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Let Go and Go On and On
Laurie Bird appeared in three Two Lane Blacktop, Cockfighter, and Annie Hall. Her fiancé, Art Garfunkel, was away shooting another film, Bad Timing, when she committed suicide at the age of 26. Let Go and Go On and On blurs what little is actually known of her with her roles in these films. Guided by constraints, it is a collage and a loving tribute.
- GenresFiction
240 pages, Paperback
First published March 17, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
August 24, 2017
It's entirely possible that this novel is a masterpiece, and that I'm not part of its intended (or appreciative) audience. In fact, it's not strictly a novel: it's "about," in the loosest possible sense, the late actress Laurie Bird, who made three movies (only two of which gave her actual parts) and then died by suicide while, ironically, her boyfriend Art Garfunkel was in Europe making a movie playing a guy whose girlfriend commits suicide. Kinsella's conceit is to pretend that Bird's three roles were in fact her actual life, although at the end he drifts from cinema and into a recreation (of sorts) of her final days.
The bulk of the novel is written in second person, the narrator relating to Bird as "you." (I admit this trope has annoyed me ever since I had to read "Bright Lights, Big City" in college, and it does so here as well.) The thoughts attributed to her, and her actions during scenes in the movies when her characters are offscreen, are both literary and at the same time somehow...mundane. In fact, that's the feeling I got from the whole novel: that Bird's story simply wasn't enough to sustain this level of literary obsession. (It's certainly a recognized trope that male authors, particularly as we approach middle age, seize on some feminine symbol of youth to try to arrest the march of time. The less reality those symbols actually have, the more we can then give them, Pygmalion-style. This book is an attempt to give a personal "reality" to the enigma of Laurie Bird, and I suppose your response to it depends on how you feel about that concept.)
If you're curious, Bird's three movies are "Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)" and "Cockfighter (1974)," both directed by Monte Hellmann, and a bit part in "Annie Hall" as Paul Simon's girlfriend.
The bulk of the novel is written in second person, the narrator relating to Bird as "you." (I admit this trope has annoyed me ever since I had to read "Bright Lights, Big City" in college, and it does so here as well.) The thoughts attributed to her, and her actions during scenes in the movies when her characters are offscreen, are both literary and at the same time somehow...mundane. In fact, that's the feeling I got from the whole novel: that Bird's story simply wasn't enough to sustain this level of literary obsession. (It's certainly a recognized trope that male authors, particularly as we approach middle age, seize on some feminine symbol of youth to try to arrest the march of time. The less reality those symbols actually have, the more we can then give them, Pygmalion-style. This book is an attempt to give a personal "reality" to the enigma of Laurie Bird, and I suppose your response to it depends on how you feel about that concept.)
If you're curious, Bird's three movies are "Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)" and "Cockfighter (1974)," both directed by Monte Hellmann, and a bit part in "Annie Hall" as Paul Simon's girlfriend.
March 28, 2018
By no means is the writing poor, but if this is what Laurie Bird was actually like, my god, why write a book about her?
June 4, 2014
I couldn't put this book down. Well written and made me slightly obsessed to try and figure out who Laurie Bird was.
I randomly ran into this book the other day. I remembered reading a review in the Reader a couple months ago when it first was released and it intrigued me. So glad this book found me again.
I randomly ran into this book the other day. I remembered reading a review in the Reader a couple months ago when it first was released and it intrigued me. So glad this book found me again.
December 2, 2014
A fictional account of the life of Laurie Bird, an actress who committed suicide at age 25, while living with Art Garfunkel. This account is not particularly complimentary. That impression is reinforced by the staccato style of Kinsella, which gives the impression that Laurie never had a thought longer than 10 words.
April 17, 2014
A solid second novel that twists and churns like memory itself, poetic and brooding with plenty of moments of raw beauty in language, concept, and revelation. A must read.
February 27, 2014
Will blow your mind
June 26, 2017
I read this while on vacation in NYC, mostly on the subway. It is not a vacation book. In fact, it's pretty depressing. So maybe not what I was looking for. The concept did intrigue me though. Tim Kinsella doesn't try to tie together the fractured strings of Laurie Bird's life so much as fill in what she could have been thinking and experiencing at the time. I'm actually pretty interested to know how much is actual concrete evidence of her life and how much is Kinsella's work. In ways I identified with his depiction of Laurie, but as the years and pages went on, I found myself identifying with her less and less. Instead it was like going through the motions of her life. Which is actually probably a pretty accurate representation of her life, now that I think about it.
I was moved by the words that Kinsella put forth, by the life presented here that could have been, the wasted potential. But I think I wanted more of the real world integrated into this book. Actual quotes from her journal, maybe a picture or two, something to help me ground this in reality. It felt fantastical otherwise, especially with the Hollywood name drops. Who knows what was real and what wasn't?
I was moved by the words that Kinsella put forth, by the life presented here that could have been, the wasted potential. But I think I wanted more of the real world integrated into this book. Actual quotes from her journal, maybe a picture or two, something to help me ground this in reality. It felt fantastical otherwise, especially with the Hollywood name drops. Who knows what was real and what wasn't?
December 5, 2017
I've read a lot of Tim's work, and honestly this is the one that really hit me. There's this jumping between factual events and fiction that really captivates me, trying to find that seam is interesting and works it s way to the end. There's also some great prose. I think setting up these films as landmarks in Laurie Bird's life is interesting. Anyway, it's really strong and definitely making an effort that brought me back to it.
May 12, 2021
I didn’t like the author’s writing style. It was emotionless and very objective. It was easy to read but I couldn’t feel temperature from the story.
If it were a memoir or a biography, this tone would be fine for me, though, it’s a novel, so I prefer more elaborated one.
And I wonder what the existing people in this book, especially Art Garfunkel, think about this book...
If it were a memoir or a biography, this tone would be fine for me, though, it’s a novel, so I prefer more elaborated one.
And I wonder what the existing people in this book, especially Art Garfunkel, think about this book...
December 19, 2019
This book is good as hell – I felt fevered during large portions of it, ecstatic and anxious for whatever was next.
September 5, 2025
this was fine
July 14, 2014
For me it’s Marlène Jobert, specifically in “Riders on the Rain,” a Charles Bronson French crime drama from 1970. Jobert made more movies than Laurie Bird, the subject of Tim Kinsella’s new novel, “Let Go and Go On and On” (Curbside Splendor) but I fell in love with her in this mod existential thriller. Of course I was very young and, likely, very stoned when I first came across the film on a late-night TV. That’s the thing about movies, they cast a spell. Film conjures an intimacy easier than in real life.
Tim Kinsella probably had a similar moment of attraction, whether it was seeing Bird in “Two-Lane Blacktop” (1971) or “Cockfighter” (1974) or “Annie Hall” (1977), in which she had a bit part as Paul Simon’s girlfriend, when he became obsessed. Laurie Bird is a type that will do that. Unlike the European cool of Jobert, she is American and retains the residue of dirty hippie freedom to her lank form. In her few films that post-Woodstock glow is faded but remains alluring. There is something else about her. It’s inarticulate, but, of course this is a novel of words trying to capture that elusive element.
“Let Go and Go On and On” by Chicago-based musician and writer Kinsella is evocative not only of a time and place, but of a feeling, a desire to connect with something that is no longer there, something that may never have been there. A shadow. Light exposed chemically on celluloid, flattened and preserved, more a tease than an actual taste. That’s a hard order to fill over 250 pages, but Kinsella manages to maintain an aura of longing, a delicate balance of fact and fiction, which mirrors the collective dream of the cinema at its best.
Kinsella breaks his book into sections titled after Bird’s three movies, with a prologue featuring Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blowup” (1966), and concluding with “Bad Timing” (1980), the Nicholas Roeg film starring Art Garfunkel, about the investigation of a woman’s suicide. At the time, Bird was Garfunkel’s fiancé. She committed suicide, overdosing on valium, in his New York City apartment while he was on set in Vienna.
That’s just one dovetail of fact into fiction. The book starts off almost as the novelization of the movies its sections are named after. It’s like we’re watching the movies with the narrator, who may be Art Garfunkel or Tim Kinsella or any other number of men similarly haunted by Bird. The characters in the films are referred to by the actor’s names, as if the movies were recording the real lives of these people, and in a sense the films are doing that. There is very little biographical information available on Bird and the three movies she appears in make up the majority of evidence available to investigate.
As the story processes, though, the narrative strays from the screenplays and ventures into Birds early years as a model in New York City. Love affairs hinted or even explicit on film are deeply explored. Famous people enter and leave, but we’re always there with Bird. She is constant, yet absent, referred to solely in the second person.
Whether you’re a fan of director Monte Hellman’s cult classic “Two-Lane Blacktop” or his exploitation adaptation of Charles Willeford’s novel, “Cockfighter,” isn’t important to your appreciation of Kinsella’s novel. Hellman, another of Bird’s lovers, figures in the story, too, hiring her also as a still photographer for the latter film. When Bird quit acting she worked professionally as a photographer, taking the cover shot of Art Garfunkel’s 1978 album “Watermark.” Garfunkel also wrote about Bird, processing her death in a collection of prose poems called “Still Water.” Bird had that affect on men, and she continues to in the pages of Kinsella’s book.
There’s something about sitting in the dark of a theater or your room, heated by the cool glow of the screen on which fantasy is projected, drawing you in, giving you a sense of connection. It can set you off on a chase in which you never leave your seat. Did you lose it at the movies? That’s because the brain is the sexiest organ.
Tim Kinsella probably had a similar moment of attraction, whether it was seeing Bird in “Two-Lane Blacktop” (1971) or “Cockfighter” (1974) or “Annie Hall” (1977), in which she had a bit part as Paul Simon’s girlfriend, when he became obsessed. Laurie Bird is a type that will do that. Unlike the European cool of Jobert, she is American and retains the residue of dirty hippie freedom to her lank form. In her few films that post-Woodstock glow is faded but remains alluring. There is something else about her. It’s inarticulate, but, of course this is a novel of words trying to capture that elusive element.
“Let Go and Go On and On” by Chicago-based musician and writer Kinsella is evocative not only of a time and place, but of a feeling, a desire to connect with something that is no longer there, something that may never have been there. A shadow. Light exposed chemically on celluloid, flattened and preserved, more a tease than an actual taste. That’s a hard order to fill over 250 pages, but Kinsella manages to maintain an aura of longing, a delicate balance of fact and fiction, which mirrors the collective dream of the cinema at its best.
Kinsella breaks his book into sections titled after Bird’s three movies, with a prologue featuring Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blowup” (1966), and concluding with “Bad Timing” (1980), the Nicholas Roeg film starring Art Garfunkel, about the investigation of a woman’s suicide. At the time, Bird was Garfunkel’s fiancé. She committed suicide, overdosing on valium, in his New York City apartment while he was on set in Vienna.
That’s just one dovetail of fact into fiction. The book starts off almost as the novelization of the movies its sections are named after. It’s like we’re watching the movies with the narrator, who may be Art Garfunkel or Tim Kinsella or any other number of men similarly haunted by Bird. The characters in the films are referred to by the actor’s names, as if the movies were recording the real lives of these people, and in a sense the films are doing that. There is very little biographical information available on Bird and the three movies she appears in make up the majority of evidence available to investigate.
As the story processes, though, the narrative strays from the screenplays and ventures into Birds early years as a model in New York City. Love affairs hinted or even explicit on film are deeply explored. Famous people enter and leave, but we’re always there with Bird. She is constant, yet absent, referred to solely in the second person.
Whether you’re a fan of director Monte Hellman’s cult classic “Two-Lane Blacktop” or his exploitation adaptation of Charles Willeford’s novel, “Cockfighter,” isn’t important to your appreciation of Kinsella’s novel. Hellman, another of Bird’s lovers, figures in the story, too, hiring her also as a still photographer for the latter film. When Bird quit acting she worked professionally as a photographer, taking the cover shot of Art Garfunkel’s 1978 album “Watermark.” Garfunkel also wrote about Bird, processing her death in a collection of prose poems called “Still Water.” Bird had that affect on men, and she continues to in the pages of Kinsella’s book.
There’s something about sitting in the dark of a theater or your room, heated by the cool glow of the screen on which fantasy is projected, drawing you in, giving you a sense of connection. It can set you off on a chase in which you never leave your seat. Did you lose it at the movies? That’s because the brain is the sexiest organ.
June 21, 2014
I've seen fictional biography before, but not fiction from biography from fiction. I'm surprised that this book manages to be as intriguing as the concept. Definitely not an easy thing to pull off, and even more surprising that there can be made to be meaning within that. It's skillful, impressive, and definitely an interesting read. Probably would have enjoyed it even more if I'd seen any of the movies involved, which somehow I haven't.
June 18, 2014
I mean, I wouldn't have read it if Tim Kinsella hadn't written it. In the end, it moved me. I particularly liked the size of the book.
March 7, 2016
Overall this is a fantastic creation of a character. The social/personality commentary however, is shit your pants brilliant. I've never wanted to highlight a fiction book for quotes before.
August 4, 2016
A great read. I missed the humor of his tour diary, but appreciate his ability to create character through 2nd person. Not easy.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews