"How Music Works," by David Byrne The critic Clive James once began a review of a Leonid Brezhnev biography by observing that it was so dull that "if it were read in the open air, birds would fall stunned from the sky." David Byrne's new book, "How Music Works," is not so bad as that. But I'm fairly certain its tedium stunned some of the cluster flies on my office windows. They fell to the floor, wriggling, wondering what caused their speck-size concussions. "How Music Works" is a roll of mental wallpaper, a textbook for a survey course you didn't mean to sign up for. It drifts between music history, sonic anthropology, mild biographical asides, broad pop theory and grandfatherly financial and artistic advice. It's all the things Mr. Byrne's twitchy and alienated music with Talking Heads never was: genial, well-meaning, as forgettable as a real estate agent's handshake. It ain't no party, this book. It definitely ain't no disco. Your money would be better spent on Mr. Byrne's intermittently lovely new album,"Love This Giant," made with Annie Clark (who performs as St. Vincent), out just this week. Readers under 40 who've barely heard of Mr. Byrne should gather instead around the euphoric art-funk bonfire that is "Stop Making Sense," Jonathan Demme's 1984 Talking Heads concert film. Read Pauline Kael's review first. She got at what made this band, for a cultural moment, click: its simmering sense of "repressed hysteria." She called Mr. Byrne "a handsome, freaky golem." Mr. Byrne is still handsome, but his freakishness has mostly fled him. This is especially true on the page, where he is adrift. His prose seems to have been translated from the Chinese. A few sentences from "How Music Works" can stand in for many. Describing the enticements that led him to rock music as an adolescent, he intones: "There was also the remote possibility that I would briefly be the hero and reap some social and personal rewards in other areas beyond mere communication, though I doubt I would have admitted that to myself." Social and personal awards in other areas beyond mere communication? Is there a clumsier euphemism for randy girls, free drugs and instant popularity? About a 2008 and 2009 solo tour for an album called "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today" he declares, "The shows were super well received; we all had a wonderful time performing." The reader who sticks with "How Music Works" will occasionally be rewarded with a shrewd bit of insight or gossip. These nuggets come around about as often as service plazas do on the interstate, about every 35 miles or so. It's the time to fill up on Diet Coke and pretzels. The book contains no details about the famously rancorous dissolution of Talking Heads, who formally broke up in 1991. The band's bassist, Tina Weymouth, has been quoted as calling Mr. Byrne "a man incapable of returning friendship." But there are memorable details nonetheless. The author describes how the early Talking Heads, in their years playing at CBGB in the late 1970s, were defined by what they omitted. "No rock moves or poses, no pomp or drama, no rock hair, no rock lights (our instructions to club lighting people were "Turn them all on at the beginning and turn them off at the end"), no rehearsed stage patter," he writes. Definitely no noodling guitar solos. "It was mathematics," Mr. Byrne writes. When you subtract all the unwanted stuff from something, art or music, what do you have left? He explains how the song "Psycho Killer" began as an acoustic ballad. He discourses on how he learned to move onstage. "A nerdy white guy trying to be smooth and black is a terrible thing to behold," he says. I let my body discover, little by little, its own grammar of movement - often jerky, spastic, and strangely formal. He describes how smartphones and YouTube have killed out of town tryouts for new material. "Barely minutes after shows were over, someone would announce that some of the numbers were appearing online," he writes. I began to announce at the beginning of shows that photography was welcome, but I suggested to please only post shots and videos where we look good. Mr. Byrne mostly straddles fences in "How Music Works." But he comes down hard on Apple's iTunes for taking what he considers too large a percentage of its online sales. He suggests it might be time for recording artists to strike. "I smell," he says, "another revolution in the works." He complains that streaming services like Pandora and Spotify aren't sharing profits with artists. He includes a big-hearted if clumsy plea for increased arts support, especially musical programs for kids. This plea takes him down some unfortunate paths. "In my opinion," he writes, "it's more important that someone learn to make music, draw, photograph, write, or create in any form, regardless of the quality, than it is for them to understand and appreciate Picasso, Warhol, or Bill Shakespeare - to say nothing of opera as it is today." Creativity is awesome. Creativity is not an education. Mr. Byrne is honest about how some of the world music he has made since leaving Talking Heads has been received. "Only playing new, unfamiliar stuff can alienate an audience - I know, I've done it," he says. I could tell I was being branded as the rocker who had abandoned the cause. Give Mr. Byrne credit for consistently going his own way. But "How Music Works" is a road to nowhere.