Helpful Score: 2
Robert Hughes is a larger than life personality and it's possible that only he can capture on the page what makes him so compelling a figure. With his usual grace, style and wit, Hughes describes how, as young man, he learned to care about art and above all, how to write about it so that others could share his pleasure. The book opens with his near death in a car accident and the description of what he suffered suggests that he must have willed himself to survive a level of physical injury and pain that would have made most of us wish to die. Fascinating too is his description of his relationship to his first wife, because he doesn't spare himself in describing how wrong they were for one another. What's surprising is that Hughes, who seems so self-assured, could have been a sap for any woman, even a gorgeous one, as his wife seems to have been. Unfortunately, she also appears to have been a bit of a nut case. Besotted with her, Hughes pretty much let himself be led around by the nose. Who would have thought.
