Julia Friedman in the Atheneum Review goes into extraordinary depth on the book, Hickey’s work, and broader issues in the art world.
Far From Respectable makes an excellent case for reading Dave Hickey again. The corrosive model which prioritizes virtue over art has been failing us for at least three decades by suppressing heterodox artists. The only winner in this unfortunate experiment, in which art is assumed to be downstream from justice, is the art market. Its explosive growth over the same period of thirty of so years, correlates precisely with the growth of the therapeutic institutions. As the quest for righteousness shrunk the space formerly taken up by aesthetics, rampant financial speculation and insider trading moved in to fill the vacuum. Oppenheimer’s book is more than an homage to Hickey. It is also a reminder that the imperative of virtue-signaling is fundamentally at odds with “the cultivation and flourishing of eccentric, subversive impulses that [have] the potential to remake the whole society from the outside in.” Hickey’s writings remind us why we might want to participate in an earnest and vulnerable art world, in which outsiders can still bond over beauty.
Scott Beauchamp likes the book a lot, at the Kirk Center website, though he also says, hilariously, that some of my defense of Hickey is “at least half warmed-over crap.” I’ll accept it.
Far from Respectable is a wonderful book that provides the most eloquent explanation of Hickey you’ll ever have the pleasure to read. And if you want to understand the culture of the latter half of the twentieth century from the inside, you have to read Hickey. You should also read him for pleasure. Joy, even. But most importantly, you should read Hickey for providing that rare literary camaraderie that only the most accomplished writers are able to conjure from language. Reading him, you’ll have the pleasure of discovering the beauty of art alongside a charming and inimitable companion. A cowboy Virgil leading pilgrims through hell with a drink in hand and cigarette cherry burning like a red eye into the heavy darkness.
At NPR’s Desert Companion, Dawn-Michelle Baude likes the book (hey, three for three!).
Well before the last chapter of Far from Respectable, it’s clear that Oppenheimer finds Hickey himself beautiful. The Texan who led a messy, break-the-mold life marked by drug addiction and kamikaze surfer moves, who personified boomer bohemia and survived to tell the tale, who never left his Austin roots behind although he climbed to the pinnacle of the ivory tower, is beautiful. And Hickey’s writing is beautiful because it keeps leading the reader deeper with its nimble allusions and astute connections. To write this review, I had to go from Oppenheimer’s Far from Respectable back to Hickey’s Air Guitar, and from there to Flaubert’s celebrated short story “A Simple Heart,” and from there to the Book of Job in the Old Testament. Instead of writing about Hickey’s notions of beauty, I found myself, with an assist from Nehamas, performing them and, as Hickey predicted, sharing them.