Kjartansson in Central Park
Watching Ragnar Kjartansson’s “S.S. Hangover,” part of “Drifting in Daylight: Art in Central Park” from Creative Time.
Year in Review: 2014
Back before Tamara and I had our son in the summer of 2013, I used to keep regular lists of my “Annual Favorites” of the year — the best books, movies, TV shows, podcasts, exhibitions and so on that I’d consumed that year.
To say my rate of cultural digestion changed with fatherhood would be an understatement; that said, I still have an interest in logging the great stuff (if only for myself). So while I skipped 2013 entirely, here’s a go at some highlights from 2014:
TheGassInterviews.org
In May, I published a project I’d been working on for some time: The Ear’s Mouth Must Move: Essential Interviews with William H. Gass. I chose to publish this on Medium at no cost to the reader, and included a range of footnotes, photos and videos. Thanks to all the contributors who made this possible.
Books
On Immunity: An Inoculation, Eula Biss
My Struggle, Book One: Karl Ove Knausgård
Little Failure, Gary Shteyngart
Notes from No Man’s Land: American Essays, Eula Biss
What We See When We Read, Peter Mendelsund
Inferno (The Divine Comedy, #1), Dante Alighieri (Mary Jo Bang, Translator)
Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst, Adam Phillips
Movies
Like Someone In Love
Inside Llewyn Davis
Her
The Grand Budapest Hotel
La Notte
Jane Eyre (2011)
A Most Wanted Man
Gone Girl
Take This Waltz
Enough Said
The One I Love
Your Sister’s Sister
Podcasts
Design Matters
Slate Culture Gabfest
Serial
The Monocle Weekly
Longform
In Our Time With Melvyn Bragg
The Entrepreneurs (Monocle)
The Stack (Monocle)
The Political Scene (The New Yorker)
New Yorker: Out Loud
Articles & Essays
If you follow me on Twitter, you have likely already seen links to the best articles and essays I read in 2014. I use it mainly as a way to praise and recommend.
Music
I listen to Rdio every day of the week — on my Mac, iPad and iPhone. A great deal of what I stream is classical, since I listen while I work. And on that front I do a poor job of logging what I like, as I hop quickly from label to composer, from soloist to trio. So for this post I’ll skip classical (and hip-hop, where I also jump around) and point simply to a handful of indie albums I enjoyed this year:
Beck, Morning Phase
Low, The Invisible Way
Angel Olsen, Burn Your Fires For No Witness
Sun Kil Moon, Benji
Tweedy, Sukierae
Life
Leo turning 1, walking, saying words
A relative I love being brave against illness
Tamara earning her doctorate in art history
Serving as Best Man as Mike and Sarah married
Tamara’s birthday dinner at Stone Soup Cottage
Attending a 90th birthday reading by William Gass
Launched: TheGassInterviews.org
readinggass:
Readers: I’m very pleased to announce the launch of TheGassInterviews.org.
Free to all and readable on any device, the microsite collects a dozen essential interviews that Gass gave between the late 1970s and 2011. It’s titled “The Ear’s Mouth Must Move,” a phrase of Gass’ own. The pieces feature text, related historical photography, video, and a handful of marginal notes and links that might be of interest to readers.
“In Prison, Preparing for Home” — In my first post on Medium, I write briefly about attending a performance of Prison Performing Arts, whose Board I’m on.
"In Prison, Preparing for Home"
In my first post on Medium, I write briefly about attending a performance of Prison Performing Arts, whose Board I’m on.
"On Becoming a Father"
A lovely short essay by Alexis C. Madrigal.
Life News: I'm Joining Forest Park Forever
This is an exciting week for me: I’m joining the staff of Forest Park Forever as the organization’s Strategic Communications Director.
For those unfamiliar with St. Louis, Forest Park is my hometown’s larger-than-Central-Park gem that’s home to the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Saint Louis Zoo, the Missouri History Museum, and several other terrific organizations; there’s also tennis, golf, running paths, paddle boats, fishing, you name it. FPF is the private nonprofit, created in 1986, whose mission is to “restore, maintain and sustain Forest Park as one of America’s great urban public parks, for the enjoyment of all now and forever.” (If you’d like a glimpse at the remarkable work FPF has done over the past few decades, here are some before-and-after photos published in the RFT last month.)
The Park’s a special place for me — it’s where, as a kid, I played in junior tennis tournaments and sledded down Art Hill. And it’s where, as an adult, I met my wife … and even where I married her.
It’s been such a pleasure to work at TOKY these past few years — the firm is packed with kind, talented people creating smart, beautiful work. I’ll miss the team and the clients, and wish them all well.
Looking ahead, I’m incredibly excited about this new opportunity at Forest Park Forever. Everyone I’ve met so far has been impressive, upbeat, and passionate about doing great work for the good of this incomparable place. Can’t wait to get started on Tuesday.
Seamus Heaney: 1939 – 2013
Sad news: The great Irish poet Seamus Heaney has died at age 74.
When I was a freshman in college in the early 1990s, I was fortunate enough to take an upper-level English class with Dr. Ed Duffy, who dedicated a few months of the semester just to Heaney’s work. It was a remarkable immersion, and I felt incredibly engaged and grown-up.
We serially read Heaney’s Station Island, a quest for both the book’s narrator and the course’s students. And at some point we landed on perhaps Heaney’s most well-known poem, “Digging,” which ends this way:
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
That occupational charge — This is my purpose — was powerful for this future English major, as I suspect it’s been for many others.
Since then I’ve kept up with Heaney, reading profiles of him, lectures from him, and adding a few of his books to my shelves. Unfortunately, it seems the slim Station Island paperback is no longer with me, though a few fatter collections are.
As I paged back through these this morning, more than a few striking lines still earn the squiggles and exclamation marks with which I marked them the first time through: “the black glacier / of each funeral / pushed away” (“Funeral Rites”); “Love, I shall perfect for you the child / Who diligently potters in my brain” (“Poem”); “The future was a verb in hibernation” (“Villanelle for an Anniversary”); “the whispering grass / Ran its fingers through our guessing silence” (“A Dream of Jealousy”).
To close, I’ll quote from a few longer passages I’d marked, still so vividly earthy and right. From “Death of a Naturalist”:
Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran.
And the last lines from “Personal Helicon”:
Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
The Unauthorized Marissa Mayer Biography
22,000 words. A very interesting read.
Ramón Lobo Interviews David Remnick
From the lengthy Q&A:
Coming back to the first topic of our conversation, how can we convince people that Internet is not enough to be informed?
I don’t agree with you. I think the Internet is just a tool, a means of distribution. And it’s a radically more efficient means of distribution than print.
But some people may have the impression they can know everything what is happening only with a click.
And they can. If they buy things on the Internet. In other words, The New York Times can’t be for free and I have no problem with people reading The New Yorker online. I’m 54 years old, you’re 58 and we may prefer it printed for all the reasons that all the people prefer things that they are used to. I prefer certain kinds of drinks, I prefer Bob Dylan to the latest hip hop sensation, but that’s because I’m 54, that’s nothing, that’s just an ordinary normal human being.
What I want to say is that you can be beautifully informed with nothing but a laptop, but you need a laptop and a credit card. Because it can’t be for free.
Can’t recall a single run-in with David Remnick — reading a piece of his, or an interview like this — where I didn’t come away incredibly impressed.
My Father-in-Law, Profiled
“Artist’s wire trees free the mind, shape the future,” written by Doug Moore and published in this past Sunday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch. With some nice photos to boot.
To view (and buy?) his work, visit H-Omer.com.
Gass at 89
Q&A: GE Managing Editor Tomas Kellner
From this interesting interview at The Content Strategist:
GE is one of the brands out there that’s done content really well. Do you think that’s because the topics are inherently interesting, or is it an internal attitude that allows the content to shine? What do you think?
What GE does is interesting – that helps. But the culture inside the company is becoming hugely focused on storytelling. We have a CMO and CCO who have pushed us to focus on creating strong content and finding interesting ways to tell our story. Another colleague and I have been traveling around the company and holding writing workshops for our communicators. We teach storytelling – how do you put together an interesting narrative, like something you would read in a newspaper or a magazine. Now you have a chance to write the story yourself, so do it right.
What’s success look like?
The ultimate goal is to retire the press release. It’s a great holder for facts, but you’d never want to read one. We want to tell stories.
As I’ve mentioned in client presentations and conversations more than a few times, GE’s been doing a great job with storytelling in recent years (GE Reports, GE on Tumblr, Txchnologist, and more).
"The stage directions were lucid... and the color of the binder: Good choice."
Woody Allen’s Films As Infographics.”
"Content Over Keywords" (or, SSO over SEO)
I wrote this post for the TOKY blog.
The TOKY Friday Review
Today I published the second in a new series on the TOKY Blog — notable highlights from what the firm’s been reading, watching, and talking about.
"The Social Media Editor is Dead"
At BuzzFeed, Rob Fishman on the widening out of this once-distinct role.
Bezos and the Six-Page Meeting Narrative
A Fortune profile on Jeff Bezos reveals how Amazon’s senior-executive team presents, consumes, and prepares to discuss plans and information:
Meetings of his “S-team” of senior executives begin with participants quietly absorbing the written word. Specifically, before any discussion begins, members of the team — including Bezos — consume six-page printed memos in total silence for as long as 30 minutes. (Yes, the e-ink purveyor prefers paper. Ironic, no?) They scribble notes in the margins while the authors of the memos wait for Bezos and his minions to finish reading.
Amazon (AMZN) executives call these documents “narratives,” and even Bezos realizes that for the uninitiated — and fans of the PowerPoint presentation — the process is a bit odd. “For new employees, it’s a strange initial experience,” he tells Fortune. “They’re just not accustomed to sitting silently in a room and doing study hall with a bunch of executives.” Bezos says the act of communal reading guarantees the group’s undivided attention. Writing a memo is an even more important skill to master. “Full sentences are harder to write,” he says. “They have verbs. The paragraphs have topic sentences. There is no way to write a six-page, narratively structured memo and not have clear thinking.”
Interesting. And people love to bash email, but working to refine and articulate a specific point or goal in writing (including in Basecamp) is valuable for everyone.
On Quora, a former Amazon staffer gives his (unverifiable) explanation for how these narratives are structured:
Like a dissertation defense:
1) the context or question.
2) approaches to answer the question - by whom, by which method, and their conclusions
3) how is your attempt at answering the question different or the same from previous approaches
4) now what? - that is, what’s in it for the customer, the company, and how does the answer to the question enable innovation on behalf of the customer?
On Launching The TOKY Research Library
A new post I wrote on the TOKY Blog.
Robert Silvers: Toward a "New Form of Criticism"
At New York Magazine, the great journalist Mark Danner talks at length with The New York Review of Books’ Robert Silvers. Here’s one bit about online publishing and social media, which strikes me not as fuddy-duddy, but very considered:
To tweet or not to tweet. And not to tweet is to be left behind.
And that raises a question: What is this? What are the kinds of prose, and the kinds of thinking, that result from the imposition of the tweet form and other such brief reactions to extremely complex realities? My feeling is that there are millions and millions if not billions of words in tweets and blogs, and that they are not getting and will not get the critical attention that prose anywhere should have unless we find a new form of criticism.If a novel is published, we have a novel review. If poetry is produced, if a play or a movie or a TV show is produced, there are the forms of criticism we know. With the new social media, with much of the content of the Internet, there are very few if any critical forms that are appropriate. They are thought to be somewhere partially in a private world. Facebook is a medium in which privacy is, or at least is thought to be, in some way crucial. The premise, at least, is that of belonging to a family, a circle of friends. And there’s another premise, that any voice should have its moment. And so there seems a resistance to intrusive criticism.
But this means that billions of words go without the faintest sign of assessment. And yet, if one cares about language, if one cares about the sensibility in which language is expressed, and if one cares about the values that underlie our use of language, such as affection, privacy, honesty, cogency, clarity—then these media, it would seem to me, should qualify as the subject of criticism. We seem at the edge of a vast, expanding ocean of words, an ocean growing without any critical perspective whatever being brought to bear on it. To me, as an editor, that seems an enormous absence.