunkel Perform 'Old Friends' in 1977
  Flashback: Simon and Garfunkel's Lost Song
  Art Garfunkel Lashes Out at Paul Simon in New Interview
  All Stories

  Art Garfunkel will publish his new memoir, What Is It All But Luminous: Notes From an Underground Man, September 26th.

  Related
  Art Garfunkel Is Ecstatic: 'My Voice Is 96 Percent Back'

  Garfunkel talks about the painful process of regaining his voice, and the future of Simon and Garfunkel

  The book will be published by Alfred A. Knopf and find the musician recounting his boyhood in Queens, meeting Paul Simon in school and recording their first hit together, "Hey Schoolgirl," at age 16 under the name Tom and Jerry. What Is It All will delve into Garfunkel's fruitful and fraught friendship with Paul Simon, and their massive success together, but also feature musings on his solo career, acting work, getting his masters in mathematics, nearly losing his voice and gaining it back.

  Garfunkel is also set to continue his "In Close-Up" world tour February 2nd at the Sunrise Theatre in Ft. Pierce, Florida. He'll play two more shows in Florida before jumping to Europe, then return to North American February 25th at the Fallsview Casino Resort in Niagara Falls, Ontario. The trek wraps May 14th at the Graton Resort and Casino in Rohnert Park, California. A full itinerary is available on Garfunkel's website while more dates are expected to be added in the future.

  The "In Close-Up" tour finds Garfunkel performing with guitarist Tab Laven and keyboardist Dave Mackay. The setlist features solo hits, Simon and Garfunkel tunes and covers of songs written by some of Garfunkel's favorite songwriters including Randy Newman, Jimmy Webb and George Gershwin.

• CBS News
  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/art-garfunkel-life-is-a-surprise-what-is-it-all-but-luminous/
  Word count: 1402

  Art Garfunkel: Life is a surprise

  Singer Art Garfunkel.
  CBS News

  Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel may have been feeling groovy when they sang "The 59th Street Bridge Song" all those years ago, but they've had many a rough moment since. This morning, on Garfunkel's 76th birthday, Rita Braver talks with a rock music legend:

  "Can you believe I'm still doing this?"
  what-is-it-all-but-luminous-cover-random-house-244.jpg
  Random House

  Yes he is! More than 50 years after Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel first hit the pop charts, at 76 Art Garfunkel is touring solo.

  Braver asked, "Do you ever get tired of singing these songs, the ones that everybody wants to hear?"

  "Not really," he replied. "I wouldn't do them if I didn't love them. I don't need to do this job. I do it only for love now."

  Garfunkel grew up in Queens, N.Y., his dad a salesman, his mom a homemaker.

  "You had two brothers," Braver said. "Must have been pretty rambunctious in there."

  "Yeah, we fought all the time. That's what you do. What else do brothers do? They put a pillow over each other's heads, then they pound the pillow!"

  But Garfunkel was the one with the special gift.
  Art Garfunkel on his voice
  Play Video
  Art Garfunkel on his voice

  "I would sing what I heard on the radio -- 'They try to tell us we're too young,' Nat King Cole. And I observed about age five or six, I can sing. This is nice."

  At his bar mitzvah, he was the cantor: "Yes, that was my earliest training. Why? Synagogues and churches have wonderful, reverberant rooms. When in the temple, it's got a high ceiling, it's got wood walls. These are great for a singer, 'cause I thrive on the reverb. And at that early age, I began to think, 'This room enhances my lucky gift.'"

  "Did you dream of becoming a professional singer?" Braver asked.
  paul-simon-and-art-garfunkel-as-tom-and-jerry-244.jpg

  Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel as Tom & Jerry, 1957.
  Publicity Photo

  "Not at all," he said. "I never actually thought that way until I met Paul Simon, when we were 11 and we met each other and practiced."

  That grade school friendship would lead to one of the most popular duos in American musical history, and one of the most complicated, then and now.

  Garfunkel was often the lead singer, as well as arranger. But it was Simon who wrote the songs that have become classics. And so, Art Garfunkel says, he had a purpose in writing his new memoir, "What Is It All but Luminous" (Knopf).

  "I suppose, if I examine my inner mind, I would say, 'Time to come out of the shadow of Paul Simon and establish yourself as a thinking artist who can sing.' I know myself to be a creative guy, and I think my profile out in show business is 'the guy over Paul Simon's right shoulder.'

  "But many years ago I started a solo career as a singer and I've made a whole bunch of albums. And, you know, we want to make a mark to show that while we were here on Earth, we were here. Capital H! And that's the motivation. I thought I was playing it too deferential to Paul."

  WEB EXTRA: Read an excerpt from "What It Is All but Luminous"

  In high school, they performed as Tom and Jerry, but split during college, only to reunite in 1963 as Simon & Garfunkel. Two years later they had a number one hit, "The Sounds of Silence":
  Simon & Garfunkel - The Sounds of Silence (Audio) by SimonGarfunkelVEVO on YouTube

  The hit songs and albums would keep on coming.

  Their music was even used in the groundbreaking 1967 Mike Nichols film, "The Graduate."
  Simon & Garfunkel - Mrs. Robinson (Audio) by SimonGarfunkelVEVO on YouTube

  And then, Nichols offered Garfunkel a role in another film. "He knew I wasn't an actor, but he was clever," Garfunkel said. "He drove by in his limo to my house on 68th Street, rolls down the window and hands me a script: 'Catch 22.' 'Read this, Artie, I see a part for you. Look at Nately, Captain Nately.'"

  He followed it up playing Jack Nicholson's best friend in "Carnal Knowledge."
  art-garfunkel-catch-22-carnal-knowledge-paramount-avco-embassy-620.jpg

  Left: Art Garfunkel, Alan Arkin and Martin Sheen in "Catch-22." Right: Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel in "Carnal Knowledge."
  Paramount/Avco Embassy

  But as for Simon & Garfunkel? They would release their fifth and final album in 1970. As Garfunkel put it in his book, "The end of S&G just slipped in on me. There never was an ending."

  Braver asked, "Do you have a better analysis now that you look back on it? Or do you just like to think of it that way?"

  "I think the laughs were used up," he replied. "We were tired of each other. All that studio togetherness, and when you finish, you have to go on tour together. When do I get a break from my funny friend? The jokes are not happening now."

  Garfunkel would weather some tough times. He stopped performing for a while after a brief, unhappy marriage. And later, he lost a long-time girlfriend to a drug overdose. But taking long walks helped.

  So did reading. "I go from book to book," he said. "I do about two books a month."

  He's up to 1,160 books, all carefully arranged in his New York study. "I told you, I'm a nutcase."
  art-garfunkel-library-rita-braver-620.jpg

  Art Garfunkel with correspondent Rita Braver in the singer's library.
  CBS News

  The study also holds photos of his family -- his two sons with second wife, Kathryn, an actress and singer. They have been married since 1988.

  Braver asked, "How did meeting her change your life?"

  "I got comfortable with life," he laughed. "I felt the nearness of this woman's shoulder and her kiss. You gotta be there when warmth replaces coldness!"

  By then, he was also comfortable with his music again … and his old pal, Paul Simon. At their legendary 1981 concert in Central Park, half a million people cheered.

  To watch Art Garfunkel perform "Bridge Over Troubled Water" in "The Concert in Central Park" click on the video player below:
  Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge over Troubled Water (from The Concert in Central Park) by SimonGarfunkelVEVO on YouTube

  But Garfunkel, who can be fussy, saw it differently. In his book, the "workaholic" voted himself a C+, "because I didn't get it as right as I wanted to get it."

  He would have plenty of chances to get it right … two more tours with Simon, and solo gigs, too.
  Art Garfunkel on his teaming with Paul Simon
  Play Video
  Art Garfunkel on his teaming with Paul Simon

  And then in February of 2010, he lost his voice.

  "Yeah, I finished touring with Paul, I came home, and a month later I lost my voice," he said. "My speech was very erratic. My singing was just not there."

  It would take four long, hard years to get it back. And today Art Garfunkel is savoring every moment.

  But what about his relationship with his old friend? He says they are at "one of their low points."

  "You think it'll get better?" Braver asked.

  "Is he watching this show?" Garfunkel said. "Paul, turn off the TV! Yeah, it might. I think so. It might. We never know the future. I believe life is a surprise."

  See also:

  Paul Simon: Expanding his "big bag of sounds" ("Sunday Morning," 11/06/16)

  For more info:

  "What Is It All but Luminous: Notes From an Underground Man" by Art Garfunkel (Knopf), in Hardcover, eBook, Digital Audio Download and Audio CD formats; Available via Amazon
  artgarfunkel.com

  © 2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

• The Stranger
  https://www.thestranger.com/books/2017/09/27/25432927/art-garfunkels-memoir-is-a-truly-bizarre-document
  Word count: 563

  Art Garfunkel's Memoir Is a Truly Bizarre Document
  What Is It All but Luminous is printed in a font that's a digital version of his handwriting.
  by Sean Nelson
  Art Garfunkel will read from his new memoir on Monday, October 9, at the Neptune Theatre. Brian Taylor

  This probably doesn't place me in a supermajority, but the news that Art Garfunkel had written a memoir struck me as thrilling. Finally, I thought, we'll get to read a thorough account of just how intensely he and Paul Simon loved and hated and needed and rejected each other, and why, and when, and how much, and how often.

  We'd get a firsthand account of what happened when Mike Nichols cast both Simon and Garfunkel in Catch-22, and then changed his mind and fired Simon, thus hastening the duo's first breakup. Perhaps we'd even get some insight into the necrophiliac climax of Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession, the Central Park reunion, the condition of having lived long enough to stand astride multiple generations of pop culture relevance.

  But Garfunkel had a different kind of memoir in mind. Actually, it's difficult to know what he had in mind, because What Is It All but Luminous is an unprecedentedly bizarre book. It's more akin to F. Scott Fitzgerald's posthumous The Crack-Up—a compilation of disconnected epigraphs, partially related thoughts, and (Garfunkel's term) "poetic bits"—than to, say, Keith Richards's Life.

  Luminous lies somewhere between a mischievous subversion of rock star autobiographies and an "Oh, shit! My book's due tomorrow!" notebook scraper. There's no shortage of poem fragments, sexual braggadocio, and reading lists, but every time he gets close to being fully interested in a perspective, he digresses. Also, it's a bit hard to read because the font is a digital version of his handwriting.

  He's now touring the country reading aloud from it. He tantalizes with lots of Simon, but the stories always stop short of a meaningful analysis. Maybe he can't or won't reduce their complex dynamic. When he gives voice to their mutual frustrations and eternal interdependence, he does so with rhetorical questions and enigmatic lines like "The falcon cannot hear the falconer."

  It is one of those books that you want to be about one thing, only to find it insists on being about something else. A short note on page 35 makes you wonder if perhaps Luminous is more like a test balloon than a tell-all. Having described his life thus far as a two-act play, with Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970), his last album with Simon, as the act break, he finally asks and answers the question that will have been troubling any discerning reader thus far: "What is this book? It is Act II." Oh. Right. Okay.

  "Someday," Garfunkel muses, "I'll write the show-off book." Which makes this one, what, exactly, one wonders? A prelude? A throat clearing? A descant? Frankly, if that's what it takes to make Garfunkel feel like singing, I am there for it. I wouldn't blame anyone else for waiting for a book that deals less glancingly with the more heroic sections of his life, but I can't deny a certain admiration for his willingness to hold a little something back in the verse. How better to make the chorus really po

• Moment
  https://www.momentmag.com/book-review-luminous-notes-underground-man-art-garfunkel/
  Word count: 1558

  Book Review | What Is It All But Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man by Art Garfunkel
  Breaking the Sound of Silence
  by Diane Cole January 9, 2018 in 2018 January/February, Arts & Culture, Featured

  What Is It All But Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man
  Art Garfunkel
  Knopf
  2017, 256 pp, $27.95

  “I have these vocal cords. Two,” the singer Art Garfunkel writes near the start of his intriguing book of impressionistic musings about his life, What Is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man. “They have vibrated with the love of sound since I was five and began to sing with the sense of God’s gift running through me.”

  In the 70 years since then, Garfunkel (now 76) has been serenading the world with his magically sweet tenor with such grace that he and his music can seem inseparable. And so, too, can his name seem indivisible from that of singer-songwriter Paul Simon, with whom he collaborated in close vocal harmony during their years together, from 1964 through 1970, as the duo Simon & Garfunkel.

  But over the decades, the harmony of the relationship itself has been less than seamless, their differences dating even to before the partnership dissolved in 1970.Since then, their many ups and downs have played out in public through periodic concert reunions, rumors of a planned new album together that never materialized, seasons punctuated by what fans could only interpret as sounds of silence, and hints (or wishful thinking) that yet another joint gig is in the offing. It should be no surprise, then, that the push-pull between the power of two and the lonely eloquence of one is a recurring refrain throughout Garfunkel’s book. It is the bedrock story—and relationship—to which he keeps returning. He likens it to a “poetically stunning” love affair that has lasted 64 years and counting. But he does not shy away from the emotionally intense rivalry and ambivalent brotherly love that has also defined their friendship.

  In the memoir, Garfunkel pushes back against the perception that he was the lesser half of the duo, “merely” the singer, not the songwriter, by pointing out his contributions as the musical arranger, as well as reminding readers of his own vocal gifts. But he is also generous in applauding Simon, asking, “Is there any writer in our time with such beauty and poignancy of heart and mind?” The more I read, the clearer it became to me that rather than argue about which one was the “better” artist, we should instead acknowledge how the blend of their talents together served to create a distinctive, and lasting, body of musical work. It was that recognition, after all, that formed the original basis for their collaboration, and remains the foundation on which their continuing friendship rests.

  They were two lower middle-class Jewish boys from Queens, Garfunkel tells us, born less than a month apart in 1941. They met at the age of 12 in their grade school play, Alice in Wonderland. Garfunkel was already singing in public—at synagogue, where his renditions of “minor-key, age-old prayerful melodies,” he writes, made the congregants cry, and where his bar mitzvah drew a standing-room-only crowd. In junior high, in love with rock and roll, they started making music together, with Simon playing guitar and Garfunkel working out streamlined vocal harmonies modeled after their idols, the Everly Brothers. As precocious high school seniors, age 16 (they skipped a grade), they dubbed themselves Tom and Jerry and cut their first record, “Hey, Schoolgirl,” a teeny-bopper hit that led to an appearance on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.

  And then—at least from Garfunkel’s point of view—came Simon’s first betrayal. Simon cheated on him, releasing a solo single without Garfunkel, under the name True Taylor, and the news stung. He writes, “He’s base, I concluded in an eighth of a second, and the friendship was shattered for life.” And yet, he continues, “Eight years later we were world-famous. You will love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart.”

  Still, Garfunkel wonders, was he himself later guilty of betraying Simon when, in 1969, he left Simon & Garfunkel behind to pursue an acting career, accepting film director Mike Nichols’s offer to play the role of Captain Nately in Catch-22? He wonders, “Who throws the stone and who throws the return stone?”

  Such passages reveal his meditative bent. Elsewhere, Garfunkel’s self-portrait can be dark, a reflection of his own cast of mind as well as the grief-stricken residue of trauma: the 1979 suicide of his girlfriend, the actress and photographer Laurie Bird, at their New York apartment when she was 25 and he was filming a movie in Europe. He repeatedly flashes back to wistful memories of their relationship, as well as to the guilt that haunts him for being absent when she needed him. He became more reclusive and his mood sank even deeper after his beloved father died. He took a leave of absence from performing and began writing. It is as if he went “underground,” and these are the notes from the emotional place of his book’s subtitle. A sample passage reflects this mindset, as he writes, “All is vanity. Where is meaning? We are eating and excreting organisms.”

  Garfunkel’s penchant for isolation continued into the early 1980s, when he began a series of epic walks across America and parts of Europe. In his descriptions, these journeys come across as a search for meaning and solace amid nature’s wonder. In this way, step by step and over time, he heals. At the start of one walk, he wittily invokes a classic Jewish blessing, writing, “Shehecheyanu, bless me, O lord, bless my feet / Thanks for sustaining my life and for bringing me here.” He also rediscovers his capacity for joy. He celebrates, in numerous hymn-like incantations, his connection to his wife Kim (whose stage name is Kathryn), whom he married in 1988, and their two children James (also known as Arthur, Jr.), who is now a singer in his own right, and Beau Daniel. He gives additional prayerful thanks when he recovers, in 2014, from a potentially career-ending bout of vocal cord paresis. His sense of gratitude is best expressed in the poem that gives the book its title: “The beauty of light finds a room in us,” he writes, “what is it all but luminous?” Lines like this demonstrate Garfunkel’s own impressive talents as a writer.

  Garfunkel covers all these aspects of his life, but elusively, with abrupt jumps in time, place and mood. The opposite of a conventional autobiography, his book more closely resembles a ramble through his emotional world, a miscellany filled with lyric-like poetry, spiritual meditations and Psalm-like blessings of gratitude as well as entertaining anecdotal outtakes from time spent among the Beatles, Jack Nicholson and other superstars. He intersperses these passages with mammoth, accountant-like lists taken from the 1,217 books he has read over the past 48 years, including classic titles by Kafka and Hermann Hesse, as well as the Random House Dictionary of the English Language. He also includes his iPod song list which, along with James Taylor and the Everly Brothers, features operatic arias sung by Enrico Caruso.

  The overall effect is that of a musical collage, a mix of many overlapping riffs, some memorable, others—well—duds, including some truly awful poetry and tasteless jokes, a variety of enigmatically precious insights, and an inclination to disclose too many details about his sex life. Those who wish to argue that Garfunkel is a lesser writer than Simon will find evidence here to support them. But the book’s more lyrical passages—and his two well-received books of poetry—suggest that the core problem in this volume is his inability, or unwillingness, to edit himself and let go of his darlings and shorten his meanderings.

  Even so, the book yields insights into Garfunkel’s personal and artistic struggles and sheds light on the dynamics, both creative and inter-personal, that fueled the musical partnership that made Simon and Garfunkel household names. That is also why, however pretentious or peculiar some of Garfunkel’s thoughts can be, they go down easily with music by either or both Garfunkel and Simon playing in the background. Despite their solo careers, that they will remain conjoined to the very end is dramatized in their running joke of recent decades, asking each other who will write whose eulogy. But whoever remains the last singer standing, Garfunkel’s appreciation could easily include this gracious summing up of what they’ve given each other: “For two-thirds of a century his arm has been around my shoulder. He dazzled me with gifts. I nurtured him in his youth. He brought me into prominence. I taught him to sing. He connected my voice to the world. I made us stand tall. All of our personal belongings are intertwined. We say it’s exhausting to compete, but we shine for each other.” To which I can only add, amen.

  Diane Cole, author of the memoir After Great Pain: A New Life Emerges, writes for The Wall Street Journal, Psychology Today and elsewhere. She is a contributing editor and the book columnist for The Psychotherapy Networker.

• Huffington Post
  https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/art-garfunkel-looks-back-at-his-luminous-life-in_us_59cff3d3e4b0f3c468060f2c
  Word count: 991

  Art Garfunkel Looks Back at His ‘Luminous’ Life in New Book
  09/30/2017 04:12 pm ET Updated Sep 30, 2017
  By Raph_PH, via Wikimedia Commons
  Art Garfunkel performing in the London Palladium in July 2017.

  Outside of music, the legendary singer Art Garfunkel talks very mellifluously and charismatically, not far off from the distinctive singing he has been known for. There’s something romantic and stream-of-consciousness in the way he reminisces about the highlights of his life and career, especially for being one-half of the famed duo Simon & Garfunkel. If his personality carries a charming and poetic tone, then that is unsurprisingly reflected in Garfunkel’s recently published book, What Is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man (Knopf), an uniquely written and unconventional memoir in which the passages are more like diaristic ruminations as well as prose poems and favorites lists. Even the book’s font style is supposedly a digitized version of the author’s handwriting, lending a sort of a homespun diary feel.

  The publication of the book provided the perfect occasion to probe into Garfunkel’s long life and career, when the artist was interviewed by Rolling Stone contributing editor Anthony DeCurtis at Manhattan’s 92Y this past Thursday. For about 70 minutes, it was a trip down memory lane for the 75-year-old Garfunkel, going back to his childhood in Queens during the idyllic Eisenhower years, and the arrival of DJ Alan Freed and rock and roll—a moment that to him was “full of life.” He also recalled the period when he and Paul Simon recorded as Tom and Jerry and hearing their hit song “Hey Schoolgirl” on the radio, which he described as a “total thrill” that made his world change.

  Garfunkel nostalgically reminisced how about he and Simon tried to peddle their talents to the hitmakers at the famed Brill Building (“Paul Simon brought the engine,” Garfunkel said of his former partner during that period). The turning point for him and Simon (Garfunkel was studying at Columbia University, while Simon was jump starting his folk career in England) was when Columbia Records producer Tom Wilson remixed “The Sound of Silence,” originally off of Simon and Garfunkel’s 1964 debut album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., as an electric folk rock song (Garfunkel called it a life changer). He also delved into other musical highlights for him from that decade, from the Monterey Pop Festival; to when Donovan played him the Beatles “Yesterday” and the Rolling Stones ‘ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction; and to the origins behind “Mrs. Robinson” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” the latter representing the high watermark for both Simon as a songwriter and Garfunkel as a singer.

  DeCurtis also brought up Garfunkel’s acting career, particularly his debut in Mike Nichols’ 1970 film version of the Joseph Heller novel Catch-22, which marked the beginning of the end of his partnership with Simon the first time. Garfunkel later admitted that he never set out to be an actor, and that he was playing against type in his acting roles (i.e., Nicolas Roeg’s 1980 thriller Bad Timing). “I wanted to find art,” he said, as opposed to appearing in hit mainstream films.

  Following a successful solo career through the ‘70s with albums like Angel Clare and Watermark, Garfunkel spoke of his quiet period at the end of that decade, marked by the tragic suicide of his girlfriend Laurie Bird. He reemerged in the public eye when he and Simon performed at their memorable concert in Central Park in 1981, which he called the “highest high.” “It was fantastic,” he told DeCurtis of that experience. “I felt the buzz around town When I stepped to the stage to half a million people, I felt the love.”
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  Knopf
  Cover of Art Garfunkel’s new book What Is It All But Luminous.

  Perhaps what was probably on most of the 92Y audience members’ minds during the conversation was the current state of Garfunkel and Simon’s relationship and whether they might reunite again. Garfunkel didn’t really go in depth about that but brought up the past occasions where a conversation between himsel and Simon about music would somehow provide the impetus for a reunion. He also spoke about the vocal cord issues following a Simon and Garfunkel tour in 2010 that forced him to not sing for a period; when resumed signing a few years later, he said he took the approach of “just do it,” as he was mending in public (He even sang a few lines of “Scarborough Fair/Canticle” at some point during the interview).

  A few of the audience members posed various questions for Garfunkel; the topics included the artists Garfunkel would consider singing with for an album (some of the names that were brought up during that part of the discussion included Van Morrison and longtime friend James Taylor); how Simon and Garfunkel first got signed to Columbia Records; his son Arthur, Jr., himself a singer; and that Garfunkel’s favorite Simon and Garfunkel song is “Old Friends.” He also explained how much of a big part played on the Simon and Garfunkel records behind the scenes; for instance encouraging Simon to write that third verse of “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

  As for the future, Garfunkel doesn’t appear to be slowing down as far as performing goes: he already has a slate of scheduled concert dates that will continue into 2018. He said that he loves touring, adding that “it’s become my base life.” And now with his latest book, Garfunkel can now add memoirist to his resume of singer/actor/pop culture icon.

  “What Is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man,” by Art Garfunkel, published by Knopf, is now available in bookstores.

• No Depression
  http://nodepression.com/article/art-garfunkel-notes-underground-man
  Word count: 817

  Art Garfunkel: Notes from the Underground Man

  From the opening pages of Art Garfunkel’s sort-of-memoir, What Is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man (Knopf), you’re either hooked or you’re repulsed. Either you’re buckled in for Garfunkel’s wild, careening journey down the roads of his many lives — actor, singer, lover, reader — or you’re yelling for him to let you out of the car. As in an epic poem, Garfunkel starts in the middle of the journey — “I was a nervous wreck as I packed my things in the middle of the night on January 2, 1969 … I was leaving the life of four years of a girl-chasing studio rat — a life of global good fortune — to cast my fate among actors.” This leave-taking, as we all know, won him no kudos from his then-partner in making music, Paul Simon, and Garfunkel tells his side of the tale: “Paul’s writing changed from ‘I know your part’ll go fine’ — words of a deep friendship (“The Only Living Boy in New York”) — to ‘Why don’t you write me?’ — words of frustration.”

  Garfunkel does his best Newt Hoenikker imitation over the next couple of paragraphs, pointing out, like the character in Vonnegut’s novel, that there’s “no damn cat, no damn cradle” when it comes to this moment with Paul Simon. He diverts the conversation quickly to his singing gift: “I have these vocal cords. Two. They have vibrated with the love of sound since I was five and began to sing with the sense of God’s gift running through me. In the sixth grade I made a friend who added sexy guitar rhythms and vocal harmony to my singing. We were twelve at the birth of rock ‘n’ roll. In our twenties we made a few special recordings. They delighted our ears and those around the world, I put my name and copyright to these lovely things. Why didn’t I write him? ... Who throws the stone and who throws the return stone? Whose stone is imagined? Whose real?” Garfunkel then meanders off — yes; he’ll draw scenes from his and Simon’s rise to stardom, their music, their decline — into a philosophical and literary reverie more a la Rimbaud, and we can follow him or not.

  If we choose to dance along with him on his peripatetic musings, we’ll stop as he reveals one of the many facets of his personality, such as his love of lists and numbers. Growing up, he “loved to chart the top thirty songs. It was the numbers that got to me. I kept meticulous lists — when a new singer Tony Bennett came onto the charts with ‘Rags to Riches,’ I watched the record jump from, say, #23 to #14 in a week. The mathematics of the jumps went to my sense of fun.” Garfunkel’s penchant for keeping lists accompanies him even now as he keeps lists of the books he’s read during over the years, and he shares portions of those lists with us. So, from February 1999 to January 2006, Garfunkel read 179 books, and he reports that 26 stood out, among them Zola’s The Debacle (1870), Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi (1946), and Groucho Marx’s Love, Groucho (1992). He then waxes poetic about his books in a tongue-in-cheek bit of verse (and he prints here his poems in bold print), “Today I’ll judge my books by their covers./I’ll watch a pot, count unhatched chicks,/I’ll fix the unbroken, hold secret gods divine.”

  If J. Alfred Prufrock’s life was measured out in coffee spoons, Garfunkel’s is measured out in lists: of songs on his iPod, of his greatest achievements, of the things he’s devoted to, of the setlist from his 2007 Paris solo show. The songs on his iPod are by artists ranging from Stephen Bishop and James Taylor to Maurice Ravel and Enrico Caruso. The ten reasons he’s in awe of his wife, Kim Cermank, include: “she has the silhouette of a nubile Egyptian princess”; “she never cooks a bad meal”; “she possesses a considerable range of great kisses”; “she’s a kickass actress, and she loves me.”

  Eventually, his making of many lists wearies the soul and the body grows restless. Yet, maybe, just maybe, that’s the beauty of this book. Garfunkel’s told us in the first few pages that his book sings; his vocal cords vibrate with love. No wonder then that he modulates from measure to measure, rarely stopping to catch his breath, and leaving us a little breathless along the way. If we’re listening, we might hear a few of the notes in this cacophony, and we might just hear those golden tones reveal love and mercy and awe and light. But, we have to listen closely.

• Elmore Magazine
  http://www.elmoremagazine.com/2017/10/reviews/books/what-is-it-all-but-luminous-notes-from-an-underground-man-knopf
  Word count: 469

  What Is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man (Knopf)
  Art Garfunkel's train of thought

  Book Reviews

  | October 4th, 2017

  Perhaps instead of “The Singer,” vocal legend Art Garfunkel should be henceforth known as “The Wordsmith.” Garfunkel is clearly enamored with and by words, and in his unorthodox new semi-memoir, likes to manipulate language in ways designed to interpret his implications about life, love, career, and existence.

  I love Art Garfunkel and always will. He is one of the few artists whom I can take completely out of a band context (i.e. Simon & Garfunkel) and still hold in high esteem, given his golden voice and rich solo work. But for being so great at molding words into descriptive thought, I am left wanting too much more. I wanted a lifetime spilled out and spelled out between 1973 and 1983; sadly this didn’t happen, even though this is the period that cements Garfunkel as one of the undeniable best at his craft.

  His all-too-succinct work is the written equivalent of his modern-day live performances: a complete lyrical tale, followed by deviations into poetry and reflections and ruminations on whatever stands out in his mind. Garfunkel has stream-of-consciousness worthy of Marcel Proust or Karl Ove Knausgaard but is unfortunately too reliant on platitudes and non-sequiturs to help us better understand his life and the events that define it. But that is likely Garfunkel’s intention all along. The mysteries of his life aren’t explicitly spelled out because it proves more fruitful for us to peel back the onion layers on our own instead, to see what cooks and what stinks.

  If you regard Luminous as a book of poetry or song lyrics, you’re apt to enjoy it more. While it’s fun to read Garfunkel’s reflections on standout books, James Taylor, his walks across the world, and the seemingly endless tributes to his wife and children, his content quits on us while it’s ahead. For example, his remembrances (and standout photo) of former girlfriend Laurie Bird are beautifully poignant but appear and disappear within a matter of paragraphs. Paul Simon makes occasional appearances but for anyone looking for a straightforward dramatic account of their public falling-out, you will be sorely disappointed.

  Still, as Garfunkel works his way fully back to the stage after fighting vocal paresis for years, this is an optimistic testament to a life both richly lived and still impacting others, both within and outside the world of music. He may dub himself an “underground man” but even Garfunkel still brings imaginative and original thought to the literary surface at times. Perhaps, I just need to give it a second read (and chance).

  —Ira Kantor

• Forbes
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/civicnation/2018/01/24/seven-mayors-championing-free-community-college/#1081046a02ad
  Word count: 1119

  Art Garfunkel's Unconventional New Autobiography Chronicles, Fascinates

  Jim Clash , Contributor
  I write about culture and adventure sports.
  Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

  When you chat with Art Garfunkel, the second half of the iconic Simon & Garfunkel musical duo, he doesn’t seem like the 75-year-old man that he is. There’s a boyish quality there, which also comes across in his new book, “What Is It All But Luminous” (Alfred A. Knopf, September 2017). The format is not conventional. Random thoughts, photos and poems pepper the narrative. To get some sense of what it all means, I sat down with Art for some perspective. In Part 1 of this interview series, the crooner legend discusses the book’s title, his seminal songs Sound of Silence and Scarborough Fair, the soundtrack to The Graduate movie and his acting in Catch-22.

  Jim Clash: Art, first congratulations on your book. Let’s start with the title - "What Is It All But Luminous" - and the subtitle - "Notes From An Underground Man." How did you come up with these?

  Art Garfunkel: Thank you. I've spent 35 years of my life writing, and I've finally put it all together. It's a big deal for me. I think of myself as a little bit of a misfit in today's times. I don't get the modern America. It looks goofy to me. Maybe I'm different - I'm the goofy one. I walk across continents. I've walked America, I've walked Europe, and sometimes I'm out there. My memories haunt me and I tear up, the eyes get a little blurry and I think, 'What is it all but luminous'? Luminous is a way to describe that your vision has gone blurry - that you're feeling spiritual instead of literal. It all shines, 360-degrees around you. I never quite grew up, Jim.

  Clash: In the book on your list of “25 records that changed my life,” you have one Simon & Garfunkel tune – Scarborough Fair. Why that one and not Sound of Silence?

  Garfunkel: The Sound of Silence changed my life. It was a big hit record, and I went from being unknown to known. So that's the logic if you look at it biographically. But I look at the question musically. "What are the songs you think a record is, Mr. Garfunkel?" The Sound of Silence was a pop song, with overdubbed guitar, bass and drums. Sure, it is singular in my autobiography. But Scarborough Fair, its flow and its smoothness, was a stunning experience as it happened for me, Paul [Simon] and [producer] Roy [Halee]. When it was finished, I felt that it was very special. It was made by the gods. So I interpreted the question of 25 records that changed my life more as studio experiences, musical happenings. Scarborough Fair was a very special success there, in my opinion.

  Clash: You put performing the soundtrack for The Graduate as one of your life’s top 25 achievements. How did that soundtrack come about, and was the song Mrs. Robinson written specifically for the movie?

  Garfunkel: Mike Nichols - that wonderful director who passed recently - was living with three of our Simon & Garfunkel tunes, more or less as placeholders. His movie was coming to an end, and he was getting ready to put the sound and songs in. He knew he liked S&G’s music, so he had commissioned us to give him four songs. But we never came up with the fourth! Paul had written “Punky’s Dilemma” – it’s on our Bookends album, goofy silly… ‘wish I was a Kellogg’s cornflake’… It was meant to be sung over when Dustin Hoffman is floating in his family’s swimming pool, thinking about his future now that he has finished college and feeling he’s going nowhere. The song is just serendipitous.

  Clash: I don't remember that in the movie?

  Garfunkel: Mike rejected it. ‘What else you got, Paul?’ Paul didn’t have anything. So Mike was living with April Come She Will, Sound of Silence and Scarborough Fair as placeholders, learning to love them just as they were in their places. So he told Paul to give him one song for when Dustin is racing down the west coast to break up the impending marriage of his girlfriend, Elaine. It needed to be up-tempo. Paul had the rhythm, but not the song. And there, in the sound stage, I said to Mike, “You know, Paul is working on a song called Mrs. Roosevelt.” Mike said. “Do you know how right that could be if we just changed the name - the syllables are perfect?” So Paul sung, "So here’s to you Mrs. Roosevelt," and I started harmonizing. When I harmonize with Paul, it falls into place – the history of Simon & Garfunkel. So Mike heard the duet, bought the whole idea, but of using Mrs. Robinson instead of Mrs. Roosevelt. There was no verse yet, so in the movie you hear: "doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo"– that’s called a song not written yet [laughs] - only the chorus was there.

  Clash: How did you get your acting role in Catch-22?

  Garfunkel: It came about because Mike reached out to me. He saw that I could act and offered me a role. I was petrified until I opened the script and saw the very funny writing, and I began to feel confident. I could see myself in this very interesting black comedy – finding that Mike Nichols and Art Garfunkel were on somewhat of a similar track. What Mike found poignant, so did I. So I called him and said, "I could say these lines, I could be an actor and surprise myself, deliver your vision."

  (Editor’s Note: In the next installments of this exclusive interview with Art Garfunkel, we discuss Art’s relationship with Paul Simon, who he might be today had he never met Paul, his epitaph, the difference between movie acting and performing as a singer and more. Stay tuned to the Forbes channel.)

  Part 2: Art Garfunkel Says He Might Have Been A Teacher Had He Never Met Paul Simon

  Final installment - Part 3: What Art Garfunkel Wants His Epitaph To Be
  Alfred A. Knopf Books

  Courtesy of Alfred A. Knopf Books.

  James M. (Jim) Clash, a New York-based journalist and Fellow at The Explorers Club, covers extreme adventure and culture. He owns a ticket to fly in space with Virgin Galactic.

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