Tim Kreider’s We Learn Nothing

My January pick for our Read Like an Artist book club is Tim Kreider’s We Learn Nothing. To get the book in time to join our discussion next month, sign up now.

Here’s my intro:

“Fourteen years ago, I was stabbed in the throat.” So begins this collection of personal essays from the former political cartoonist, unfairly as gifted with words as he is with pictures. Krieder’s writing will not be for everyone, but I would like to assign everyone over the age of twenty “The Referendum,” a piece about how as we age, our peers give us a “glimpse of the parallel universes” that would have resulted had we made different life choices. I love this book because the essays only get deeper and richer with each year. Interspersed throughout are Kreider’s cartoons, which take their cues from biting satirists like Ralph Steadman and George Grosz. This is a contemporary classic.