Yield: The Journal of an Artist

In this impressive final installment of the artist’s series of diaries (Prospect), late American sculptor Truitt (1921–2004) lyrically looks back on 80 years of life. As novelist Rachel Kushner notes in the book’s foreword, “to read Truitt’s diary shows me what she thinks about without a mannered or false layer.” Written from 2001 to 2002, these daily entries indeed offer a version of Truitt free of artifice as she meditates on the sacred and mundane. In poetic vignettes, she conjures outdoor idylls, like nights spent sleeping on her porch in Big Sur: “before dawn, fog flowed from the Pacific Ocean so that... I lay between a cloud and a dark, starred sky.” Other entries deliver simmering takes on the news, such as the inauguration of President George W. Bush, which prompts Truitt to presciently admit, “I am anxious for the country.” Elsewhere, tender reflections on fellow 20th-century artists—such as Donald Judd, “who left a whole town, Marfa... a memorial to his life”—give way to thoughts on aging, a “radical situation” persistently knocking at her door. While the fragile nature of her body preoccupies most of the writing, her mind is sharp as ever: “My life has turned out the way it has because... [I] consulted myself and no one else.” This sparks with intelligence. (Apr.)

Correction: An earlier version of this review misstated the book's subtitle.