All week long we have been talking about the idea of "home," and the physical attributes and emotional attachments we have to our homes. We end our series by talking with artist and writer Maira Kalman. She is the author of “And the Pursuit of Happiness,” a compilation of her year-long journey for our partner, The New York Times, to explore her adopted home, America. Kalman was not born in the United States, but she traveled the country to fall back in love.Download The Takeaway podcast here.
Also, the NY Times had this to say:
If children’s picture books are on the wane, all the more reason to hail the advent of a new picture book for grown-ups. Kalman, the creator of a dozen books for children, and whose previous adult works include “The Principles of Uncertainty” and the unaccountably ingenious illustrated edition of “The Elements of Style,” now brings us AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS (Penguin Press, $29.95), an investigation of the historical underpinnings and current workings of democracy in America. Sort of. Really, it’s more like an impromptu interpretive dance about our country, executed in fat, frolicky color, unprissy brushstroke, a smattering of pleasantly pedestrian photographs and perfectly rambunctious penmanship. Oh, Maira. May we call you Maira? You are like the imaginary childhood friend we never had. Never mind, we have you now, and in these pages you give us your giant, wistful heart; your unfettered, inquisitive prose; and your loving renderings of hats, noses, despondency, public restrooms, a numbered Civil War grave, a Brooklyn sewage plant, Thomas Edison in a cream-colored suit, napping on the grass, and various fried eggs. Wait — this is democracy? In Kalman’s eclectic, catholic, ecstatically skewed view, yes. All this and more.See the full NY Times piece here. Don't forget, Kalman was on The Colbert Report as well.
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