Customer Comments

Miranda July is poster girl for the follow your impulses, give in to distraction and procrastination way of creation. There's most likely only one of these posters though, selling for a dollar in a pennysavers ad. Jealous of "older writers who had gotten more of a toehold on their discipline before the web came," July only got one script and one book written before the internet arrived. So she'd "set the stage for writing but instead looked things up online." Or read the pennysaver ads over lunch. She gave up on her project and gave in to her curiosity about just who these pennysaver-ad-placers were, and inadvertently stumbled into a subculture of people without computers. July meets some extreme characters and interviews them with earnest respect, honest about her feelings of fear, overwhelm, sympathy and affection. I already loved the book before I even got to the surprising and tender ending. Now I want to go see "The Future" again. If you're stymied,stuck or stalled out in a creative endeavor, I highly recommend you stop and read this book. You can call it research. Oh and Miranda, if you're googling yourself again, hi, I love your work.

Extraordinary Work of Art

I finished this book feeling like I knew Matt Love and Newport equally well, at least as seen from the vantage point of the local taverns and foggy beaches. His writing is unguarded, passionate and generous and the book is inspiring in its immediacy. Newport is lucky to have this resident writer, teacher, preserver and rabble rouser in their midst. I admit I briefly harbored a fantasy of being his girlfriend, (along with, undoubtedly, scores of high school girls and tavern regulars) but alas I don't have a chance as I do like my umbrella, don't always know where my salmon comes from and have been known to occasionally tip back a bottled water.