The Longing for Less: Living with Minimalism by Kyle Chayka

The Longing for Less: Living with Minimalism Reviews

• 
  D. St. Germain

  The Longing for Less: Living with Minimalism by Kyle Chaka explores the various meanings the word “minimalism” takes and has taken over time. As he notes, “When a word or style is everywhere, it tends to lose its original meaning. There are more than thirteen million posts tagged with #minimalism on Instagram and around ten new images appear every minute…..Shots of the blue sky pockmarked with clouds are categorized as minimalist, as are line-drawing tattoos, wrinkled bedsheets, folded clothing, Chemex coffeemakers, spiral staircases, monochrome athleisure outfits, rustic cabins in the snow, and demure selfies.”
  
  The book is part travelogue, part critical theory reader, part architecture and art history, and part deep dive into the piles of plastic crap Americans have buried themselves under in the name of what they think they need - and what they trade away to get it.
  
  The book shines when examining minimalism as a trend in the face of diminishing opportunity and expectations for young people, as a means of understanding lives under increasingly precarious living conditions in the 21st century, asking, are people attracted to minimalism because they see and feel the underlying invalidity of a culture that demands we organize our time, resources, and sense of self-worth around the accumulation of stuff? Or given the increasingly precarious conditions many people find themselves living in, have many people embraced minimalism as a means of justifying/glorifying their inability to have more stuff?
  
  Minimalism has a history as a spiritual and philosophical practice, and so we get a deep dive into the stoics and early philosophy. Then, Chaka travels to visit the monuments and makers of minimalist architecture and art in the US to examine how artists and intellectuals applied their (culturally-specific and era-specific) understanding of minimalism to their exterior world.
  
  Certainly what this book highlights is the way humans are meaning-makers, constantly building meaning into how we interpret what happens to us, i.e. “everything happens for a reason” “god has a plan.” - and how we glorify the simple life. (As one other
  goodreads reviewer put it, they read the book "for justification of how I've chosen to live my life in the past 10 or so years.") Cognitive science in recent years has illuminated how we often convince ourselves what we have is what we wanted all along (even though that isn’t necessarily true). We see this in the ways that millennials glorify #vanlife as a means of travel and freedom and yoga on the beach with your hot romantic partner and cute dog, rather than a reality for gig-workers with uncertain incomes and no health care who can’t pay the astronomical rents in the places where 20 years ago most people *could* afford to live. Chaka's discussion of this particular phenomenon in the book contributes a lot to our understanding of how we reconcile our lives with our most recent past.
• 
  Emily Carlin

  Not bad, just not what I wanted it to be. I wanted an in-depth critique of the ways in which “minimalism” as a concept has been commodified. It started off strong, but then turned into 90% art criticism, which all fell kind of flat for me — prob my failing, not the book’s.
  
  One thing that bugged me: How condescending the author is towards contemporary minimalism, the kind popularized by podcasts and subreddits, and which may be adopted by people who may have never heard of Donald Judd (...the horror....).
  
  Sure, Kondo-y Pinterest-y minimalism may be superficial, but I think it retains some of the spirit of the “real thing” — not to mention the fact that anything that goes against our prevailing consumer culture seems like a good thing. It just rubbed me the wrong way how Chayka sort of discounts/brushes off the merits of mainstream minimalism and then writes reverentially about his own special, rarefied experience of minimalism in a rock garden on a solo trip to Japan.
• 
  Kusaimamekirai

  
  I’m always somewhat bemused when something from my adopted homeland here in Japan breaks through in America. There was the ramen craze a few years ago (is this still happening?), and now we have Marie Kondo and her relentless tidiness in the name of minimalism.
  I do not begrudge Kondo her business empire which sells copious amounts of “things” to people she tells to not collect “things”. Perhaps her “things” spark joy more than our “things”. These things in truth are beyond my cluttered brain. However the obvious question remains, if this is minimalism, what does minimalism truly mean?
  Kyle Chayka’s “The Longing for Less” asks this question and true perhaps to the ethos of minimalism, fails to answer it. What he does however is provide a fascinating history of the minimalism movement through 4 appropriately minimalist chapters titled: Reduction, Emptiness, Silence, and Shadow.
  There are wonderful insights throughout but among the more interesting is the idea that the current minimalist craze sweeping the world isn’t anything new. Throughout history in times of uncertainty and chaos, similar movements have appeared and they seem to be an attempt to restore some kind of order in a world that stubbornly resists it:
  
  “Minimalism is thus a kind of last resort. When we can’t control our material security or life path, the only possibility left is to lower our expectations to the point where they’re easier to achieve, which could mean living in a train car, or a camper van.”
  
  “What the Stoics, Francis, and Thoreau have in common is a strategy of avoidance, especially in moments when society feels chaotic or catastrophic. It’s a coping mechanism for those who want to fix or improve the status quo instead of overturning it. Its orientation is toward survival.”
  
  We see this again, particularly in the 1950’s and 60’s, where minimalist architecture, music, and art begins to proliferate. Be it John Cage’s musical composition’s of silence, Donald Judd’s art instillations of square blocks, or Philip Johnson’s glass house in the middle of the woods, it is clear that throughout history when we reach a kind of critical mass of noise and unease, we push pack to its polar opposite of literal and ephemeral silence.
  One important distinction Chayka makes however is that silence does not mean absence. What is lost in the kind of enforced austerity of the tidiness movement for example is that the absence of one thing serves to heighten our senses to another. Listening to John Cage’s 4’33 in the woods, one doesn’t hear a piano but instead the birds singing, trees rustling, wind blowing:
  
  “His music is a kind of conditioning for heightened awareness: These sounds are going on all around you, all the time, but only with the help of art are you able to register them beyond your own conveniently numbed perception. Instead of masking details, Cage’s music highlights them.”
  
  It is a symphony in and of itself that is eternally changing and yet unique. In a sense, true minimalism is what you get from it. It is not something to cancel out a messy outside world, but to augment it and see it in a new way:
  
  “The art, music, architecture, and philosophy that I’ve described, however, isn’t concerned with perfect cleanliness or a specific style. It’s about seeking unmediated experiences, giving up control instead of imposing it, paying attention to what’s around you without barricading yourself, and accepting ambiguity, understanding that opposites can be part of the same whole.”
  
  Emptiness, or making our life devoid of “things” is in short, not an end.
  We can no more escape this world of materialism and noise through total negation than grow wings and fly.
  You are not required to “keep under than 30 books in your house because, you will never reread them” as Marie Kondo suggests. Emptiness does not mean slavish rigidity. Rather it is a blueprint, an eternally flexible, customizable, and open to interpretation one, that provides a means to understand the world better and see what we otherwise would not.
  
• 
  Victoria Chen

  tl;dr - I could've googled for historical ascetes rather than read this compilation.
  
  Several chapters in, it was still unclear to me what point the author was trying to make. At times he seemed moralistically condescending toward modern minimalism, yet I wasn't sure whether he was trying to argue that previous minimalism movements were more substantial, or whether they were all insubstantial??? I didn't dislike the short anecdotes on various historical figures who were proponents of some form of minimalism. However, I was extremely irked that the author laid a foundation for a critical assessment without delivering any substantial food for thought.
  
  Thus it seems ironic to me that he criticizes present-day capitalist exploitations of consumer appetite for minimalism while doing the same through this insubstantial book.
• 
  Annie Wilson

  This book started off super strong, and I was interested in it as what I thought would be an interesting historical/sociological analysis of minimalism, but halfway through it unravels into a collection of (ironically) curated profiles of artists and figures that appear selected because they each support the author’s somewhat esoteric message - indeed, the book seems to deliberately ignore many key figures in the history of minimalism (both in and outside of art) that would contradict the author’s thesis. The final message is also a bit unclear and conveys an air of, “if you get it, you get it, and if you don’t, you don’t....and that’s because you’re not sophisticated enough to get it.”
• 
  Erika

  The Longing for Less is a fascinating exploration of the concept of minimalism - its current appeal, its impact on society, and its historic roots in the visual arts, music, literature, and design. The book feels like a thoughtful conversation with a friend over coffee, colloquial and natural. It takes the reader around the globe and through different eras to explore the unexpected development of minimalism as a force to be considered. It takes every notion we might have gleaned about minimalism from art class and Marie Kondo and gently unravels them, laying bare a school of thought that is far more philosophical and impactful than I had ever imagined. I think The Longing for Less is a great read for anyone who wants to understand the 'why' behind sparking joy.
• 
  Jose

  Overall I think this book is somewhat muddled. I don't think Chayka does a good job tying together the current personal enrichment form of minimalism with various strands of art trends that have been labeled minimalism. This might be more appealing if you're interested in art criticism, but I found Chayka's criticism mostly uninteresting.
• 
  Chunyang Ding

  For a book about minimalism, Chayka could have done with a few dozen fewer pages. Although he presents a very solid argument - that this current zeitgeist of trendy minimalism is rooted in many thoughtful, preexisting traditions - the way that he presents his case is often insufferable.
  
  To start, there is no attempt to hide the author from the pages. Much of the explanation of minimalist artwork is from his particular perspective, which he also proceeds to dissect for you, the reader. In several places, Chayka explains that the artwork cannot be capture in text, before promptly doing just that for several pages. I cannot tell if he is trying to be ironic by leaning into it, or if he believes that this is the only way to communicate his appreciation of the art.
  
  I did really appreciate his views of pop-minimalism, that the commercialization of minimalist merch is a truly ridiculous endeavor, as well as his willingness to dive into the complexities of the people who have shaped this movement. Yet the attempted scope of the work - approaching minimalism from pop-culture, architecture, sculpture, music, and Japan - felt too broad to really land any of its punches.
• 
  shannon

  He knows a lot about art. He wants you to know he knows a lot about art. He wants to discuss it in the most joyless way possible. Life is too short.
• 
  Melissa Stacy

  Published in January 2020, the nonfiction book, "The Longing for Less: Living with Minimalism," by Kyle Chayka, sounded like an ideal read for me.
  
  I've followed and read all of the popular contemporary minimalist authors and bloggers, so a book that analyzes the movement as a whole was deeply appealing.
  
  But I had to DNF this book by page 42. The content of this book is shallow, scattered, disorganized, and boring. I'm not learning anything, other than that the author thinks very highly of himself for knowing basic information about art history, the basics of Stoicism, and global cultural trends from a life spent traveling internationally and working for elite publications.
  
  Chayka also criticizes popular modern minimalists without offering anything to substantiate that criticism. In short, I'm left thinking that these people just 'annoy' him, not that there is anything fundamentally missing from their message.
  
  Well, this book sure 'annoyed' me. I wouldn't recommend this.
  
  Two stars.
  
• 
  Shrey

  The title makes it sound like a self-help book, but this is more of an exploration of minimalism and the culture surrounding it through different lenses: the commodification of minimalism and the Marie Kondo craze; minimalism in art; minimalism in music; Japanese culture and minimalism.
  
  It was cool to learn about Donald Judd, Marfa, Julius Eastman, Iki and some other stuff I wrote down. Supposedly the physical book has some interesting design aspects to it, but I'll have to wait until after the pandemic to go into a real-life bookstore to view it.
  
  It went into a bunch of threads, but didn't quite cohere into a whole for me.
• 
  Kristine

  The Longing for Less by Kyle Chayka is a free NetGalley ebook that I read in mid-November.
  
  The concept of resisting a tendency to become overly ornate and hang on to unimportant things, and, instead, to really mull over what you need in your life. Chayka profiles people within the Minimalist lifestyle movement about modernist design, refuge spaces from noise, as well as meditative activities and tasks to make this seem more like a journalism series compiled together, but not quite making the proper editing choices to flow them all together.
• 
  Briana

  As a younger millennial, I remember when minimalism was the design trend sweeping the cultural spectrum. Words like “downsizing” and the idea of “quiet living” became part of our everyday vernacular. Brands were getting rid of loudness and even makeup trends preferred a minimalistic approach like millennial favorites such as Glossier. But with most trends, minimalism started to fade and people questioned this idea of luxury minimalism. Questions regarding minimalism’s attainability and function started to surface and slowly the culture shifted back to maximalism. With the pandemic taking place over the past few years, I found myself thinking a lot about minimalism, quiet living, and a more functional experience on our fragile planet.
  
  The Longing for Less: Living With Minimalism by Kyle Chayka was one of the first books I saw on the list for learning about minimalism. I wanted to stay away from books from the early 2010s because I feel like that was when the obsession with minimalism was at its peak. Now that things have quieted down, I wanted to read something with more clarity. Chayka was a writer at Hyperallergic, an online arts magazine that I’ve been reading for the past few years so it was no surprise that a lot of this book focused on art and design. Minimalism is an art movement that was popular in the 60s and 70s, just before the neo-pop art movements.
  
  A lot of this book explains the history of minimalism and what it actually means. I appreciate the way that Chayka deconstructs the consumerist minimalism idea. He touches on the idea of starting over and if people get rid of junk then they don’t suddenly solve all of their life’s problems. It talks about how certain brands promise minimalism but lacks long-term functionality so we have to keep buying these smartphones, laptops, etc. The book is told in four parts: Reduction, Emptiness, Silence, and Shadow which all present different ideas and cultural context for minimalist ideas. We stretch from learning about visual artists such as Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, and Dan Flavin to Zen Buddhism in Japan and Scandinavian minimalism. We touch on Japanese design and the architecture of Soho in New York City.
  
  Ideas of minimalism versus austerity were presented here and I enjoyed what this book had to say about differentiating between the two. However, this brings me to my issues with this book. I read some passages a few times where the writer will start an idea but there would be no resolution. Sometimes it felt like reading a history book and other times it felt like reading someone’s stream of consciousness. I think that there are times when there’s a lack of focus instead of being a straightforward book on how we can live with minimalism. I thought that was a little odd to have that as a subtitle when I don’t think this book focuses on that.
  
  Readers will get a good understanding of how humanity, especially millennials will lean into minimalism since our generation doesn’t have a lot of stability when it comes to ownership but I think that’s about it. I like how I’m able to get an introduction to minimalism and I highly recommend this for people who want to learn more.
  
• 
  Gwen

  Chayka's Minimalism: the appreciation of things for and in themselves, and the removal of barriers between the self and the world (46)
  
  This book is not really about how to help *you* long for less, but rather, it's a (quite esoteric) meditation/analysis of how *other* minimalists in art, architecture, music, philosophy, and literature have approached the mindset. I did many internet deep dives on the (numerous) topics I was unfamiliar with.
  
  I wanted a bit more contextualizing on why and how minimalism has become such a hot topic: why is minimalism now so in vogue? Chayka alludes to it a bit, but never in any serious depth. I enjoyed this book the most when Chayka describes minimalism outside of art/architecture/music/philosophy/literature--what it can mean to humanity.
  
  In general,
  Chayka's New York Times piece and the
  New York Times' book review are an excellent gloss if long-form reading about Japanese philosophers, the Marfa art scene, and minimalist composers aren't necessarily for you.
  
  Quotes I bookmarked:
  
  How to build a sense of self
  - One act of will is to erase everything that's already around you, washing it clean white and starting over again so that the only things left are those that you choose, which is the standard practice of minimalism. This is a simple way to build a sense of self: You are what you include. An object, person, or idea is either in or out of your worldview. But favoring control leaves no room for surprises. A more difficult, perhaps more deeply satisfying method is to embrace contingency and randomness, accepting that life is a compromise between what exists and what you want, and beauty is found not by imposition but through an absence of control. You capitulate to particular moments as they pass. (205)
  
  On popular contemporary minimalist thought:
  - Minimalism is...popular around the world, I think, because it reacts against a condition that is now everywhere: a state of social crisis mixed with a terminal dissatisfaction with the material culture around us that seems to have delivered us to this point, though the fault is our own. When I see the austere kitchens and bare shelves and elegant cement walls, the dim vague colors and the skeletal furniture, the monochrome devices, the white t-shirts, the empty walls, the wide-open windows looking out into nothing in particular--when I see minimalism as a meme on Instagram, as a self-help book commandment, and as an encouragement to get rid of as much as possible in the name of imminently buying more--I see both an anxiety of nothingness and a desire to capitulate to it. ...The popular minimalist aesthetic is more a symptom of that anxiety, having less as a way of feeling a little more stable in precarious times, than a solution to it. (220-221)
  
  - Minimalism is thus a kind of last resort. When we can't control our material security or life path, the only possibility left is to lower our expectations to the point where they're easier to achieve... (22)
  
  - Minimalist cleanliness is the state of acceptable normalcy that everyone must adhere to, no matter how boring it looks or how oppressive it feels. (34)
  
  - Minimalism can be oppressive. The style can make you feel like you don't belong in a space unless you conform to it, as in upscale cafes or severe hotel lobbies. Being in the
  Glass House...doesn't really feel like freedom but entrapment in someone else's vision. (67)
  
  - Minimalism as it appears in the West is inherently oppositional, posing itself against something, as a departure from a current state--cleanliness against mess, absence against presence, and silence against noise. The targets of popular minimalism are values that are usually seen as Western or American, whether it's a reaction against capitalism's relentless pursuit of industrialized productivity for profit or the promise of consumer materialism, that being able to buy the right things is what makes us happy. As such, minimalism is easily associated with something foreign. In the modern era Japan, as in Lost in Translation, has offered a convenient Other for that projection, a culture with what appeared to be a heritage of spare, precious, quiet, sensitive aesthetics readymade for contrast to problematic excess. (170)
  
  - There's a darkness and danger to the idea of absence...that's totally missing from the bland facade of popular minimalism today. It's not about consuming the right things or throwing out the wrong; it's about challenging your deepest beliefs in an attempt to engage with things as they are, to not shy away from reality of its lack of answers. To believe or commit too strongly to one particular way of seeing or being is to miss out on all the other possibilities and to allow yourself to be defined too much by one thing. (218-219)
  
  The concept of "the second body" (Not sure if I agree with this, but it's an interesting concept)
  - The contrast between simple form and complex consequences bring to mind what the British writer Daisy Hildyard called "the second body" in her
  2017 book of the same name. The phrase describes the alienated presence that we feel when we are aware of both our individual physical bodies and our collective causation of environmental damage and climate change. While we calmly walk down the sidewalk, watch a movie, or go grocery shopping, we are also the source of pollution drifting across the Pacific or a tsunami in Indonesia. The second body is the source of an unplaceable anxiety: The problems are undeniably our fault, even though it feels like we can't do anything about them because of the sheer difference in scale. In the same way, we might be able to hold the iPhone in our hands, but we should also be aware that the network of its consequences is vast: server farms absorbing massive amounts of electricity, Chinese factories where workers die by suicide, devastated mud pit mines that produce tin. It's easy to feel like a minimalist when you can order food, summon a car, or rent a room using a single brick of steel and silicon. But in reality, it's the opposite. We're taking advantage of a maximalist assemblage. Just because something looks simple doesn't mean it is; the aesthetics of simplicity cloak artifice or even unsustainable excess. (43)
  
  Productivity at all costs
  - Maybe we manufacture safe silences because we want to avoid confrontation with whatever is beyond us. We're not accustomed to the awe that it can inspire anymore. The new form of silence is devoted to commercial productivity, not transcendent contemplation. You don't meditate in Amtrak's Quiet Car; you fill out spreadsheets. (124)
• 
  hajin yoo

  this is less of a instructive manual and more of a survey of minimalist art, philosophy, and movements to provoke what it means to be a minimalist; to reconcile clean, austere aesthetics with the chaos of contemporary life. True to the books thesis, the author doesn’t give any easy answers, sidestepping the typical how-to guides prevalent in the genre and instead challenging us to live with the ambiguity inherent in life and in minimalist philosophy. There’s so much literature about what minimalism is and isn’t that it often becomes antithetical the the values it’s supposed to champion. It’s not about distinguishing yourself through superior taste or creating curated, empty spaces. These totems are natural reactions to our hypercapitalist consumerist society, an attempt at control and cohesion, but it’s not an actual solution in of itself. They’re merely totems to facilitate a total acceptance of reality, a manifestation of the contradictions and shadows that undergirds everything.. the absence is nothing and it’s everything; the transience of ikebana a temporary vessel for the universes eternalness.
  Considering the books topic, it comes to its logical end with an appreciation of Japanese aesthetics. I thought that part was kind of boring.
  ANYWAYS! Came in wanting a guide to be a minimalist - at least an answer to the question posed on the cover! Came out with no clear answers but hmm that’s life ain’t it!!
  
• 
  Claude

  This was truly god awful. I don't even have the energy to express everything that was wrong w this book but
  1 - he cherry picked like crazy
  2 - He had a weird obsession with just. Hating Marie Kondo and painting her as an authoritarian type figure and implying she was a scammer when the handful of (I'm assuming white?) Dudes he mentioned were just lightly implied to be scammers. Like. The difference of description was so noticeable.
  3 - HE IS SO PRETENTIOUS ABOUT THIS ENTIRE THING like soooo pretentious like he obviously thinks nobody gets minimalism except for the few philosophers he's decided to just fixate on and write about. Like sure you're writing about this aspect of minimalism but you cant then say it encompasses an entire movement and criticize the personal lense that other people experience the movement thru. You are also experiencing the movement through your personal lens
  4 - the number of times he mentioned Trump and feeling shell shocked, it's like he thinks he's oppressed for being a democrat honesty.
  5 - idk if you would categorize some of this as purple prose but really he went On and On oh my god
  6 - We Get It Kyle. You like to fetishize Japanese culture 🙄
  
  The little I learned about minimalism was interesting though.
• 
  Nikhil Sethi

  Chayka took me on vacation around the world, explaining wonderful pieces of art, the underlying philosophy, and his personal experience understanding it.
  
  I loved it all and just wish I could read a fully personal work by Chayka. A truly gifted writer.
• 
  tinaathena

  This book was not what I expected (a criticism of Instagram aesthetic and the low hanging punching bag of KonMari, though it did very much linger on these topics) and was challenged/surprised by the level of art criticism, which is maybe always inherently pretentious. And when does art criticism end and philosophy begin? Are they two sides of the same coin? If so, what of design for commercial purposes? When is it art? Is it always art? Is that liminal space between considered art?? Any book that makes me stew on stuff like this is always good, even if I don't love it. I am always a bit 🥴 when KonMari is eye-rolled at(for further reading please see Teigen v. Roman think pieces) but I see the validity of the argument from the author. I think this sums up a lot of the book: when I see minimalism as a meme on Instagram, as a self-help commandment, and as an encouragement to get rid of as much as possible in the name of imminently buying more--I see both an anxiety of nothingness and a desire to capitulate to it. I long for oblivion, but that's another issue.
• 
  Yannick Schutz

  A few good portraits.
  I came for the minimalism, stayed for the stories.
  I laughed and enjoyed the historical touches.
  
  I don’t think I like the almost condescending tone it can come around for current minimalists but I definitively liked the lesson on the sources of this movement.
• 
  Andrew Sampson

  i've got a blank space baby, and i'll write your name
• 
  Caroline Horgan

  This book did not spark joy. I felt like I was reading an assignment for a college course. Interesting connection between visual art and music, but not at all what I expected.
• 
  Murray

  Interesting
• 
  Rachel Y

  I liked the journey and rather-ambiguity of it. I really didn't know until partway through chapter 2 what exactly the aim was or how we were trying to achieve it, but I was OK with that. I loved the chapters on minimalism in music and in visual art. I wanted more from the chapters tying minimalism to Zen and Buddhism. As a standalone project I would probably give this a 3.5 but I like Chayka's writing in other places so will happily round to a 4.
• 
  Violet

  Really fascinating little book. It started with why minimalism is such a big trend and how it's actually the perfect trend for capitalism - you can go to any coffee shop or hotel and they'll all be more or less the same... And it then explored minimalism in art and music more specifically. Some chapters felt a bit long and slightly repetitive, but it reads like a long, long Guardian essay (which I think is a good thing). Very enjoyable and informative.
• 
  Audrey Kalman

  just so good. maybe my new favorite.
  
  a good bit towards the end: minimalism is popular around the world right now "because it reacts against a condition that is now everywhere: a state of social crisis mixed with a terminal dissatisfaction with the material culture around us that seems to have delivered us to this point, though the fault is our own." 🔥 🔥
• 
  Danie DesJardins

  While a bit harsh at times, even if deserved, this book draws correlations between art movements, lesser known classical musicians and architects who changed the face of a city in the hunt for 'what is minimilism'. Giving some food for thought on intention, as well as impact for anyone thinking of considering a minimalistic life- and urges you to go beyond the trendy, white washed, sharp edged "minimalism" that might spring to mind.