What a retrospective book with snapshots should be and similar to Rodman's. ( )

I usually wait a day or two after I read a book to let my thoughts gel before I write a review. However, just moments ago, I finished the last page of this marvelous photo-album/memoir/biography/travelogue and had to write about it immediately.

Williams has written dozens of (mostly) one-page essays combining photographs and the observations made in his journal three or four decades ago with whatever it strikes him to say about them in the light of a couple of (quite full) decades of additional living. The subjects are (almost exclusively) creative people Williams has spent a little time with, plus a few that he wishes he had. Included in these pages are writers, poets, photographers, sculptors, painters, thinkers - a lot of folks I've never heard of, a few that I have, and a few that everyone has, and Williams makes me wish that I could sit down and visit with every one of them. The only thing I can see that they all have in common is that there couldn't be but one of each in the world. In the midst of reading these gems, I was struck with a growing sense that my own cloud of family/friends/aquaintances was rapidly expanding - broader and deeper.

A Palpable Elysium is the best argument I've seen yet for making the people in your life the most important thing in your life. It's certainly an odd book, and Williams has made no attempt (hooray) for it to 'fit' into a category. It's odd; sometimes startling; and frequently surprising. I already know it's one of the best things in my library.

Buy this book and keep it by your reading chair/sofa/bed/tree. Read a couple of entries and study the photos every time you sit down.

Os. ( )

Quirky stuff. Mostly portraits of writers and artists (including some celebrities, some 'outsiders'), with some architechural details and tombstones.

The 6x6 format gives everything an air of gravitas (yay, Rollei), and Williams has been very well served by his printer: old-fashioned color palettes wonderfully translated into the modern digital era. Interesting if not transcendent stuff. ( )