Kirkus
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The former Talking Heads frontman on great art and ideas that missed their moment. In academic literature, a “sleeping beauty” is a research paper that was neglected when it was first published but found relevance later. Pop icon and author Byrne (How Music Works, 2012, etc.) expands the concept by looking for examples not just in science but in literature, music, technology, economics, and more. Though the book is structured as 35 brief histories and biographies, he organizes them around a handful of themes. Sometimes all an artist needs is one spirited advocate (like William Faulkner had in Malcolm Cowley); sometimes a figure needs time to escape their reputation (like the infamously pugnacious Caravaggio); sometimes research needs to catch up with a rejected idea (like continental drift); or sometimes a catastrophe demonstrates an idea’s validity (as financial collapses redeemed the research of neglected economist Hyman Minsky). If music doesn’t pan out for Byrne, he has a viable sideline as a pop-history writer—he has a wry, entertaining, and informed voice whether he’s discussing Vermeer’s paintings or water-management systems in ancient India. His enthusiasm for the subject is consistent throughout, though too often he gooses his prose with exclamation. (“Even the Bard did sequels!...There’s a lot you can do with one chord!...Never underestimate how one might be discovered!”) There’s little autobiographical material here, though an opening chapter about his discovery of the neglected Brazilian musician Tom Zé speaks to his passion, and he plainly did all this homework in the name of boosting creativity. The closing pages advocate for a cosmopolitan, open-minded view of the world that might save good ideas from lying dormant for years, even centuries. An affectionately curated assortment of tales about human ingenuity saved from the dustbin of history. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.