As jubilantly overstuffed as its subtitle. The book is a startlingly slow read—and I say that with unbridled enthusiasm. I can’t remember the last book I’ve read that contained so much information so tightly packed, or in which the distillation of vast research offered such relentless ricochets of association, connection, and allusion. Although its meld of journalistic detective work, insightful analysis, and keen critical judgment might suggest a straightforward nonfiction account, it’s a work of obsession and devotion that finds a distinctive and original form—a hectic informational voracity—for its passionate archivism ... The last line of Everything Is Now—forgive my spoiler—in which he refers to 'this book, which I consider a memoir, although not mine,' is a keenly self-conscious, poetic, and philosophical encapsulation of the paradoxically personal yet impersonal ambition energizing the project ... Something of a citational history, bringing to life the wild artistic ferment of the times, along with many of the era’s vital voices ... The characters who inhabit Everything Is Now make for an extraordinary cast. After reading the book, it’s as if one had been all over town all decade long, with a dazzling array of companions, and readers are likely to come away from the kaleidoscopic whirl with their own highlights and affinities ... Hoberman pays due attention to the major national and international events that influenced New York’s avant-garde—civil rights, the Vietnam War, political assassinations—and also to historic doings within the city, such as feminist activism and the Stonewall uprising. But he places particular emphasis on power at the local level and, most of all, on its prime physical manifestation: policing ... Eminently quotable ... Brings a phantasmagorical roster of personalities to the fore—some unheralded, others coterie famous, and some world-historical famous—and traces connections that proved to have mighty consequences ... One of Hoberman’s most ingenious touches is to emphasize urban specifics: he cites throughout exact street addresses where artists lived and worked, where performances and shows and screenings were held.
Its densely packed pages offer vivid and timely anecdotal lessons on the impact, suppression and self-obliteration of radical art ... A child of the ’60s himself, J. Hoberman writes authoritatively on harmolodic jazz, censored comedians, the Fluxus art movement, experimental film, immersive theater, political protest and the birth of rap. Some of these stories— the emergence of Bob Dylan, for instance—are oft told. But our guide through this subterranean blues knows all the craziest, twisted tales, and where the bodies are buried ... Everything has everyone—Hoberman is encyclopedic in his recounting of the breakthroughs, breakdowns and bombings. It’s a performer- and performance-driven narrative, vividly told ... But one key figure is elusive. Every now and then Hoberman breaks the fourth wall with a wry parenthetical or a confessional memory, but overall the author remains doggedly offstage: a historian who was occasionally a witness. It’s a strangely objective, master-narrator stance for a milieu that was about dismantling barriers, prosceniums and structures, and centering collaboration. When he does interject, Hoberman conveys paragraphs in just a few words ... Unfortunately, though, the forest often gets lost for the trees. Without a strong narrative providing critical context, it’s hard to keep track of all the players and their acts. As compelling as the tales are, sometimes I reeled from information overload. The wildly visual subjects also beg for photos, which are minimal ... Offers instructional examples for today’s divisive world ... The book ends, finally and charmingly, with the story of how Hoberman himself entered the narrative.
Astonishing ... What Mr. Hoberman has rendered is a blueprint to an explosion, the schematic to a zeitgeist ... The author...mischievously connects his stories about a future being born to literary legacies of an inescapable past.
Expertly researched and gripping ... The book is divided into two sections, organized in more or less chronological chapters, each containing multiple delineated narratives. The sheer amount of information packed into Everything Is Now can be overwhelming. That’s not to say that the experience of reading the book is necessarily unpleasant—rather, Hoberman’s book is so dense with facts that it could induce a sort of overstimulation ... More an intermediate guide to the sixties than a handbook for beginners, the commitment to specifics on display in Everything Is Now is quite commendable ... Just as Cynthia Carr’s 2012 biography Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz told the life story of one artist while also creating a masterful history of 1980s Downtown New York, Hoberman’s book paints an all-encompassing picture of a time and place ... Succeeds in reminding us that although many of the people written about may no longer be around, their work and their actual spirits live on in a real and gratifying way .... Provides an indispensable account of the cultural trailblazers who made pivotal use of their moment.
Hoberman’s handling of the material, based on interviews and archival research, is cleverly, strictly chronological, giving us a sense of the wider shifts being enacted through an accumulation of minute details ... As such, Everything is Now often reads like a catalogue of events, meticulously documented and rapidly narrated. Hoberman’s prose is taut, jittery, almost psychedelically compressed ... Hoberman’s voice is more of a sub-machine gun, riddling 400 pages with details of the scene and barely stopping to reload ... There’s a trade-off to this style. The reading experience can be dizzying, and his scene-setting awkward ... A harsh critic would read the many footnotes as a lack of discipline: as a feat of research it’s impressive, but Everything Is Now occasionally gives the impression of celebrating a scene without really explaining why ... Given the depth of Hoberman’s knowledge and his clear love of the material, I found myself wishing he would stop for breath more often. When he lets himself, it’s great ... Obliquely, Everything is Now works best as a book about real estate and how it changed hands ... But ultimately, reading Everything is Now, it’s hard not to ask: who is this for? Does this particular scene need any more canonising? .... The resulting image he creates is something part remembered, part invented, part exhumed.
Hoberman traces a progression from artistic subcultures to countercultural struggles for civil rights, gay liberation, and free speech .... An indispensable cultural history.
The dish, plus the mentions of virtually every downtown address where people lived and worked, gives a vivid sense of the ’60s avant-garde as a physically and personally close-knit group and the art they created as a collective enterprise .... Readability is also hampered by Hoberman’s jumbled chronological framework .... The abrupt ending reinforces the impression of an author not entirely in control of his material. Hoberman’s undisciplined presentation may echo the attitude of its subjects, but it doesn’t make for engaging reading.
