- 2024
- Graywolf Press
Formats
- Paperback, Digital
The Long Run: A Creative Inquiry
How do we keep doing this—making art? Stacey D'Erasmo had been writing for twenty years and had published three novels when she asked herself this question. She was past the rush of her first books and wondering what to expect—how to stay alive in her vocation—in the decades ahead.
D'Erasmo began to interview older artists she admired to find out how they'd done it. She talked to Valda Setterfield about her sixty-year career that took her from the Merce Cunningham Dance Company to theatrical collaborations with her husband to roles in films. She talked to Samuel Delany about his vast oeuvre of books in many genres. She talked to Amy Sillman about working between painting and other media, and between abstraction and figuration. She talked to landscape architect Darrel Morrison, composer Tania Léon, actress Blair Brown, musician Steve Earle, and visual artist Cecilia Vicuña. She saw connections between them and to artists across time: Colette, David Bowie, Ruth Asawa. She found insights, too, about what has driven and thwarted and shaped her as a writer.
Instead of easy answers or a road map, The Long Run offers one practitioner’s conversations, anecdotes, confidences, and observations about sustaining a creative life. Along the way, it radically redefines artistic success—shifting the focus from novelty, output, and external recognition toward freedom, fluidity, resistance, community, resilience, and longevity.
Reviews & Praise
"A rich meditation on the artist's life and work over time...a lyrical exploration of life and art. D'Erasmo's essays invite readers to be part of that company, to find themselves in her pages, and, in turn, to invite other artists into the conversation. Though each essay stems from an artist the author interviewed, D'Erasmo's associative genius takes her into new and surprising territory. In musical sentences... D'Erasmo explores not just what it means to have a long career in the arts, but what it means to be an artist, to be queer, and to be a citizen of the Earth, making this book a unique contribution to the canon of work about the life of an artist. Artists of all kinds will find inspiration and good company within these thoughtful essays." Kirkus (Starred)
"Oh, how I needed this book! Stacey D'Erasmo has given us a tender and fascinating lineage of artists who demonstrate the myriad ways to build a life around an artistic practice and sustain it. Between their stories emerges her own gorgeous and intimate memoir, a queer k¨nstlerroman that had me rapt. Every moment of reading these pages felt like ingesting a delicious, life-saving tonic. What a gift of a book." Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award
"Stacey D'Erasmo is one of my favorite writers, full stop. For years, I've been learning from her, admiring her wisdom and style, attempting to emulate her cool. I suspected she held secrets about how to really live, and I was right. Here she offers wisdom in the form of portraits—appreciations—each one precise, wondrous, meditative, often sexy, and exquisitely wrought. The Long Run is a revelation. A book about sustaining an artistic practice, yes, but also a book that offers sustenance itself." Justin Torres, author of Blackouts, winner of the National Book Award
"In and around these conversations with a range of disparate creators, Stacey D'Erasmo gives us a master class in openness, in generosity, and in courage. Fierce, funny, and philosophical, The Long Run is a necessary companion for anyone who makes things." Lauren Elkin, author of Flâneuse and Art Monsters
"Stacey D'Erasmo takes her place alongside Olivia Laing with these brilliant portraits of artists who have stayed in over decades and the perspectives that have kept them returning to their work. The surprise bonus is the portrait of D'Erasmo herself and the New York scenes that have buoyed her own long writing practice. An essential book that I'll always keep at hand." Alice Elliott Dark, author of Fellowship Point and In the Gloaming