Regarded as one of the 20th century's most radical and influential composers, John Cage's (1912-1992) passion for music was matched by his lifelong captivation with the humble mushroom. In the gorgeous two-volume John Cage: A Mycological Foray: Variations on Mushrooms, Cage's fascination with fungi comes into focus.
Cage's introduction to mushrooms was out of necessity, as he foraged for sustenance during the Great Depression. By the 1950s, Cage was the poster child for the postwar avant-garde, teaching music composition at Manhattan's New School and whisking students to upstate New York for mycological forays on weekends. By the end of the decade he was supplying mushrooms to restaurants and won five million lire on an Italian game show after identifying all 24 names of the white-spored Agaricus.
The first volume of A Mycological Foray presents dozens of photographs and musings about mushrooms from Cage's diaries; Indeterminacy, a collection of stories, each of which is meant to be performed in 60 seconds; and Mushrooms et Variationes, consisting of 60 mesostics (a poem with horizontal text that also forms text vertically) arranged in a renga (a form of Japanese poetry where stanzas are linked but written by different authors). The second volume, a reprint of 1972's The Mushroom Book, contains 20 loose lithographs of illustrations by Lois Long, overlaid with translucent paper that contains descriptions by mycologist Alexander H. Smith along with the text of Mushrooms et Variationes, so "word and image cluster and disperse across the page, mimicking the reproductive structure of spores." The result is an unorthodox and whimsical monograph that is essential to understanding the foundations of John Cage's oeuvre. --Frank Brasile, librarian