Ron Padgett is the author of many books of poetry including How To Be Perfect, You Never Know, The Big Something, and Great Balls of Fire, as well as Joe: A Memoir of Joe Brainard.

Known during his life primarily as an artist associated with the New York School of poets, Joe Brainard (1942–1994) was also a wonderful writer whose one-of-a-kind autobiographical work I Remember (“a completely original book”—Edmund White) has had a wide and growing influence. It is joined in this major new retrospective with many other works that for the first time allow the full range of Brainard’s writing to be savored in all its deadpan wit, nonstop goofy inventiveness, self-revealing frankness, and generosity of spirit. Collected Writings gathers journals, jottings, letters, stories, one-liners, comic books, mini-essays, and playlets, much of which exist in print only in expensive rarities, if at all, to create “one of the most dazzlingly minute autobiographies ever written” (Harper’s Magazine). “Brainard disarms us with the seemingly tossed-off, spontaneous nature of his writing and his stubborn refusal to accede to the pieties of self-importance,” writes Paul Auster in his introduction to this collection. Assembled by the author’s longtime friend and biographer Ron Padgett and including fourteen never-before published works, here is a fresh and affordable way to rediscover a unique American artist.

“ Beautifully designed, Collected Writings reproduces the improvised, homemade feel of Brainard’s journal writings by including drawings and handwritten notes and memos and cartoons and flyers.”
—Mark Ford, The New York Review of Books
 
“ This is a really fun book, one that will win over old friends and new fans alike.”
—Patrick James Dunagan, Rain Taxi