{"id":116820,"date":"2017-10-19T09:00:23","date_gmt":"2017-10-19T13:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=116820"},"modified":"2017-10-19T14:31:20","modified_gmt":"2017-10-19T18:31:20","slug":"carrie-mae-weems-favorite-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/10\/19\/carrie-mae-weems-favorite-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Carrie Mae Weems on Her Favorite Books"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The following is excerpted from\u00a0<\/em>Unpacking My Library: Artists and Their Books,\u00a0a collection of interviews with contemporary artists about their personal libraries, to be published by Yale University Press in November.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Carrie Mae Weems in her library. Photo: David Paul Broda<\/p><\/div>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Your photographic work incorporates family stories, autobiography, documentary, and other narrative forms. What do you consider to be your role as a storyteller?<\/p>\n

CARRIE MAE WEEMS<\/p>\n

In the past I\u2019ve employed elements of text in and around my work, but I\u2019m certainly not a storyteller. Storytelling requires skills that I don\u2019t possess. Rather, in my work, text functions as a conceptual frame for creating play, counterpoint, tension and\/or positioning meaning. The word is a form and the shape of things.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Is there one book that stands out as having had a big impact on you when you first read it?<\/p>\n

WEEMS<\/p>\n

Books are my playmates, my best friends, my running buddies, my partners in crime, my solace, and my occasional lover. For many years I carried a Felix Gonzalez-Torres catalog [text by Nancy Spector, for the Guggenheim Museum] everywhere. I\u2019d find myself hugging it, holding it tightly to my chest. I fell in love with it\u2014I took simple pleasure in opening it, letting the pages fall where they may, and reading it randomly. I really do love that book\u2014the way it feels and the way it carries, the ease at which you can move through it, thumb through \u2028it, look at it. One day I opened it up and I thought, This is really interesting. Who designed this? His name is Takaaki Matsumoto. I was lucky enough to have him design the catalogue from my exhibition at the Guggenheim, and we have become wonderful friends. His designs are elegant, smart, and very simple, with beautiful paper.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Carrie Mae Weems\u2019s Library. Photo: David Paul Broda<\/p><\/div>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Do you believe that books can have a special kind of power over us, and if so, what is it about books that have this effect?<\/p>\n

WEEMS<\/p>\n

Music and books have saved my life. They anchor my being, ground my existence, widen the path, feed and nourish, and the best reveal both the limits and the expanse of our humanity\u2014they are powerful objects. Most books are, however, one-night stands.\u00a0One rarely goes back for seconds. Of course, then there are those that are returned to again and again, because you can\u2019t get enough.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

On the subject of rereading, Vladimir Nabokov commented, \u201cWe have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a painting) that takes in the whole picture and then can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting.\u201d Which books do you reread most often, or keep going back to? Which writers do you return to?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Carrie Mae Weems\u2019s Library. Photo: Anthony Rossi<\/p><\/div>\n

WEEMS<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve gone back to Ira Glass to reread certain stories. I\u2019ve gone back to Malcolm Gladwell many times to read the way he enters a story. I am fascinated by the way he leads a reader into the story, the structure of his writing. At first glance you might think they are telling offbeat stories, but they\u2019re really not. I think it\u2019s really about how the story is constructed, and how they engage with us, they are built in exceptional ways, that\u2019s how they set themselves apart. I reread the opening five or six paragraphs of Gladwell\u2019s New Yorker <\/em>piece on Edward Snowden and Daniel Ellsberg probably ten times. I thought it was magnificent\u2014what an opening, what a grand way of getting me into this headspace of yours. I\u2019ve gone back to \u2028Coetzee many times because in particular \u2028I think Disgrace <\/em>is amazing. I have read Toni Morrison on my knees, just floored by her amazing ability to tap into that thing that is so difficult for most of us. And then Maria Semple\u2014I keep going back to Where\u2019d You Go, Bernadette<\/em>\u2014it\u2019s so fantastic, so beautifully constructed out of emails. And there are the artists that I return to repeatedly\u2014there\u2019s a whole list of them, from the great classical painters to the great modernist painters. Duchamp is one of the great puzzles of my life. I\u2019ve gone to see Duchamp\u2019s work in the Philadelphia Museum more times than I can count. I look into that world he has created for us that is so frightening and exceptionally extraordinary. The wonderful thing about reading is discovering, and going back to, and reinvestigating the people you admire, or have questions about, or that interest or engage you in some way. Or people who have managed to articulate reality for you in a way that you completely get, that you have never been able to say yourself. Tobias Woolf I think is also kind of amazing, and Cormac McCarthy is really something, his world. There are these passages of language that I find so amazing.\u00a0And Baldwin, Paul Auster, these authors are really quite special. They have a facility with the language that I so envy and like having close to me.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Carrie Mae Weems\u2019s Library.\u00a0Photo: David Paul Broda<\/p><\/div>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Are there publishers whose books you covet, or authors or artists you collect? Do you collect certain books because of their beautiful design?<\/p>\n

WEEMS<\/p>\n

Even though I mark in my books, I prefer beautifully printed books with cotton paper, with strong spines, good color, nice patterns\u2014books that were made with thoughtful consideration, that aren\u2019t too big, and can be held easily in the hand. On the other hand I love newsprint, so there is something about rough-and-tumble paper, a kind of throwaway paper that I also really love. I\u2019ve done projects with newsprint over the years\u2014I love working with it, I love the color of it, that kind of yellow, so I have worked in that way, too, but I really do like certain kinds of materials, and those materials I come back to again and again. And I suppose in some small way this idea of the surface and texture, what a page feels like when you engage with it, is also meaningful because I am a photographer, somebody who is used to working with certain kinds of textures that resonate with the quality of words and pictures in a certain kind of way. So this material, and the material world, is one I think we all are deeply engaged in. And how we are engaged in that, how I am engaged in that, really matters to me. What\u2019s around me, what do I build, what do I look at, what do I touch, what do I enjoy touching\u2014that tactile nature of reading and looking at books is as important as reading them. Most of us have books that we will never read. It\u2019s all sort of wishful thinking\u2014I keep looking at my books and think, when am I going to read that, when is it possible?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Carrie Mae Weems\u2019s studio. Photo: Anthony Rossi<\/p><\/div>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

If you could design or customize your library, and there were no restrictions, is there anything you would change?<\/p>\n

WEEMS<\/p>\n

If I could, I\u2019d have a very large room filled with books on the floors, wall to wall and floor to ceiling. In the center would be a chair just for me, along with a small table for pads, pencils, and ashtrays. This would be my playroom, and every day from four to seven, I\u2019d have tea or martinis with my closest friends.<\/p>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Regarding your recent performance-based work, you have stated, \u201cThere are only a few great stories in the world and they are repeated again and again.\u201d How did you come to create this work?<\/p>\n

WEEMS<\/p>\n

For many years, even though I have not done\u2028 any theater, I was always interested in theater to one degree or another. So I decided about a year ago that I would spend some time reading about Brecht again. I go back to Beckett, to Waiting for Godot, <\/em>over and over and over\u2014it\u2019s the thing I constantly reread, I read it several times a year. So I was looking at Bertolt Brecht because I wanted to understand it, and I was thinking about theater while mounting Grace Notes <\/em>[Grace Notes: Reflections for Now<\/em>, a performance of music, song, text, spoken word, and video projection, premiered at the Spoleto Festival in June 2016]. It was really through reading some early work about Brecht that I realized that I myself was actually building the story of Antigone; that I was creating a modern-day Antigone as Brecht did in his day. I didn\u2019t realize I was working on Antigone until I was reading about Brecht\u2019s work. It was through this that I discovered my own self, and I think that\u2019s what reading is. I was just so stunned when I realized I had created a contemporary Antigone. This idea that there are only a couple of stories and they get retold again and again and again, I think is true. There are these themes, and Antigone has a great theme; a sister wants to bury her brother with honor, that\u2019s all she wants to do. But in a larger community that denies her that right, and in a state that denies her that right. So if we look at that contemporarily, we can extrapolate pretty easily, it\u2019s not difficult. There\u2019s that wonderful song by Billie Holiday, \u201cThe Same Old Story,\u201d [sings<\/em>], \u201cIt\u2019s all fun and laughter, They lived ever after in ecstasy, The same old story but it\u2019s new \u2028to me.\u201d I was deeply affected when I learned that indeed I had actually tapped into an old story, an ancient story.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Carrie Mae Weems\u2019s Library. Photo: David Paul Broda<\/p><\/div>\n

INTERVIEWER<\/p>\n

Do you read for pleasure, out of curiosity, or professionally? Are there certain books that have helped you in your\u2028 own work?<\/p>\n

WEEMS<\/p>\n

Reading is a way of searching for meaning, a way to self-discovery, a point of departure for figuring things out, or for mapping a process. I think I do \u2028it because I am searching. It is not just for pleasure, but it is the searching out and the seeking of greater understanding of myself through what others have made. For me, reading is always related to work, to effort, to discovery. It has something to do with understanding that somebody else has been there, somebody else has charted a path. It\u2019s not the path that you\u2019re going to take\u2014you have to take your own\u2014but your path can certainly be informed by what has been made, what has come before you, and who has struggled through it. While I take great pleasure in reading, I don\u2019t read for pleasure. I\u2019m too hungry, too desperate.\u00a0Like everybody else I\u2019m stumbling through the darkness, looking for the light\u2014and for a flash, a hot minute, certain writers\/books illuminate the darkness, for which I am eternally grateful.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Carrie Mae Weems\u2019s Top Ten\u00a0Books<\/strong><\/p>\n

(for which she has listed eleven)<\/em><\/p>\n

1.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

2.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

3.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

4.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

5.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

6.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

7.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

8.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

9.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

10.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

11.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jo Steffens\u00a0is an independent writer and curator; she is the former director of the Municipal Art Society of New York\u2019s Urban Center Books and Banff-Calgary International Writers Festival.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

From <\/em>Unpacking My Library: Artists and Their Books edited by Jo Steffens and Matthias Neumann, published by Yale University Press in November 2017. Reproduced by permission.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is excerpted from\u00a0Unpacking My Library: Artists and Their Books,\u00a0a collection of interviews with contemporary artists about their personal libraries, to be published by Yale University Press in November.\u00a0 INTERVIEWER Your photographic work incorporates family stories, autobiography, documentary, and other narrative forms. What do you consider to be your role as a storyteller? CARRIE […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1285,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[907],"tags":[25816,6234,2555,31125,8736,29172,31123,31128,5366,8084,31126,6184,31124,31127],"class_list":["post-116820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-work","tag-antigone","tag-billie-holiday","tag-cormac-mccarthy","tag-daniel-ellsberg","tag-disgrace","tag-duchamp","tag-felix-gonzalez-torres","tag-grace-notes-reflections-for-now","tag-ira-glass","tag-malcolm-gladwell","tag-maria-semple","tag-paul-auster","tag-takaaki-matsumoto","tag-waiting-for-godot"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCarrie Mae Weems on Her Favorite Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The artist on the pleasures of rereading, beautifully printed cotton pages, and martini hour in her dream library.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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