Book presentation

On Thursday 28 May, Daniel Kane, the editor Love, Joe: The Selected Letters of Joe Brainard, will give a presentation of the book (just released in paperback!) and have a conversation about Brainard and the people around him. The talk takes place at Nord Books, Sankt Paulsgatan 20, 118 48 Stockholm. The event starts at 18.00, the book will be for sale at a launch price and there will be drinks.

Joe Brainard was one of the most distinctive figures on New York City’s vibrant cultural scene in the 1960s and 1970s. Widely known for his influential experimental memoir, I Remember, Brainard worked in a variety of forms, from New York School–aligned poetry to Pop Art–adjacent artworks, including wild riffs on the comic strip character Nancy.

Love, Joe presents a selection of Brainard’s letters stretching from 1959 to 1993, offering an intimate view of his personal and artistic life. They allow readers to witness an extraordinarily fertile moment in New York’s history, when literary and visual arts intersected with happenings, proto-punk and psychedelic rock concerts. Brainard’s letters to his partner, Kenward Elmslie, and others also open a window onto the transformations of queer life during this period. His correspondents include poet and artist friends such as John Ashbery, Ted Berrigan, Alice Notley, Bernadette Mayer, James Schuyler, Alex Katz, and Andy Warhol, as well as lovers, patrons and fans. At once an insider’s view of the art and literary worlds and a revelation of Brainard’s creative process, these letters invite readers to share in his radical but gentle candor, his open-mindedness, and a sophisticated naiveté that helped him erase the conventional barriers between art and life.