Floor Sample
Written by: Julia Cameron
Editorial Reviews:
A beautifully crafted memoir by the woman who has helped thousands of people uncover their creative inspiration.
In Floor Sample, the author of the international bestseller The Artist's Way and twenty-one other classic books on the creative process weaves an honest and moving portrayal of her life. From her early career as a writer for Rolling Stone magazine and her marriage to Martin Scorsese, to her tortured experiences with alcohol as she struggled with a Hollywood existence that she would never learn to make peace with, in this unflinching memoir Cameron reflects on the experiences in her life that have fed her own art as well as her ability to help others realize their creative dreams. She also describes the fascinating circumstances that led her to emerge as a central figure in the creative recovery movement-a movement that she inaugurated and defined with the publication of her seminal work, The Artist's Way.
Julia Cameron is a passionate and wry observer of the world, and this story of her life as a self-described "floor sample" for all she teaches in her brilliant creativity books will surprise, entertain, and inspire all of her many fans as well as anyone interested in a good literary memoir.
If you like "Floor Sample, you might also like ...
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating:
Summary: She's Got the Floor
Comment: Well, nobody said she was a great writer... Oh wait, everyone did, when she released bestselling, influential THE ARTIST'S WAY. Even she seemed to second the motion about her artistry, and now we have the full record of her making art, short stories, songs, scripts, everything she could get her hands on. You have to hand it to Julia Cameron, she knows what she wants. I think at bottom she's a atay at home, she just hasn't gotten to that stage yet, and in the meantime she has a wild lifestyle constantly on the movie between many countries and cities, trying to find a place where she and Domenica can mend their fractured relationship.
Someday we'll hear the real reason why Domenica couldn't get a break in the movies, despite being the daughter of Scorsese. If she got a job, she lost it soon afterwards. Maybe people couldn't deal with Mama Rose. One of these days Domenica can write her own book about how she racked up thousands of free miles by taking the Atlantic shuttle more often than any other child ever born. Julia Cameron can't be an easy woman to live with even when she's relatively together, and yet you can see why her daughter remains attached to her--she's bright, creative, beautiful, and she knows how to dress; the two of them have weathered many storms, and Julia has learned to pass for a native no matter where she may happen to be, whether in the adobe huts of Taos (where, she tells us, "Dennis Hopper had lived for many years" and where "DH Lawrence was buried") or the Georgian townhouses of London.
Sometimes the voices get to be too much (a friend advises her that composing songs can be like dipping your whole head in a bowl of music, a lovely image that unfortunately was to have tragic consequences when Julia was writing "Avalon") and she has a breakdown. But soon afterwards she sees a scarlet tanager (one of her father's favorite birds) while running in the woods with Domenica, and she takes it as a sign that the road ahead will be filled with creativity, and that her father's impending death will be a peaceful one--no reason to mourn. Both parents donated their bodies to science and I think Julia should follow their example and donate hers, particularly her brain and her hair.
Fans of Liza Minnelli will want to read this book to learn how it feels to lose your man to Liza, but that is only one of the reasons why FLOOR SAMPLE is so particularly satisfying and strange. In closing, I would like to echo the words of Cameron, standard recovery advice but very applicable in this time of financial strain, "Don't get too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired."
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great read
Comment: Coming off of 'The Artist's Way' I was curious to know about Julia. It was how she got to where she was to the The Artist's Way. I thought it was a great journey and an enjoyable read, her struggle to find sobriety and her own center, it was much more valid than a lot of other memoirs I've read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: What a disturbing book!
Comment: This is really two books in one. I loved the first half or so--a vivid, well-written account of an arts and music filled childhood in Illinois, an early and tempestous marriage, an out-of-control addiction, and a struggle to get sober.
Right after Cameron sobers up, there's a marvelous period where she's raising her baby daughter and writing three pages a day. She's just begun to discover what would form the core of her creativity work--how actually being an artist is more important than looking like an artist, or suffering for her art. This is a sane and entirely workable approach--a platform that you could build a decades-long career on.
Unfortunately, the more well-know Cameron becomes, the less she heeds her own advice. The second half of the book is such a slog that it's hard to believe it was written by the same person who wrote the first half. As other reviewers have said, it becomes a chronicle of heedless leaps and terrible choices that she repeats and repeats. As time goes on, she seems to surround herself with people who will tell her what she wants to hear--that she's amazing, that she's an artist--all while the actual circumstances of her life are going precipitously downhill.
The end result is distubing and tragic--and not in an artful way. There is no "triumph of the human spirit," just an endless slog that I imagine continues to this day.
To me, this is a cautionary tale for artists. Here, we see the downside of someone who gets caught up in their own grandiosity and forgets the humble modesty in working that she actually preaches. Here, we see someone who surrounds herself with people who will tell her that she's brilliant and amazing, even as the quality of her work is clearly headed downhill (sorry, but those musicals sounded insane.) For me, it underlines the need for constant critical thinking in conjunction with all that creation.
Dorthea Brande, in her marvelous book "Becoming a Writer," talks about how a writer needs to be two people--the impulsive, childlike artist that creates, and the sober, detail-oriented, parent that creates a safe place for the child. If this book is any indication, and I'm afraid it is, Julia Cameron gave her life over to the childlike, creative side of her without putting in place any of the boundaries or structures that were necessary to keep that child safe. She looked for someone else to give that to her, but no one ever did. Heartbreaking.
Customer Rating:
Summary: oh dear
Comment: I am not of the generation that got swept away with the Artist's Way phenomenon, but I do like memoirs, so picked this up at the library.
The reviewer that said that after this book, the whole Artist's Way method seemed to be about tapping in to or tuning in to impuses and psychotic voices seemed really astute to me. I ended up with that concern as well. The grandiosity! The lack of insight about her impact on others. The obsessional focus on "art" as though it excuses anything.
I really wondered about what the people around her would say, and how very different their view of her might be. I worried, as have others, about the impact of all this on her daughter. Julia Cameron seems to have foisted her investment in "specialness" and "art" onto her daughter, and that can't have been easy.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Voyeuristic for the reader. I liked that.
Comment: I've read most of Cameron's books and was delighted to find out there was a memoir. I knew she was a recovering alcoholic, but I had no idea of her psychotic episodes, turmoiled love life and struggle with self-doubt and endless geographical cures. A person's weaknesses, acknowledged and overcome to the point of attaining personal success, makes them stronger.
I enjoyed it and would have liked to know even more.
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.5409
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Tarcher
Manufacturer: Tarcher
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 416
Publication Date: 2006-05-04
Publisher: Tarcher
Studio: Tarcher
 | Format: Hardcover List Price: $24.95 Our Price: $5.99 Your Save: $ 18.96 ( 76% ) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Average Customer Rating:  |
Editorial Reviews:
A beautifully crafted memoir by the woman who has helped thousands of people uncover their creative inspiration.
In Floor Sample, the author of the international bestseller The Artist's Way and twenty-one other classic books on the creative process weaves an honest and moving portrayal of her life. From her early career as a writer for Rolling Stone magazine and her marriage to Martin Scorsese, to her tortured experiences with alcohol as she struggled with a Hollywood existence that she would never learn to make peace with, in this unflinching memoir Cameron reflects on the experiences in her life that have fed her own art as well as her ability to help others realize their creative dreams. She also describes the fascinating circumstances that led her to emerge as a central figure in the creative recovery movement-a movement that she inaugurated and defined with the publication of her seminal work, The Artist's Way.
Julia Cameron is a passionate and wry observer of the world, and this story of her life as a self-described "floor sample" for all she teaches in her brilliant creativity books will surprise, entertain, and inspire all of her many fans as well as anyone interested in a good literary memoir.
If you like "Floor Sample, you might also like ...
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating:
Summary: She's Got the Floor
Comment: Well, nobody said she was a great writer... Oh wait, everyone did, when she released bestselling, influential THE ARTIST'S WAY. Even she seemed to second the motion about her artistry, and now we have the full record of her making art, short stories, songs, scripts, everything she could get her hands on. You have to hand it to Julia Cameron, she knows what she wants. I think at bottom she's a atay at home, she just hasn't gotten to that stage yet, and in the meantime she has a wild lifestyle constantly on the movie between many countries and cities, trying to find a place where she and Domenica can mend their fractured relationship.
Someday we'll hear the real reason why Domenica couldn't get a break in the movies, despite being the daughter of Scorsese. If she got a job, she lost it soon afterwards. Maybe people couldn't deal with Mama Rose. One of these days Domenica can write her own book about how she racked up thousands of free miles by taking the Atlantic shuttle more often than any other child ever born. Julia Cameron can't be an easy woman to live with even when she's relatively together, and yet you can see why her daughter remains attached to her--she's bright, creative, beautiful, and she knows how to dress; the two of them have weathered many storms, and Julia has learned to pass for a native no matter where she may happen to be, whether in the adobe huts of Taos (where, she tells us, "Dennis Hopper had lived for many years" and where "DH Lawrence was buried") or the Georgian townhouses of London.
Sometimes the voices get to be too much (a friend advises her that composing songs can be like dipping your whole head in a bowl of music, a lovely image that unfortunately was to have tragic consequences when Julia was writing "Avalon") and she has a breakdown. But soon afterwards she sees a scarlet tanager (one of her father's favorite birds) while running in the woods with Domenica, and she takes it as a sign that the road ahead will be filled with creativity, and that her father's impending death will be a peaceful one--no reason to mourn. Both parents donated their bodies to science and I think Julia should follow their example and donate hers, particularly her brain and her hair.
Fans of Liza Minnelli will want to read this book to learn how it feels to lose your man to Liza, but that is only one of the reasons why FLOOR SAMPLE is so particularly satisfying and strange. In closing, I would like to echo the words of Cameron, standard recovery advice but very applicable in this time of financial strain, "Don't get too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired."
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great read
Comment: Coming off of 'The Artist's Way' I was curious to know about Julia. It was how she got to where she was to the The Artist's Way. I thought it was a great journey and an enjoyable read, her struggle to find sobriety and her own center, it was much more valid than a lot of other memoirs I've read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: What a disturbing book!
Comment: This is really two books in one. I loved the first half or so--a vivid, well-written account of an arts and music filled childhood in Illinois, an early and tempestous marriage, an out-of-control addiction, and a struggle to get sober.
Right after Cameron sobers up, there's a marvelous period where she's raising her baby daughter and writing three pages a day. She's just begun to discover what would form the core of her creativity work--how actually being an artist is more important than looking like an artist, or suffering for her art. This is a sane and entirely workable approach--a platform that you could build a decades-long career on.
Unfortunately, the more well-know Cameron becomes, the less she heeds her own advice. The second half of the book is such a slog that it's hard to believe it was written by the same person who wrote the first half. As other reviewers have said, it becomes a chronicle of heedless leaps and terrible choices that she repeats and repeats. As time goes on, she seems to surround herself with people who will tell her what she wants to hear--that she's amazing, that she's an artist--all while the actual circumstances of her life are going precipitously downhill.
The end result is distubing and tragic--and not in an artful way. There is no "triumph of the human spirit," just an endless slog that I imagine continues to this day.
To me, this is a cautionary tale for artists. Here, we see the downside of someone who gets caught up in their own grandiosity and forgets the humble modesty in working that she actually preaches. Here, we see someone who surrounds herself with people who will tell her that she's brilliant and amazing, even as the quality of her work is clearly headed downhill (sorry, but those musicals sounded insane.) For me, it underlines the need for constant critical thinking in conjunction with all that creation.
Dorthea Brande, in her marvelous book "Becoming a Writer," talks about how a writer needs to be two people--the impulsive, childlike artist that creates, and the sober, detail-oriented, parent that creates a safe place for the child. If this book is any indication, and I'm afraid it is, Julia Cameron gave her life over to the childlike, creative side of her without putting in place any of the boundaries or structures that were necessary to keep that child safe. She looked for someone else to give that to her, but no one ever did. Heartbreaking.
Customer Rating:
Summary: oh dear
Comment: I am not of the generation that got swept away with the Artist's Way phenomenon, but I do like memoirs, so picked this up at the library.
The reviewer that said that after this book, the whole Artist's Way method seemed to be about tapping in to or tuning in to impuses and psychotic voices seemed really astute to me. I ended up with that concern as well. The grandiosity! The lack of insight about her impact on others. The obsessional focus on "art" as though it excuses anything.
I really wondered about what the people around her would say, and how very different their view of her might be. I worried, as have others, about the impact of all this on her daughter. Julia Cameron seems to have foisted her investment in "specialness" and "art" onto her daughter, and that can't have been easy.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Voyeuristic for the reader. I liked that.
Comment: I've read most of Cameron's books and was delighted to find out there was a memoir. I knew she was a recovering alcoholic, but I had no idea of her psychotic episodes, turmoiled love life and struggle with self-doubt and endless geographical cures. A person's weaknesses, acknowledged and overcome to the point of attaining personal success, makes them stronger.
I enjoyed it and would have liked to know even more.
Technical Details
Binding: HardcoverDewey Decimal Number: 818.5409
Format: Bargain Price
Label: Tarcher
Manufacturer: Tarcher
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 416
Publication Date: 2006-05-04
Publisher: Tarcher
Studio: Tarcher
