Very neat artice by the New Yorker on Thomas Joshua Cooper

[Tin Can]

As second gen Norsk, I will buy "Dreaming the Gokstadt" very interested in the old ships too.

Thanks!

I would say the Some Rivers, some trees, some rocks and some seas if you can get a used copy. Dreaming the Gokstadt is a fave too.

[Jim Becia]

I have six of Thomas's books too and found Refuge really disappointing, non of the printed pictures in the book are sharp. Some Rivers, some trees some rocks and some seas is probably my favorite, Shoshone Falls is good too. I loved the first two books since I found them at the Uni library in the 90's.

The new one I ordered is called “The World’s Edge” published by Prestel just this September. When I receive it, I’ll try to post a comment or two about it.

[mmerig]

Somebody at The New Yorker should have read the article before it went to press. Egregious writing.

Authors usually get back to the subject of an article before publishing, and if this happened, and the author made any needed corrections, then Cooper is responsible for any BS in the article.

If the author screwed up, then Cooper should write a letter to the editor.

[mmerig]

Worth writing a note the the editor of the New Yorker. They should do better.

Please see post #33

[mmerig]

. . . .If you can't keep up, then yes, it can sound like BS.

It's the other way around -- those that cannot keep up often miss clues about validity, or lack thereof. Those that can, catch mistakes and lies. That is the reason for peer review in the sciences, for example.

Via the discussion here, it's clear to me now that BS is an accepted part of fine arts, and that's totally fine, especially if it makes a good story and truth does not matter. But much of the article dealt with travel, adventure, and discovery. Credibility is important for those aspects.

I never heard of TJC before this post, so I am just going by the New Yorker article, the You Tube video (which I did not get through, two hours of life I would never get back), and what was on the Lannan Foundation.

But as the saying goes, there's often a pony at the bottom of a manure pile, and I imagine people that know him have seen plenty of ponies. I am missing that, but there is only so much time in one life.

[Tin Can]

Not Art

[Peter Lewin]

When you look on Amazon for books by TJC, you find a lot of monographs for someone accused of feeding the New Yorker writer a lot of BS. I'm not familiar with his work (other than images I have now found via Google on the internet, some of which I have liked and some not so much), and am working through the video bit by bit (2 hours at one sitting is more than I want to devote to staring at my iMac) but to the extent we can judge someone by their output, he seems to be the real thing.

[Vaughn]

Which of his books would be a good introduction to his work?

I have Dreaming the Gokstadt and also Between Dark and Dark(1985), which is excellent.

[Hugo Zhang]

I read my New Yorker today and watched the video. I like him and it is a bit unbelievable he could find financial backers for his trips which lasted a few weeks and costed $250,000 to $300,000 per trip.

[mpirie]

"True" is a more substantial book than many of the others and the quality or printing is as good as "Between Dark and Dark" and "Dreaming the Gokstadt".

Mike