Fire Season

Selected Essays 1984-2021

By: Gary Indiana, Christian Lorentzen

Narrated by: Charles Constant

"One of the most important chroniclers of the modern psyche."—The Guardian

Whether he's describing Tracy Emin or Warhol, the films of Barbet Schroeder ("Schroeder is well aware that life is not a narrative; that we impose form on the movements of chance, contingency, and impulse . . .") or the installations of Barbara Kruger ("Kruger compresses the telling exchanges of lived experience that betray how skewed our lives are . . ."), Indiana is never just describing. His writing is refreshing, erudite, joyful.

Indiana champions shining examples of literary and artistic merit regardless of whether the individual artist or writer is famous; asserts a standard of care and tradition that has nothing to do with the ivory tower establishment; is unafraid to deliver the coup de grâce when someone needs to say the emperor has no clothes; speaks in the same breath—in the same discerning, insolent, eloquent way—about high art and pop culture. Few writers could get away with saying the things Gary Indiana does. And when the writing is this good, it's also political, plus it's a riot of fun.

©2021 Gary Indiana. (P)2024 Tantor

Critic reviews

2022 NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK

Great voice, excellent book

This book made me want to read ever one of Indiana's prose. He sees beneath so much pretense. A working class sensibility and a skeptical artist's eye. Unlike Fran Lebowitz, Indiana is a New York writer who us funny, engaging, and his standards challenge real power.

Brilliant essays on art, literature, film, etc

I'm so glad I stuck with this book after initially thinking I wasn't going to like it. Indiana was a remarkable mind and writer, and the narration here does his work justice.