A review by 5easypieces
Words Without Music: A Memoir by Philip Glass

2.0

This was...fine, I suppose. For one of my favorite composers, and certainly one of the most important (American) composers of the 20th Century, I was hoping for more. As other reviewers have noted, he doesn't really get into any of the work that everyone knows until well over halfway through the book. Which could be okay, but it doesn't ever feel like he establishes a through line from his early days to the later work that would make learning about his youth valuable. The subject matter and corresponding details are also kind of all over the place; I learned as much about how he and Candy Jernigan made the down payment on their first apartment together as I did about the score for Koyaanisqatsi. There are moments of wonderful abstraction and introspection (particularly in the closing chapter) scattered throughout the book that create a frustrating sense of the book this might have been.