Jessica Helfand

Jessica Helfand is an artist, designer and writer. She has taught at Yale University, her alma mater, for more than two decades as well as all around the world. Jessica is the founding editor of Design Observer and the author of numerous books on visual and cultural criticism. She is the first-ever recipient of the Henry Wolf Residency at the American Academy in Rome, and has been a Director’s Guest at Civitella Ranieri, a fellow at the Bogliasco Foundation, and an Artist-in-Residence at Caltech.

If you could recommend 3 books to anyone, what would they be?

The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante

These four books are simply extraordinary. Character-driven, but also interwoven with a plot that spans decades and shifts perspective, I found the stories utterly absorbing and revelatory, with the focus shifting between the two protagonists with enormous grace—and elements of surprise.

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

The central premise is a winding historical tale of a woman who segregates stories into notebooks of different colors—black, red, blue, yellow—ultimately reframing her narrative into a single, golden dossier. Along the way, this is a tale of communism and community, of feminism, English-isms, and what it means to hold onto your own independent mind. The fact that Lessing wrote this more than 60 years ago is unbelievable. (As a close second, I'd add Mary McCarthy's The Group).

Reveries of the Solitary Walker by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

A meditation on walking, on nature and on space, I loved that these were quantified and numbered (first walk, second walk, and so on) but the book itself is unfinished, as indeed all walking is destined to be.

What are you reading now?

The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell

The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell, which was my mother's favorite book, and which feels particularly enriching in a year when I could not go anywhere. (I felt the same way watching the Yorkshire landscape in the televised adaptation of All Creatures Great and Small. Time travel!) The four stories are told, Rashomon-style, over the course of four novellas. I'm halfway through, and then planning on a deep dive into Virginia Woolf. Because I experience most fiction as audiobooks while I am painting in the studio, I tend to adopt either an author or a narrator, and then stay with them awhile. Highly recommended.

Whose reading list are you most curious about?

“Classics with multiple parts, character-driven, and often, for me at least, British rather than American. (I went from Juliette Nicholson reciting The Golden Notebook to listening to David Sedaris read from his diaries a few days ago and thought my head would explode.) It took me many years to start devouring fiction and now I can't stop. It's a particularly delicious adventure in a year like this one's been—and I'm so grateful for Librivox, Audible, and Scribd.”

— Jessica Helfand