'American Utopia' Book Argues For The Reincarnation Of Hope In The American Project
The New Wave musician and former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne cannot have known a pandemic was en route when he decided to convert his 2019 Broadway show, American Utopia, into an impressionistic, sweetly illustrated adult picture book — created in collaboration with the much-loved artist Maira Kalman.
It can only have been a stroke of luck that, together, Kalman and Byrne hit on a form perfect for our attention-frayed, stay-at-home age: a version of a play that, rather than offering the full script with's spirit or, at least, what I imagine its spirit must have been. Not having seen the musical, I can only guess — but I can testify, with great pleasure, that the book stands on its own as a soothing and uplifting, if somewhat nebulous, experience of art, as well as an argument for the reincarnation of hope in the American project.
