{"product_id":"cosmic-scholar","title":"Cosmic Scholar. The Filmmaker, Foklorist, and Mystic who Transformed American Art: The Life and Times of Harry Smith","description":"\u003cp\u003eHe was an anthropologist, filmmaker, painter, folklorist, mystic, and walking encyclopedia. He taught Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe about the occult, swapped drugs with Timothy Leary, had a front-row seat to a young Thelonious Monk, lived with (and tortured) Allen Ginsberg, was admired by Susan Sontag, and was one of the first artists funded by Guggenheim Foundation. He was always broke, generally intoxicated, compulsively irascible, and unimpeachably authentic. Harry Smith was, in the words of Robert Frank, “the only person I met in my life that transcended everything.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eCosmic Scholar\u003c\/em\u003e, the Grammy Award-winning music scholar and celebrated biographer John Szwed patches together, for the first time, the life of one of the twentieth century’s most overlooked cultural figures. From his time recording the customs of Native American tribes in the Pacific Northwest and Florida to his life in Greenwich Village in its heyday, Smith was consumed by an unceasing desire to create a unified theory of culture. He was an insatiable creator and collector, responsible for the influential\u003cem\u003e Anthology of American Folk Music \u003c\/em\u003eand several pioneering experimental films, but was also an insufferable and destructive eccentric who was unable to survive in regular society, or keep himself healthy or sober.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eExhaustively researched, energetically told, and complete with a trove of images, \u003cem\u003eCosmic Scholar\u003c\/em\u003e is a feat of biographical restoration and the long overdue canonization of an American icon.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[publisher's note]\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Farrar Straus \u0026 Giroux","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57357991706964,"sku":"A8B-33363","price":38.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1072\/9609\/6596\/files\/Cosmic_20Scholar.jpg?v=1790813710","url":"https:\/\/after8books.com\/products\/cosmic-scholar","provider":"After 8 Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}