And the Pursuit of Happiness
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With her trademark style, wit, sensitivity, and spontaneity, Maira Kalman guides a whirlwind tour of American democracy. And the Pursuit of Happiness is beloved artist and author Maira Kalman's yearlong investigation of democracy and how it works. Energized and inspired by the 2008 elections, on inauguration day Kalman traveled to Washington, D.C., launching a national tour that would take her from a town hall meeting in Newfane, Vermont, to the inner chambers of the Supreme Court. As we follow Kalman's wholly idiosyncratic journey, we fall in love with Lincoln alongside her as she imagines making a home for herself in the center of his magisterial memorial; ponder Alexis de Tocqueville's America; witness the inner workings of a Bronx middle-school student council; take a high-speed lesson in great American women in the National Portrait Gallery; and consider the cost of war to the brave American service families of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The observations she makes as she travels charm and inform, and-as we have come to expect with Kalman-the route is always one of fascinating indirection. Kalman finds evidence of democracy at work all around us. And the cast of characters we meet along the way is rousing good company, featuring visits from Benjamin Franklin, Eleanor Roosevelt, and many others. And the Pursuit of Happiness is a remarkable tribute to our history and a powerful reminder of the potential our future holds, from a true national treasure.The New York Times - Leah Hager Cohen…an impromptu interpretive dance about our country, executed in fat, frolicky color, unprissy brushstroke, a smattering of pleasantly pedestrian photo graphs and perfectly rambunctious penmanship…Kalman's work, for all its embrace of a childlike sensibility (and its preponderance of tributes to a childlike sweet tooth), is hardly naïve. Her seemingly loopy juxtapositions are in fact fertile and canny, but like a good teacher she resists overinterpreting them, generously leaving the meaning-making to us. Also like a good teacher, she models a tendency to think well of the world, to see in it that which is most decent and hopeful. Best of all, she leaves us curious, formulating our own questions, discovering what things we are burning to ask.
