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Art Garfunkel is really, really into ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’
09.05.2013
08:15 am
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Art Garfunkel
 
Back in the day, like when the Internet was first a thing, one of my unexpected joys was discovering that Art Garfunkel, who had a very well-developed website early on, dedicated a section to updating the books he was reading. Not just the books he’d been reading lately, but every book he had read since 1968. (Here’s how it looked on November 3, 1999.) The guy went through a great many books a year, and his preferences were pretty high-minded for the most part, like Voltaire and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Lord Chesterfield and cats like that. And he’d mix it up too, there wouldn’t be any runs of every Philip Roth book in a single year or anything like that, he’d jump around from Thomas More to E.L. Doctorow to Martin Heidegger as it pleased him. At the time I thought that the idea of a famous musician like Art Garfunkel parading his erudition in public like this was high-larious, but in retrospect (I’m older too) I find it rather sweet and admirable. He has good taste and he clearly enjoys his reading. In truth I probably wasn’t all that nice to ol’ Art, having an inherently funny name like “Art Garfunkel” and being a prominent example of someone who hadn’t been that productive musically in the recent past and all.

It’s something a shock, then, to discover lo these fifteen or so years later that Art has kept the list current through 2012—and presumably will keep updating it. I noticed that Art keeps a separate list of “Favorites,” which list currently has a substantial 157 selections on it, just to give you an idea of just how much the man reads—those are just the favorites.

Looking at the list, it’s hard not to notice that the most recent entry is E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey, and some British journalist must have noticed too because there’s audio of him talking about it:
 

I love that book. Unlike so many people, I think it’s quite well written. It’s not only spicy, this writer can write. I thought it was a very well written, hot book. It’s spicy!

 
The quote sounds spliced together and I wouldn’t trust it for a second, but Art’s enthusiasm does sound legit.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Simon & Garfunkel in Quad: Why won’t the record labels give the people what they want?
Old Friends: Simon & Garfunkel, ‘Live at The Kraft Music Hall’ 1968

Posted by Martin Schneider
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09.05.2013
08:15 am
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