Books like Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin

Completely fascinating. It's a biography of Robert Irwin, a contemporary artist, and one whose rather minimal works (a canvas with two lines! an apparently empty room!) I'd previously have been inclined to dismiss unthinkingly. Irwin is a thoroughly amazing character, and Weschler subtly but expertly brings him out, largely through Irwin's own words. What feels to me like the core of the book -- and, if the biography is as honest as it feels, the artist -- is the dynamic between certainty, dedication, and bullheaded effort on the one side, and, on the other, perception, full awareness, surrender. Weschler gets this beautifully in a couple of paragraphs where he describes two recurring gestures of Irwin's. In one, his bunched hands spread out, blossoming, as he speaks of wonder and observation. And then he's talking about nailing it, doing it right, getting it down, and he twists his arm, clenched and determined, turning an invisible screw. Opening up, forcing determinedly ahead. And the combination, as I read this book, felt a lot like grace.