"What Is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man", by Art Garfunkle

Hardcover | 256 Pages

Signed by Art Garfunkle

"In What Is It All but Luminous, Art Garfunkel writes about growing up in the 1940s and ‘50s (son of a traveling salesman, listening as his father played Enrico Caruso records), a middle-class Jewish boy, living in a redbrick semi-attached house on Jewel Avenue in Kew Gardens, Queens.

He writes of meeting Paul Simon, the kid who made Art laugh (they met at their graduation play, Alice in Wonderland; Paul was the White Rabbit; Art, the Cheshire Cat). Of their being twelve at the birth of rock’n’roll (“it was rhythm and blues. It was black. I was captured and so was Paul”), of a demo of their song, Hey Schoolgirl for seven dollars and the actual record (with Paul’s father on bass) going to #40 on the charts.

He writes about their becoming Simon & Garfunkel, ruling the pop charts from the age of sixteen, about not being a natural performer but more a thinker, an underground man.

He writes of the hit songs; touring; about being an actor working with directors Mike Nichols (“the greatest of them all”), about choosing music over a PhD in mathematics.

And he writes about his long-unfolding split with Paul, and how and why it evolved, and after; learning to perform on his own . . . and about being a husband, a father and much more." - Penguin Random House

"A charming book of prose and poetry printed in a digitalized version of his handwriting... witty, candid, and wildly imaginative... A highly intelligent man trying to make sense of his extraordinary life." - Associated Press

It's hard to imagine any single word that would accurately describe this book... an entertaining volume that's more fun to read than a conventional memoir might have been." - The Wall Street Journal

Poetic musings on a life well-lived - one that is still moving forward, always creating, always luminous. This isn't your typical autobiography. Garfunkel's history is told in flowing prose, bounding from present to past, far from a linear rags-to-riches story." - Bookreporter