Name: The Address Book
ISBN: 9780979956294

Sophie Calle

After finding a lost address book, the artist sets out to understand its owner by randomly interviewing contacts to learn more about the personality and past of its owner.

The Address Book

taylor miles hopkins

Pierre and René were competing to show their father unique images of Rome. René's Rome was more baroque; Pierre 's was more linked to life experiences than to culture. The father was delighted. He saw two cities at once.

…He has his own sources of oxygen." For example, Sylvie tells me about a file in Pierre's library, a file he keeps on his enemies,  entitled My Hates.

...He has a difficult relationship with life. But with this very elaborate system, he has managed to make it livable and to make himself likable. You can find him pitiful, or you can see there his grandeur, his uniqueness...He is rebellious, but his revolts are a gesture, through which he defuses his anger. He sets many bombs, but they're imaginary bombs.

A wild social experiment—it’s interesting to think of how much more we understand a single person through others’ descriptions of them rather than their own introduction. There is a pull of excitement of learning intimate things about someone that you feel you’re not supposed to know—which in turn also brings about pangs of consciousness on whether we (and Calle) are intruding and overstepping respectful boundaries that we all share with each other as strangers. A fast read well worth the exploration of the intimacies of distant connections and minor narratives.