Hammer Museum to host reading of author, editor Glenn O’Brien’s collected works

January 12, 2020

Glenn O’Brien (1947–2017) was a widely influential writer, editor, and poet, whose columns for Andy Warhol’s Interview, Artforum, GQ, Purple, and other publications provided commentary on music, art, politics, fashion, and advertising for more than four decades. On January 14, an all-star line-up read from the recently-released Intelligence for Dummies: Essays and Other Collected Writings by Glenn O’Brien. 

Writer, editor and poet Glenn O’Brien covered everything from fashion to politics in his work. On Jan. 14, the Hammer Museum will host a reading of “Intelligence for Dummies: Essays and Other Collected Writings,” which compiles many of his works. (Courtesy of Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin)

"Glenn O’Brien’s “The Style Guy” column in GQ magazine pertained not only to fashion but also to how people carried and represented themselves.

The writer, editor and poet will be acknowledged for his influence on the arts at the Hammer Museum on Jan. 14, promoting the recently released “Intelligence for Dummies: Essays and Other Collected Writings.” The book is a collection of O’Brien’s commentary on music, art, politics, fashion and advertising. The event features various people reading his works, some of whom have worked with O’Brien. Michael Zilkha, who has collaborated with O’Brien, said having multiple people read excerpts from the book showcases the diverse fields O’Brien covers.

“He was a brilliant chronicler of the last 40 years whether it was in fashion or music or art. … There was an incredible prescience to him,” Zilkha said. “He would really know what was happening and had a very interesting angle of things.”

Freelance arts journalist Linda Yablonsky, who will read at the the event, said she was an avid reader of “Glenn O’Brien’s Beat” in Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. While this was meant to be an amusing column regarding late 1970s music and nightlife culture, she said he also included politics, society and fashion simultaneously.

O’Brien did not portray topics such as politics and fashion as mutually exclusive, as Zilkha said O’Brien approached politics indirectly as opposed to head-on and derived universal truths from cultural specifics. For example, when O’Brien writes about Sarah Palin in “The Rhetoric of Confusion: Sarah Palin and the Rise of Mediocracy,” he focuses on speech patterns as well as politics, he said. This is also demonstrated in his book “How to be a Man: A Guide To Style and Behaviour For The Modern Gentleman,” which pertains not only to fashion but also to how to behave and conduct one’s life to be a gentleman, Yablonsky said."— Drake Gardner, Jan. 12, 2020

This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Daily Bruin website.

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