Product Description:

• Take Their Advice: Camille Paglia - Wayne Koestenbaum - Jonathan Ames - Jennifer Belle - Howard Zinn - Joe Dallesandro - Bruce LaBruce - Dr. Laura Schlessinger - Tom Robbins - Judith Butler - Martha Nussbaum Horst - William S. Burroughs - Larry Niven - Veruschka - Lydia Lunch - Spalding Gray - Eileen Myles - Roger Scruton - Ken Kesey Mary Gaitskill - Richard Powers - Mark Dery - Florence King - Mark Simpson - Bob Shacochis - Joanna Scott - Quentin Crisp - Carolyn Chute - Michael Thomas Ford - Alexander Theroux - George Saunders - Charles Baxter - Ian Shoales - Fay Weldon - Bruce Benderson - Scott Russell Sanders - John Shirley - Dr. John Money - Cindy Sherman - Richard Meltzer - Gene Wolfe - Abbie Hoffman - Diane Wakowski - Richard Taylor - Bette Davis - Arthur Nersesian - Jim Harrison - Martha Gellhorn - Lucius Shepard - Dan Jenkins - Steve Stern - Murray Bookchin - John Zerzan - Maurice Vellekoop - Joel-Peter Witkin - Stewart Home - Maxx Ardman - Katharine Hepburn - Bret Lott - Lynda Barry - Alain de Botton - Mary McCarthy - Hakim Bey - Anita O Day - Chris Kraus - R. U. Sirius - C. D. Payne W. V. Quine - Rita Dove - Robert Creeley - Valerie Martin - Paul Krassner - Alphonso Lingis - Mark Helprin - John Rechy - Ram Dass - William T. Vollmann - and Bettie Page

Customer Ratings:

• A great gift for the young.. I believe I picked up my first copy of Take My Advice at some sort of clearance sale. Not long after I returned to purchase another copy to give to a good friend of mine. She had just graduated and I could not wait to share this book with someone. The editor did a great job of picking a wide variety of people to write essays on advice to the young. Very insightful. Very personal. I also enjoyed seeing the candid photos of the contributors from their youth. This book really struck a chord with me.
• Fascinating Wisdom & Reflections!. There are 79 fascinating original essays in this collection that were gathered together over a period of ten years from public figures who give out their advice, wisdom, and reflections on life. The book is chuck full of insight from people like Quentin Crisp, Bette Davis, William S. Burroughs, Katharine Hepburn, and others. Joe Dallesandro, star of Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey s late 60 s cult films, Flesh, Trash, and Heat offers some excellent advice in his essay. He states, The negative aspect of beauty in our culture is our obsession with it - like when a person becomes bulimic or anorexic because they want to look like a celebrity or a model in a magazine. He further states, Beauty is fun, it has its place, but don t mistake it for self-worth. In other words we need more than beauty and good looks to feel fulfilled. We need to look inside ourselves and find inner beauty and true meaning in our lives. Once in a while we should forget the me and lend a helping hand to others who need us. Good advice.
  

  You may not agree with all of the advice being dished out in these essays, but it is a fascinating look into the lives of these famous and not so famous individuals, and the way they think. It will also make you think a little more deeply yourself, and provide you with plenty of interesting advice to digest and compare with your own beliefs. Harmon has done an excellent job in bringing these people s thoughts into our own thoughts. This is a book I certainly will read again!

  Joe Hanssen

• Take my advice and check out this book. This book is filled with advice from a wide array of writers, artists, philosophers, photographers, poets, critics and even a sexologist.

  I came across this book by fluke one day, and it turned out to be one of the most rewarding books I have ever read. After reading this, I felt uplifted, inspired and viewed success from a new angle. If you are a person obsessed with chasing the almighty dollar, I would not recommend this book. It only gives advice on the things in life that truly matter.

  This book was created in order to give advice to the young, the people who are just starting out. But yet, I believe it to still be a useful tool to those growing older, for a person is never too old to learn or to grow. If you want things to change, it is best to start with yourself.

  I will leave you with some sample pieces of advice given by the writer Lucius Shepard:

  Just because you re living on the edge doesn t mean that you don t have to do the right thing.

  Run like hell if you have to, but try not to hurt anyone.

  If you get ahead of the game, let some of your money loose in the world where it can do some good, and chances are that good thing will come back around.

  Make sure you know whomever you have to trust.

  Take the cash and flush the credit cards.

• Much food for thought. In the unbelievably commercialized world we live in, this book comes as a breath of fresh air telling college graduates how they should think as they head out into the world. Since most of the advisors are artists, their advice isn t likely to help you make a lot of money! However, I firmly believe that artists hold the key to the future because they alone refuse to buy into the dominant cultural/political system (in this case, mindless consumerism) and seek ways of framing new modes of thought. For this reason, this book should be read by anyone discontented with sheer consumerism and searching for a better way to live. What s especially telling is how many of these artists suggest that we stop watching TV!
• More garbage than good advice.. I was very dissappointed with this book. I had hoped to get pearls of wisdom that I could share with graduates. There were a few gems but it was like looking for diamonds in a swamp.