{"product_id":"how-it-feels-to-be-alive-encounters-with-art-and-our-selves","title":"How It Feels to Be Alive: Encounters with Art and Our Selves","description":"\n\u003ctable align=\"center\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"2\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\"\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"productDetailSmallElements\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eBiographical Note\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eMegan O'Grady\u003c\/b\u003e is a critic and an essayist. While she was a writer at large for \n\u003ci\u003eT: The New York Times Style Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e, she created the Culture Therapist column. Her reviews and essays about art and life also appear in \n\u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e, \n\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e, and \n\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e. She was previously a contributing editor at \n\u003ci\u003eVogue \u003c\/i\u003eand a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Currently, she is an assistant professor of art and art history at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where she lives with her family.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Quotes\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eNew Yorker \u003c\/i\u003eBest Book of 2026 So Far\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Wide-ranging and deeply personal.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Beautiful . . . It's the thoughtful and careful writing that makes the book work so wonderfully . . . It's a curated tour through one life, with its disasters and joys, complications and clarities, all set alongside the wonders of paintings and performances that add perspective to the aforementioned disasters and joys and et ceteras.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Robert Sullivan, \u003ci\u003eVogue\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"To allow art to change your life, you must come to it vulnerable, naked. Still, some truths are only discovered when put in writing. Combine these two and you get Art Writing, O'Grady's vocation, passion, and tool of self-discovery. The book holds serious value as an art-historical resource, but its best parts are the author's intimate revelations about who she is, and who she hopes to be.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e --Hakim Bishara, \u003ci\u003eHyperallergic\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"A vital call to engage deeply, to see in new ways, and to rethink all that we take for granted, \n\u003ci\u003eHow It Feels to Be Alive\u003c\/i\u003e inspires and exhorts, providing a template to think through the knottiest problems in our culture, our selves, and the connections between the two.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Cynthia Carr, \u003ci\u003eDaily Kos\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Gorgeously written . . . I love many things about this book, but partly I love that it is accessible, meaningful and captivating even if you aren't someone who dwells regularly in the world of art. You might find yourself, though, as I did, inspired to seek out more art in your life after reading it.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Kevin Simpson, \u003ci\u003eThe Colorado Sun\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"O'Grady makes a graceful and absorbing book debut . . . an eloquent celebration of art.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Mesmerizing.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--\u003ci\u003eInsideHook\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Marvelous . . . Know anyone who questions the value of art? Hand them a copy of this book.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e--Shelf Awareness\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Enlightening . . . [O'Grady] exhibits a remarkable fluidity, leaping across continents and centuries with ease.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"[O'Grady] has put together a wonderfully welcome book--a hopeful treatise referred to as a mash-up of arts criticism and personal narrative . . . O'Grady cites the desire to explore 'the tangle of art and life, ' which she has done beautifully.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Center for Fiction\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"O'Grady's voice is beautiful and inventive . . . the writing is exhilarating . . . In this timely collection, O'Grady articulates powerfully the value of art, reminding us how vital it is to our very existence.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Amanda Norton, \u003ci\u003eNewcity Lit\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\" \n\u003ci\u003eHow It Feels to Be Alive \u003c\/i\u003eis an essential book imbued with unwavering, attentive, and clear-eyed optimism. Exploring how to navigate an increasingly contentious world with the strength, wisdom, beauty, and history available to us through art, Megan O'Grady brings joy and meaning to everyday living. Reading O'Grady is like taking a long walk with a kindred spirit, through whose perceptive eyes we have gained a deeper understanding of our own minds.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Yiyun Li, author of \u003ci\u003eThings in Nature Merely Grow\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"In an era when the arts feel increasingly imperiled, Megan O'Grady's \n\u003ci\u003eHow It Feels to Be Alive\u003c\/i\u003e shines as a rapt testament to art's ongoing vitality. Her meditations on artists ranging from Agnes Martin and Carrie Mae Weems to Pope.L are a ravishing sensorium of embodied experience, while she also provides illuminating historical, biographical, and metaphysical insight. Rather than asking what art means, she asks what it does--how a painting unsettles us and reshapes the way we inhabit the world--with stunning candor and poetic grace.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Cathy Park Hong, author of \u003ci\u003eMinor Feelings\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"How--now that you mention it-- \n\u003ci\u003edoes\u003c\/i\u003e it feel to be alive? A bit like reading Megan O'Grady's book, stained with blood and beauty, as she fearlessly claws at the artificial veil between art and life and shows that, as anyone who has any experience of either knows, life and art are indivisible. She invents a new model of writing about art--and that, as it happens, is also a new way of writing about life.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Benjamin Moser, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Upside-Down World: Meetings with the Dutch Masters\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Megan O'Grady is one of the most astute and openhearted culture writers working today. \n\u003ci\u003eHow It Feels to Be Alive \u003c\/i\u003eis a remarkable and restless work of clear thinking about mixed feelings.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Catherine Lacey, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Möbius Book\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"This book is a highly original take on the art and life conundrum. Megan O'Grady discusses these lucky artists and their work in the context of her own life and experiences, elements so tightly interwoven that they often merge, producing a new kind of memoir and a new kind of art writing--some of the best I've read.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Lucy R. Lippard, author of \u003ci\u003eMoving Targets: Feminist Essays on Women's Art 1970-1993\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Megan O'Grady's adventures in the art world take her from Agnes Martin's mystical geometries to the real-life interventions of Pope.L and beyond, reminding us that the best art will ask questions for which there may be no answer, create feelings one can barely name, and generate theories when there's nothing to believe. For O'Grady, art is a search for meaning, and it's personal. She shares her inner journey as the artists in \n\u003ci\u003eHow It Feels to Be Alive\u003c\/i\u003e set out to sculpt the intangible, to interrogate the humdrum, or to reinvent the world, and, always, to look where no one else has. Look again.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Cynthia Carr, author of \u003ci\u003eCandy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\" \n\u003ci\u003eHow It Feels to Be Alive\u003c\/i\u003e is an exquisite floodlight on the many vital gifts afforded to us by art--including our best argument that we need each other. Here is the ecstasy, here is the power that art invites into our ways of living. It is a celebration of what it means and what it takes to truly see ourselves and our world.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Canisia Lubrin, author of \u003ci\u003eCode Noir\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Insightful, broad-ranging, beautifully rendered, this memorable book offers profound reflections on identity, relationships, feminism, and the environment. \n\u003ci\u003eHow It Feels to Be Alive \u003c\/i\u003ereminds us why art matters.\" \n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003e--Claire Messud, author of\u003ci\u003e This Strange Eventful History\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher Marketing\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA vital testament to how art makes us who we are--and offers new ways of seeing our world and our lives.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBarbara Kruger once defined art as the ability \"to show and tell, through a kind of eloquent shorthand, how it feels to be alive.\" Testing that claim, Megan O'Grady takes us on a journey to explore art's intimate effects and how it might help us find clarity in an uncertain world. \n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWhen O'Grady was a teenager, she saw a photograph in a museum that changed her life. When she was at the end of an early marriage, art stoked new ways of thinking about connection and transformation. When she was a new parent, it guided her to confront vulnerability and shame. Whether she was seeking a home or contending with crises personal, political, and ecological, art was a critical lifeline, a source of beauty, solace, and provocation. \n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eLooking closely at five artworks and the context in which each was made--and often drawing on personal conversations with the artists--O'Grady traces the works' rippling impacts, suggesting sometimes unexpected lineages and genres. How does art expand and redirect our imagination and attention? When bottom-line or nihilistic thinking dominates our public sphere, what meanings and alternatives does art offer? \n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eA vital call to engage deeply, to see in new ways, and to consider all that we take for granted, \n\u003ci\u003eHow It Feels to Be Alive\u003c\/i\u003e inspires and exhorts, providing a template for thinking through the knottiest problems in our culture and our selves, and the connections between the two. \n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations:\u003c\/strong\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"italic\"\u003eShelf Awareness\u003c\/span\u003e 12\/30\/0001 (EAN 9780374613327, Hardcover)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"italic\"\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/span\u003e 04\/01\/2026 (EAN 9780374613327, Hardcover) - *Starred Review\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"italic\"\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/span\u003e 04\/06\/2026 (EAN 9780374613327, Hardcover)\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eContributor Bio:\u003c\/strong\u003eO'Grady, Megan\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eMegan O'Grady\u003c\/b\u003e is a critic and an essayist. She was a writer at large for \n\u003ci\u003eT: The New York Times Style Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e, where she created the Culture Therapist column. Her reviews and essays about art and life also appear in \n\u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books, \u003c\/i\u003e\n\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e, and \n\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e. She was a contributing editor at \n\u003ci\u003eVogue \u003c\/i\u003eand a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Currently, she is an assistant professor of art and art history at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where she lives with her family.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003c\/table\u003e\n","brand":"Farrar, Straus and Giroux","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51496038760726,"sku":"9780374613327","price":34.8,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0857\/9910\/8886\/files\/9780374613327.jpg?v=1783051429","url":"https:\/\/lusper.myshopify.com\/products\/how-it-feels-to-be-alive-encounters-with-art-and-our-selves","provider":"Lusperbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}