I Should Have Known Better by William E Jones

I Should Have Known Better by William E Jones

I Should Have Known Better is a sequel to the sleeper hit I'm Open to Anything (2019), expanding the original's scope and ambition. The new book has been produced entirely with the support of a crowdfunding campaign that reached five figures and 150% funding, an unprecedented accomplishment for a literary novel.

I Should Have Known Better's first person narrator, while working at a dead-end job in Los Angeles during the mid-1990s, reconnects with his best friend Moira, recently returned from Central America, and makes a new friend, Bernie, who teaches the history of photography. The two of them convince him to pursue a master's degree as a way of escaping the unrewarding life of a video store clerk. Once the narrator is exposed to an academic environment, he takes a dim view of the education that art school has to offer, but is happy to meet a group of talented fellow students who become close friends. He encounters a number of art world figures, ranging from the brilliant to the abject, who disabuse him of his illusions. The narrator has his most instructive experiences off campus, especially a love affair with the handsome and mercurial Temo, an insolent rich kid who leads a double life. Together they explore their sexual limits in scenes of bracing explicitness.

I Should Have Known Better bears witness to the last gasp of Los Angeles bohemia at the end of the twentieth century. The novel paints precise portraits of inspired eccentrics devoted to pursuing their dreams, "shopping artists" who believe in nothing but hedonism, and latter-day leftists who find themselves directionless after the fall of communism. Above all, the book pays tribute to the impulsive experiments and intense friendships of youth.

Jones, William E.: - William E. Jones is an artist, filmmaker, and writer who was born in Ohio and now lives in Los Angeles. He has made two feature length films, Massillon (1991) and Finished (1997) which won a Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award, the documentary Is It Really So Strange? (2004). His work has been the subject of retrospectives at Tate Modern and Anthology Film Archives, and has been included in the 1993 and 2008 Whitney Biennials. His writing has appeared in Artforum, Bidoun, Frieze and Little Joe. His book Imitation of Christ was named one of the best photo books of 2013 by Time magazine.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780578761800
ISBN 10	0578761807
Title	I Should Have Known Better
Author	William E Jones
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	We Heard You Like Books
Year published	2021-09-01
Number of pages	200
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.