Inside the Spiral is one of the most informative and well-written biographies I have ever had the pleasure of reading. To use the American vernacular, Suzaan Boettger can write like “hot-damn”! Many books I read are overly Americo-centric when they should be far less insular and globally inclusive. This characteristic is absolutely excusable for Inside the Spiral. Whether we like it or not, New York City was the arts “center of the universe” in the 1960s-1970s. Smithson was a key player and personality in this milieu, totally American, and other than his early exhibition of paintings in Italy, and much later the Earth commission in the Netherlands, was totally American based.
Boettger has done an exceptional job in researching and presenting us with the closest I believe possible to the “essential” Robert Smithson. I have always thought of biography as a sort of poor second cousin to autobiography. Boettger has...