See buying choices for this item to see if it's one of the millions that are eligible for Amazon Prime.

75 used & new from $0.10

Have one to sell? Sell yours here

Publisher: learn how customers can search inside this book.

Tell the Publisher! I�d like to read this book on Kindle Don�t have a Kindle? Get yours here.

Things I Didn't Know: A Memoir (Hardcover)

by Robert Hughes (Author)

3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

Available from these sellers.

20 new from $3.95 55 used from $0.10

Also Available in:	List Price:	Our Price:	Other Offers:
Hardcover (Bargain Price)			13 used & new from $13.48

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Nothing If Not Critical: Selected Essays on Art and Artists

by Robert Hughes

4.6 out of 5 stars (5) $16.20

The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding

by Robert Hughes

4.3 out of 5 stars (59) $13.57

Goya

by Robert Hughes

4.1 out of 5 stars (19) $21.86

The Shock of the New

by Robert Hughes

4.2 out of 5 stars (12)

A Jerk on One End: Reflections of a Mediocre Fisherman

by Robert Hughes

4.9 out of 5 stars (7) $11.05

› Explore similar items

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Cultural critic Hughes (The Fatal Shore) slices into his own life with his ever-ready scalpel of penetrating analysis, opening his saga in 1999 with his near-fatal car accident at age 60 in his native Australia. Glimpsing death, he perceives its mouth as "the bocca d'inferno of old Christian art," a sampling of the rich, wide-ranging corpus of knowledge he brings to bear upon every aspect of his life. His improbable recovery touches off both earnest and acerbic reflections on his upbringing, his native country and the manifold influences that power his works and wanderings through Europe and America. Recognizing his life as an act of rebellion against his sanctimonious war-hero father, he re-enacts his virulent rejection of military aggression and his punitive boarding at Catholic school, where the priests vilify him for reading James Joyce in secret. His immersion in the artistic ferment of the '60s echoes the worldwide convulsions—both cultural and political—of that decade, pulling him into the avant-garde circles that girded his critical career. Hughes's vivid ruminations and sharp-eyed insights combine in bold, definitive strokes to yield a rich portrait of the art expert. 75,000 first printing. (Sept)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker
Hughes, the former art critic for Time, deftly intertwines personal and cultural history in this fiercely erudite memoir. As the youngest son in a prominent Sydney family, he recalls a childhood marked by a growing distance from family, church, and Australia but also by early signs of his aesthetic vocation: the "noble" form of a freshly caught fish fills him with "a first stirring of desire for the Ideal." Stifled by Australia's cultural isolation, he fled to Italy and, later, London, which provides the backdrop for a savagely comic parade of sixties grotesques, from hippies ("stupefied herbivores nattering about karma") to his first wife, whose "near-programmatic infidelity" reminded him of a "deranged alley cat." Framed as a "settling of accounts" with his native country, Hughes's story occasionally becomes self-indulgently sour, but it offers a fascinating examination of artistic patrimony and the formation of a critic.
Copyright © 2006 Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher: Knopf (September 19, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1400044448
ISBN-13: 978-1400044443
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.5 x 1.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds

Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #609,268 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	71% buy the item featured on this page: Things I Didn't Know: A Memoir 3.7 out of 5 stars (11)
	20% buy Nothing If Not Critical: Selected Essays on Art and Artists 4.6 out of 5 stars (5) $16.20
	9% buy Things I Didn't Know (Vintage) 4.3 out of 5 stars (3) $12.44

Explore similar items

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

(What's this?)

Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.

personal memoirs(2)

Help others find this product — tag it for Amazon search

No one has tagged this product for Amazon search yet. Why not be the first to suggest a search for which it should appear?

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

Customer Reviews

11 Reviews

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

Average Customer Review

3.7 out of 5 stars (11 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excavation of Things Unknown or Merely Forgotten, December 31, 2006

By	Izaak VanGaalen (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This book starts with a car accident, in 1999 on Australia's Great North Highway, that almost ended Robert Hughes life. Miraculously, he survived but ended up with many pins and screws to keep his mangled body together. What happened afterwards is a good illustration of Hughes' lifelong reputation of brashness and elitism. Hughes was prosecuted for dangerous driving because he was driving on the wrong side of the road. But because the three men in the other vehicle were on drugs and later tried to blackmail him the case was dismissed. After the trial, Hughes went on to call the other party "low-life scum," and also managed to defame the prosecutors. The prosecutors were not happy and decided to sue. And they won. The Australian press was elated that this world-famous art critic had been taken down a notch, not only because he was an elitist, but because he had left Australia to become, well, a world-famous art critic.

This memoir begins in Sydney were Hughes was born and educated, and ends in 1970, when he is leaving London for New York where he would become Time Magazine's art critic for the next 30 years. While attending the University of Sydney he was a cartoonist for the Sydney Observer. When the Observer's art critic vacated the position, the editors, recognizing Hughes' talents, asked him take the job, which he did. Although he loved the work, he felt he needed more experience so he went to Italy, where he worked under the tutelage of Alan Moorhead, and then later to London.

I have read many of Hughes pieces for Time Magazine that were written between 1970 and 2000, but have to admit I was underwhelmed, for I'm not an art history enthusiast. His most impressive works were, in my opinion, The Fatal Shore (a history of Australia) and The Culture of Complaint (a study of modern crybabyism). Hughes is a consumate prose stylist who wears his learning lightly (at least in Time Magazine). He is not overburdened with theory and uses an occasional combatative obscenity to remind you that he has not lost touch with the vernacular.

However, Hughes defiantly admits he's an elitist but qualifies it by saying it is "in the cultural but emphatically not in the social sense". As an art critic, this is understandable, there can be no egalitarianism in art. As he himself puts it: "his job is to distinguish the good from the second rate." This attitude was no doubt formed or reaffirmed when he lived in London during the swinging, drug-taking Sixties. He had the misfortune of marrying a women who embodied all of its excesses. The phony egalitarianism and pseudo revoltionary chic of the art scene turned out to be drivel that pointed to nothing but itself. This was a very dark, but formative, period for Hughes that didn't end until he left for America.

The outcome of writing this memoir was not clear in the beginning, but the impulse was. There were certain loose ends that always lingered in his mind. Writing this book was an attempt to excavate, "to find out about things I didn't know." But the search is still inconclusive, we are already anticipating the next installment.

Comment Comment (1) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Things We Don't Necessarily Want To Know, June 24, 2007

By	Bradley F. Smith (Miami Beach, FL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The first chapter about a car crash that almost killed him, and the last two about his life in '60s London and how he became the art critic for Time magazine are the most readable in this memoir. The long mid-section is as flabby as that of its aging creator. Fiercely erudite though it is, one feels much of this is over-written. To be fair, there are many fascinating anecdotes about Hughes' life in Australia and Europe. His accounts of his marriages are also acidic and entertaining. Evidently, he was quite a pot-head in his day. A bit too much art crit and not enough about his seamier side make this long book a bit less than it might have been. Still worth at least a skim through the middle.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A life well-lived, January 12, 2007

By	John Talbot (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Hughes first gains his catharsis by a lengthy account of his horrific car accident in Western Australia - and its consequences. The narrative improves after that, but the emphasis varies, leaving the feeling that in places more could have been revealed of the man's internal motivations and emotions.

However, he holds nothing back when he expounds on matters of art and artistic judgment. Without being didactic, his insights are illuminatingly useful, especially for the layman in this area.

Not up to his "The Fatal Shore", this work is still good value for its enlightenment and the inherent interest of a productive if sometimes erratic life well-lived, which one suspects will continue to offer much for many years.

The absence of any photographs is disappointing.

Comment Comments (2) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 11 customer reviews...

Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Just enjoy
There are a number of literate reviews here. I have no desire to compete with them. I will just say this is a thoroughly enjoyable book. Read more

Published 22 months ago by Robert Gill

4.0 out of 5 stars Best when not about art
I arrived at this autobiography as a fan of "The Fatal Shore" and "Culture of Complaint", and having no recollection of having read any of Mr. Read more

Published 24 months ago by T. Burket

5.0 out of 5 stars Sex, Art & Rolling the Punches
'Things I didn't Know' finds Bob Hughes straightening his record. Immediately we've returned to the north-west of Australia's outback for Bob's account of his near fatal crash... Read more

Published on March 13, 2007 by R. J MOSS

4.0 out of 5 stars Things I didn't know: A Memoir
I bought this as a gift for a Journalist son-in-law who has followed the authors career and admires his work as an art critic. Read more

Published on January 9, 2007 by H. F. Stunzner

4.0 out of 5 stars There were plenty of things this reader didn't know...
For an art world diletante like myself, Hughes is an imposing figure. His writing often has the quality of being witheringly, definitively "right" and that makes him a critic... Read more

Published on January 9, 2007 by John Seed

2.0 out of 5 stars Things Robert Hughes "Doesn't " Know
I have followed Mr. Hughes for a number of years and appreciated his unique perspective on culture in general and the arts in particular. Read more

Published on December 27, 2006 by William D. Miller

2.0 out of 5 stars A Joycean Oddyssey
I read the book because I enjoyed Fatal Shores.It is a well written,toolong,at times lively,and sometimes tedious recounting of an intellectual journey taken perhaps most famously... Read more

Published on October 22, 2006 by Patrick Mccormick

5.0 out of 5 stars More please
So here we finally have Robbie Huge's autobio, and it turns out that a little corner of Julian Schnabel's intuition works after all. Read more

Published on September 30, 2006 by S. Matthews

› See all 11 customer reviews...

.jsOffDisplayBlock { display: block; } .jsOffDisplayInline { display: inline; } .jsOffVisibility { visibility: visible; } .jsOnDisplayBlock { display: none; } .jsOnDisplayNoneBlock { display: block; } .jsOnDisplayNoneInline { display: inline; } .jsOnDisplayInline { display: none; } .jsOnVisibility { visibility: hidden; } .jsOnDisplayBlock { display: none; } .jsOnDisplayInline { display: none; } .jsOnVisibility { visibility: hidden; }

Customer Discussions

Beta (What's this?)

New! See all customer communities, and bookmark your communities to keep track of them.

This product's forum (0 discussions)

	Discussion	Replies	Latest Post
	No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight

Start a new discussion

Topic:

First post:

Receive e-mail when new posts are made

Prompts for sign-in

[Cancel]

Guidelines

Active discussions in related forums

Discussion	Replies	Latest Post
history Why does Holocaust Denial Exist?	5236	2 minutes ago
history Did we eat the Neanderthals?	139	3 minutes ago
history What was the Worst Military Defeat in History?	34	10 minutes ago
biography Best Biography On A Musician?	125	2 hours ago
memoir Have You Written a Memoir - Come Tell Us About It.	676	5 hours ago
biography Judicial biographies anyone?	11	9 hours ago
memoir drug memoirs	22	3 days ago