Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Penguin Books (2009), Edition: Illustrated, 336 pages
Description
The Principles of Uncertainty is an irresistible invitation to experience life through the psyche of Maira Kalman, one of this country's most beloved artists. The result is a book that is part personal narrative, part documentary, part travelogue, part chapbook, and all Kalman. Her brilliant, whimsical paintings, ideas, and images--which initially appear random--ultimately form an intricately interconnected worldview, an idiosyncratic inner monologue. Kalman contends with some existential questions--What is identity? What is happiness? Why do we fight wars? And then, of course, death, love, and candy (not necessarily in that order).
User reviews
LibraryThing member wortklauberlein
Maira Kalman's art doesn't particularly appeal to me but I did muse about the frequent rendering of art and photographs into her own style and what extra layer that added. This is a quirky illustrated essay about how we live and the fact that we all die, but it's also about sofas and suitcases and
And if you know more about the story of the suitcase Maira Kalman has that once belonged to a man who fled Danzig in 1939, please let me know. It may be important, or it may be another dead end in a search for those things that tie us to the past.
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how varied people are and how distinctive each of us is, even when viewed from the rear. For frustrated journal-keepers or those legions who protest they don't know how to write or don't know what to say, read this book. Go with the flow. In the end, it all matters, and nothing matters. Be depressed. Enjoy.And if you know more about the story of the suitcase Maira Kalman has that once belonged to a man who fled Danzig in 1939, please let me know. It may be important, or it may be another dead end in a search for those things that tie us to the past.
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LibraryThing member sarah-e
Everything I say - I regret saying. What if I did not speak? (p 99)
This beautiful book is full of sweetness and humor, sad realities and simple truths. I cannot tell you what it means to me to have read it, except that I laughed out loud in bed several times, and that I liked it all very much. It
This beautiful book is full of sweetness and humor, sad realities and simple truths. I cannot tell you what it means to me to have read it, except that I laughed out loud in bed several times, and that I liked it all very much. It
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left me with the impression that maybe the world is not all as bad as I have recently been thinking. Or at least that if it is, I can deal with it. I wish it had been longer. Show Less
LibraryThing member MeditationesMartini
This book of watercolours and nostalgia and food and hats is an Epicurean aesthetics of living, a manifesto for a softer world, the literary equivalent of laugh lines. Reading it, I wanted to slow down and s-l-l-o-o-w d-o-o-w-w-w-n and SSSLLLLOOOOOWWWWWW DDDOOOOWWWWWNNNNNN, and I did, and I
It's generous, inclusive; Kalman is tugging on a universal sleeve, saying "here, I made this," sending all of us an embossed invitation to close our eyes and drift with her on the river Lacrimae Rerum. To open them suddenly; to laugh brightly and long.
But it's also, of course, specifically Jewish, an Old-Country-via-Old-New-York remembrance of things past that makes you think ach mir! what a culture, what a history, what a gift to the world. And then it's also personal, because like, whence, specifically, this inrushing experience, lately common in me, of affinity for a (hopefully unspuriously) constructed Jewishness?
Well, it's like this: as the child of an immigrant, you enact a constant enigma of return, a negotiation of self and history. You build a spiritual Heimatland that underwrites who you are and want to be. And in my case that's not the Austria of Onkel Walter and Onkel Ewald and cozy huts and rodeln gehen and eierschwammeln under pines and keys to kingdoms under rocks on Sundays; or that's a big part of it, of me, but ultimately the Austria, das Ich, that I love is a lost Austria, a dream diluted and deferred, a fin-de-siecle-and-beyond Wien of der Mahler and der Schoenberg and the paintings of Klimt and Schiele and that young firebrand Trotsky down at the Cafe Central, and sure there's the novels of Musil and Schnitzler and to an extent Kafka usw., and granddaddy Freud casting his shadow like Laios over the 20th century, but ultimately it's not a literary or even an intellectual Vienna, in the usual sense, or if it is it's in a way the contradictions and shortcomings of which are embodied by Freud's own work. Cozy, wistful, haunted, sexy, ludicrous, self-absorbed, immoral, left behind and yet a crucible for some of the most exquisite feelings--an aesthetic geography
Do you see where I'm going with this? Because the other thing that this Vienna is, this aestheticized recognition of a Selbstquelle, a source of self--is a Jewish Vienna. A multicultural promise turned to ash, and maybe it's impossible for someone who wants to feel themselves cosmopolitan, flaneur, and yet always able to pop in and see an extended cousin or chum and have a kleiner schwarzer and complain about St. Germain or Stephen Harper--not to love this Jewish Austria, this reconciliation of opposites in joy. Certainly it calls me.
But that is a lost world, and I'm not out to pigeonhole Kalman's book nor essentialize it. Not to limit its sense of play (or the cosmic signification of the Jewish people, although I am trying to shy away from this, trying not to imply that this is in any primary way the "Jewish literature" of a reductive Other) by tying it (or them) too closely to the greatest tragedy. Kalman certainly doesn't--she gives us major hairdos under preposterous hats, the constant consumption of pastries with names like bombes, the desperate need to follow the elderly and make sure they're all right. And when she does come out and address this business of heartbreak and continuing to live, she does it with the bracingly martial sentiment of the British wartime posters: Keep Calm and Carry On.
And so you put that book right down on that shelf and carry right on out that door, ready to take on the world, certain that someone somewhere is wearing a preposterous hat. And as I did it, out of my electronic music companion and into my ears piped that lovely lyric from the Cure's "Doing the Unstuck":
it's a perfect day for letting go
for setting fire to bridges
boats
and other dreary worlds you know
let's get happy!
it's a perfect day for making out
to wake up with a smile without a doubt
to burst grin giggle bliss skip jump and sing and shout
let's get happy!
but it's much to late you say
for doing this now
we should have done it then
well it just goes to show
how wrong you can be
and how you really should know
that it's never too late
to get up and go
it's a perfect day for kiss and swell
for rip-zipping button-popping kiss and well...
there's loads of other stuff can make you yell
let's get happy!
it's a perfect day for doing the unstuck
for dancing like you can't hear the beat
and you don't give a further thought
to things like feet
let's get happy!
but it's much too late you say
for doing this now
we should have done it then
well it just goes to show
how wrong you can be
and how you really should know
that it's never to late
to get up and go
kick out the gloom
kick out the blues
tear out the pages with all the bad news
pull down the mirrors and pull down the walls
tear up the stairs and tear up the floors
oh just burn down the house!
burn down the street!
turn everything red and the beat is complete
with the sound of your world
going up in fire
it's a perfect day to throw back your head
and kiss it all goodbye
it's a perfect day for getting old
forgetting all your worries
life
and everything that makes you cry
let's get happy!
it's a perfect day for dreams come true
for thinking big
and doing anything you want to do
let's get happy!
Oh dear, did I include them all? Well, I went outside and it was a perfect Vancouver afternoon, the sun making things glow from the inside and burning off the last bit of mist, sparkling particles amidst the trees.
This book gave me that moment. It turned my ich habe genug gehabt into simple ich habe genug.
O beautiful human life.
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ddiiiddd, but never quite slow enough to savour it to the full, to the sugar in the bottom of the cup.It's generous, inclusive; Kalman is tugging on a universal sleeve, saying "here, I made this," sending all of us an embossed invitation to close our eyes and drift with her on the river Lacrimae Rerum. To open them suddenly; to laugh brightly and long.
But it's also, of course, specifically Jewish, an Old-Country-via-Old-New-York remembrance of things past that makes you think ach mir! what a culture, what a history, what a gift to the world. And then it's also personal, because like, whence, specifically, this inrushing experience, lately common in me, of affinity for a (hopefully unspuriously) constructed Jewishness?
Well, it's like this: as the child of an immigrant, you enact a constant enigma of return, a negotiation of self and history. You build a spiritual Heimatland that underwrites who you are and want to be. And in my case that's not the Austria of Onkel Walter and Onkel Ewald and cozy huts and rodeln gehen and eierschwammeln under pines and keys to kingdoms under rocks on Sundays; or that's a big part of it, of me, but ultimately the Austria, das Ich, that I love is a lost Austria, a dream diluted and deferred, a fin-de-siecle-and-beyond Wien of der Mahler and der Schoenberg and the paintings of Klimt and Schiele and that young firebrand Trotsky down at the Cafe Central, and sure there's the novels of Musil and Schnitzler and to an extent Kafka usw., and granddaddy Freud casting his shadow like Laios over the 20th century, but ultimately it's not a literary or even an intellectual Vienna, in the usual sense, or if it is it's in a way the contradictions and shortcomings of which are embodied by Freud's own work. Cozy, wistful, haunted, sexy, ludicrous, self-absorbed, immoral, left behind and yet a crucible for some of the most exquisite feelings--an aesthetic geography
Do you see where I'm going with this? Because the other thing that this Vienna is, this aestheticized recognition of a Selbstquelle, a source of self--is a Jewish Vienna. A multicultural promise turned to ash, and maybe it's impossible for someone who wants to feel themselves cosmopolitan, flaneur, and yet always able to pop in and see an extended cousin or chum and have a kleiner schwarzer and complain about St. Germain or Stephen Harper--not to love this Jewish Austria, this reconciliation of opposites in joy. Certainly it calls me.
But that is a lost world, and I'm not out to pigeonhole Kalman's book nor essentialize it. Not to limit its sense of play (or the cosmic signification of the Jewish people, although I am trying to shy away from this, trying not to imply that this is in any primary way the "Jewish literature" of a reductive Other) by tying it (or them) too closely to the greatest tragedy. Kalman certainly doesn't--she gives us major hairdos under preposterous hats, the constant consumption of pastries with names like bombes, the desperate need to follow the elderly and make sure they're all right. And when she does come out and address this business of heartbreak and continuing to live, she does it with the bracingly martial sentiment of the British wartime posters: Keep Calm and Carry On.
And so you put that book right down on that shelf and carry right on out that door, ready to take on the world, certain that someone somewhere is wearing a preposterous hat. And as I did it, out of my electronic music companion and into my ears piped that lovely lyric from the Cure's "Doing the Unstuck":
it's a perfect day for letting go
for setting fire to bridges
boats
and other dreary worlds you know
let's get happy!
it's a perfect day for making out
to wake up with a smile without a doubt
to burst grin giggle bliss skip jump and sing and shout
let's get happy!
but it's much to late you say
for doing this now
we should have done it then
well it just goes to show
how wrong you can be
and how you really should know
that it's never too late
to get up and go
it's a perfect day for kiss and swell
for rip-zipping button-popping kiss and well...
there's loads of other stuff can make you yell
let's get happy!
it's a perfect day for doing the unstuck
for dancing like you can't hear the beat
and you don't give a further thought
to things like feet
let's get happy!
but it's much too late you say
for doing this now
we should have done it then
well it just goes to show
how wrong you can be
and how you really should know
that it's never to late
to get up and go
kick out the gloom
kick out the blues
tear out the pages with all the bad news
pull down the mirrors and pull down the walls
tear up the stairs and tear up the floors
oh just burn down the house!
burn down the street!
turn everything red and the beat is complete
with the sound of your world
going up in fire
it's a perfect day to throw back your head
and kiss it all goodbye
it's a perfect day for getting old
forgetting all your worries
life
and everything that makes you cry
let's get happy!
it's a perfect day for dreams come true
for thinking big
and doing anything you want to do
let's get happy!
Oh dear, did I include them all? Well, I went outside and it was a perfect Vancouver afternoon, the sun making things glow from the inside and burning off the last bit of mist, sparkling particles amidst the trees.
This book gave me that moment. It turned my ich habe genug gehabt into simple ich habe genug.
O beautiful human life.
Show Less
LibraryThing member mykl-s
This book is like a museum. Full of beautiful, interesting images, abd with words to boot.
LibraryThing member olevia
This graphic memoir is a collection of Kalman's writings & drawings from a limited-time blog published in the online New York Times newspaper. Kalman's drawings & accompanying sparse, yet well-chosen words are vignettes from her life in Russia & New York City. Words don't work in explaining what
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Kalman is about in "The Principles of Uncertainity" - you must see the book (or the blog, which is still accessible online) or understand what she is about. Show Less
LibraryThing member kylekatz
Great art, insightful, a little marred for me by her pro-Israel leanings, her white privilege and wealth and basically taking for granted that shopping in Paris and eating fancy crudités is a normal way of life.
LibraryThing member subbobmail
I am a Maira Kalman fan, just as I was a fan of her late husband, gonzo design guru Tibor Kalman. Maira has for years been publishing neato picture books for children like Hey Willy, See The Pyramids and Next Stop, Grand Central. She writes and paints like a big wide-eyed kid, and that's big
The Principles of Uncertainty collects a bunch of work that Kalman did for the New York Times Magazine, online version. It feels like a peek into her brain and/or sketchbook. "How can I tell you everything that is in my heart. Impossible to begin. Enough. No. Begin. With the hapless dodo." And indeed, there is a painting of a dodo. From there she goes to Spinoza, Pavolv's dog (stuffed) and the young Nabokov -- all in five pages. I could happily watch Kalman ramble around like this for hours.
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praise. The Principles of Uncertainty collects a bunch of work that Kalman did for the New York Times Magazine, online version. It feels like a peek into her brain and/or sketchbook. "How can I tell you everything that is in my heart. Impossible to begin. Enough. No. Begin. With the hapless dodo." And indeed, there is a painting of a dodo. From there she goes to Spinoza, Pavolv's dog (stuffed) and the young Nabokov -- all in five pages. I could happily watch Kalman ramble around like this for hours.
Show Less
LibraryThing member kristenn
I knew nothing about this book when I received it for Christmas but I enjoyed it very much. And it turns out I'm already a little familiar with her art because she does New Yorker covers. A lot of the drawings were striking and the colors were lovely, but I particularly enjoyed the writing. She has
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a fun attitude about things. There's a lot of thoughtful material, but with many slightly zany side comments. Overall, the visual elements reminded me of Leanne Shapton's Was She Pretty and the text reminded me of Helene Hanff. Both very good things Show Less
LibraryThing member MariaKhristina
This book was under the graphic novel section of my library but it's not a traditional graphic novel. The book follows the author through a year of illustrations and trains of thought. It sounds like it could be a jumbled mess but it is edited and put together very nicely.
LibraryThing member bamalibrarylady
This book confused me and I don't know if it's because I thought it was a graphic novel or because I thought it was an art book. At any rate, the chapters were inconsistent and it was just painful to read.
LibraryThing member bamalibrarylady
This book confused me and I don't know if it's because I thought it was a graphic novel or because I thought it was an art book. At any rate, the chapters were inconsistent and it was just painful to read.
LibraryThing member bamalibrarylady
This book confused me and I don't know if it's because I thought it was a graphic novel or because I thought it was an art book. At any rate, the chapters were inconsistent and it was just painful to read.
LibraryThing member Altamari
It was a book about nothing and also everything all at once. I know that doesn't make sense but it will once you read it. Lovely artwork. Delightful commentary on the everyday human experience. You know how you are laying in bed and your mind begins to wander to the randomest of thoughts and ideas.
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Well, Maira Kalman puts those random ramblings into words and visual imagery. It will bring a smile to your face and make you appreciate the little things that bring happiness around you. Show Less
LibraryThing member Smiler69
A very special book which is very Maira Kalman... if you’re familiar with her work you recognize her approach and her illustration style which is naive and charming and her wandering from one subject to another seemingly at random accompanied by a handwritten narrative of sorts, which is partly
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inner monologue and partly commentary on the images which are based on photos she takes. She is a collector of odds and ends; ticket stubs, things that fall out of books, postcards of waterfalls and saints, a lover of unusual hats and hairdos. Family, war, existential questions, Russian authors and their love stories, it’s all there as a collection of anecdotes, all treated in a picture book format for adults. If you’re familiar with this artist you will love this book, and if not, this is a great introduction to a quirky and original mind. There’s even a recipe in the appendix for the honey cake she mentions sharing with her 88 year-old aunt in Tel-Aviv which I’ll definitely try out; I haven’t had homemade honey cake in ages and it’s really quite delicious. Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2007
Physical description
9.09 inches
ISBN
0143116460 / 9780143116462