Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over

"It is, but it’s also just really fun to read because she has got a great voice, you know? She has a very distinctive way of writing. Huge personality on the page. Painter was 64 and had studied art, I think, as an undergraduate, years ago, but then became a historian and put it aside. Now in her sixties, it was not a great time to be doing something all consuming. Her parents are failing, she’s just retired from Princeton, but she decides to go to art school. There she experiences some racism, and quite a bit of ageism. But she’s very self-confident and throws herself into it, and has some pretty tough discussions about what it means to be an artist. She’s told at one point that she may become a painter , but she’ll never be an artist —and she really takes exception to that. “Her age gives her more impetus to work hard and learn—she has less time to waste” Her memoir is about trying something new, it’s about going a completely different direction in your life, it’s about following a passion that you’ve had but never nourished and pushing through the resistance. She’s a very lively writer. She’s not afraid of all caps, she just puts it out there, she’s smart and ebullient and funny and sharp, and we loved it for those reasons. Yes, she makes clear that her age and experience gives her perspective the younger students don’t have. Her age also gives her more impetus to work hard and learn—she has less time to waste. But she also found the more she learned, the harder it got. At one point, one of her instructors was looking for something positive to say about her work and finally said, ‘well, you’re not afraid of paint,’ which I thought it was wonderful, because clearly she’s not afraid of anything. The author photo that goes with this book is an exuberant picture of her standing in front of this wonderful blue and yellow and green painting that she has done, and it made me excited for the book even before I read it. Oh gosh, yes. Every year sees more and more diversity of voices. And I have to say, I’m happy that we have a diverse shortlist but that’s because these books were so good. We didn’t have any checklist that said, ‘we need a black writer, we need a Latino writer, we need an Asian writer,’ you know? It just happened that these were the great books that we all admired this year. There’s room for so many more voices now. There’s a hunger for so many more voices now. And the form is always changing. There’s memoir in comic strip form, and memoir in poetry. Eileen Myles wrote a memoir through the observations of her dog —actually, her dead dog. There are memoirs in first person and second person and third person, and there are a lot of books that are now being marketed as hybrid fiction/memoir. Those I have a little more trouble with, because I think memoir still has to be factually true—and when you blend it with fiction, I’m enough of a journalist to say that it then becomes fiction. But I also am willing to be open-minded and pay attention and look at what’s going on. It’s the most exciting genre, and it has been for some time. Every year there are new voices and new ways of telling stories, and I think it’s great fun. Read more in the best books of 2019 interview series."