Year in Review: 2012

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

This post is part of my Annual Favorites list I’ve been keeping for the past decade-plus.

Favorite Books (Goodreads profile)

  1. The German Genius, by Peter Watson (choice passages)

  2. Journey to the Abyss: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler, 1880-1918 (choicepassages)

  3. Life Sentences, by William H. Gass

  4. Nox, by Anne Carson

  5. A Hologram for the King, by Dave Eggers

  6. Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective

  7. Donald Judd

  8. Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, by D.T. Max

  9. The Long Goodbye, by Megan O’Rourke

  10. Gerhard Richter: Panorama

  11. Where Good Ideas Come From, by Steven Johnson

  12. The Lifespan of a Fact, by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal

  13. Chip Kidd: Book One: Work, 1986-2006

  14. The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court, by Jeffrey Toobin

  15. The Obamas, Jodi Kantor

  16. Some of My Lives, by Rosamond Bernier

  17. The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach

  18. Berlin Stories, by Robert Walser

  19. The Address Book, by Sophie Calle

  20. The Englishman who Posted Himself and Other Curious Objects, by John Tingey

  21. Art and Activism: Projects of John and Dominique de Menil

  22. The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes

  23. The Bridge on the Drina, by Ivo Andrić

  24. Shards, by Ismet Prcić

  25. The Promise: President Obama, Year One, by Jonathan Alter

  26. Elizabeth Costello, by J. M. Coetzee

  27. How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne, by Sarah Bakewell

  28. Death in Spring, by Mercè Rodoreda

  29. The Art of Intelligence, by Henry A. Crumpton

  30. Zoe Strauss: 10 Years

  31. Mortality, by Christopher Hitchens

  32. Karaoke Culture, by Dubravka Ugrešić

  33. The Fate of Greenland, by Philip W. Conkling

  34. Redheaded Peckerwood, by Christian Patterson

Happy to have read Karen McGrane’s Content Strategy for Mobile, Frank Chimero’s The Shape of Design, and Mike Monteiro’s Design Is a Job, but would keep them off the ranked list. Same with “Mark Owen”‘s No Easy Day.

Favorite Movies: 2012 (Letterboxd profile) 

  1. Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present

  2. Gerhard Richter Painting

  3. Moonrise Kingdom

  4. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

  5. Lincoln

  6. The Master

  7. The Queen of Versailles

  8. Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap

  9. Arbitrage

  10. Skyfall

  11. The Dark Knight Rises

Didn’t connect with: Headhunters, We Have a Pope, The Bourne Legacy.

Favorite Movies: Pre-2012

  1. A Separation

  2. Bill Cunningham New York

  3. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

  4. Certified Copy

  5. Margin Call

  6. Notorious

  7. A Dangerous Method

  8. Bridesmaids

  9. Young Adult

  10. Moneyball

  11. Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop

  12. J. Edgar

  13. Too Big to Fail

  14. Hopscotch

  15. Haywire

Music

I continue to be a huge fan of Rdio, which I pay $10 a month to be able to stream music on a desktop, iPad, or iPhone. (This includes, say, streaming the new Nas via my home’s wi-fi as I mow my suburban lawn.) There will always be rituals and a closeness to the music I miss from my CD days, but the advantages of Rdio — especially the ability to discover and immediately listen to new music, particularly hip-hop and classical — are significant. I don’t have a ranked list here, but my listening history is an open book.

Favorite Articles, Essays & Blog Posts (categorized, not ranked)

Affairs

Culture

Tech & Media

Essays

Misc. Reporting, Articles & Posts

Most-Used iPhone & iPad Apps

I start every morning with the NYTimes’ iPad app. I listen to podcasts, NPR, and music via Instacast, Public Radio Player, and Rdio. I journal using Day One, which is synched using Dropbox on all devices. The new 1Password 4 is a slick companion to the essential desktop app. I organize a lot of my work and personal life using Evernote, and keep up with tasks using Things. Other apps I use often: Reeder (every night, to catch up with the day’s articles), Goodreads, Fantastical, Tweetbot (iphone) and Twitter (iPad), Instagram, Facebook, Checkmark, Instapaper, Pinboard, Netflix, PBS for iPad, Simple, and iBooks (largely for work PDFs).

Final Notes

One unusual memory I have from 2012 is spending several weekday evenings in March walking through my neighborhood for an hour or so, listening to the day’s oral arguments for and against the healthcare act. (My greatest moment of exasperation was hearing Justice Scalia mock-ask whether he was seriously supposed to get through so many pages of material.) In April, I published Abstractions Arrive: Having Been There All the Time, an iPad-only e-book pairing an essay by William H. Gass with photographs by Michael Eastman; New York Times coverage was a cherry on top. May’s Confab conference was one of the best I’ve attended. In August, Tamara and I enjoyed a few highly cultural days in Miami. Surpassing all that, though — we’re expecting a baby in late May of 2013. I expect this should be my best year yet.

Saturday, December 29, 2012 →

A recent work from my father-in-law, whose sculptures can be purchased here.

"Stories at Home, Contributions Away"

Thursday, December 20, 2012

I wrote this post — about content trends in 2012 — for the TOKY blog.

Towards the Gass Interviews....

Sunday, December 9, 2012

tumblr_mesbfy7Nxm1qaqkgvo4_1280.png tumblr_mesbfy7Nxm1qaqkgvo2_500.png

I’m still at work editing The Ear’s Mouth Must Move: The Essential Interviews of William H. Gass. While I’d love for this to be published in a gloriously beautiful print version, I haven’t yet found an interested publisher. So it’s likely that, as with Abstractions Arrive, I will publish it myself as an iPad e-book using iBooks Author. Life is short, and I get restless waiting for traditional gatekeepers. We’ll see, though.

Here are a few screenshots of the in-process project, posted here mainly to show what’s possible in terms of tappable footnotes. More in time…

Craig Mod: "Subcompact Publishing"

Sunday, December 9, 2012

An important and insightful essay. I hope Mod writes a part two that looks a bit more at how exactly (to continue his metaphor) the small vehicles would get made. 

Related: Mod’s round-up of coverage of his essay. This Jim Ray piece from the Mule blog isn’t on there, but I think it’s worth reading.

Andrew Piper on E-Reading

Thursday, November 15, 2012

The subtitle of this Slate piece is way too glib, but the essay from Piper — a literature professor at McGill — is worth reading. Thoughtful and thought-provoking. It’s excerpted from Piper’s book, Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times.

Two Minutes On Video

Sunday, November 11, 2012

A sliver of self promotion, as I link to a brief video portrait of me made by Greg Kiger and his Once Films crew for a series of TOKY portraits. You can watch the segments on my friends and colleagues Jay, Geoff, and Katy on the TOKY blog.

An Airborne "Abstractions Arrive"

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Have to say I like Lee Rice Epstein’s photo of the iBook, which he captioned this way on Twitter: “Gass + Eastman via @Schenkenberg at cruising altitude.” Glad you’re liking it, Lee!

"Small Presses & Self-Publishers: Enemies? Or Half-Siblings?"

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Interesting piece by Sean Bishop in the VQR blog. (And yes, I agree with this sentiment, and not just for literary publishers, but other groups in the arts: “There is still a contingent of presses and publishers who bristle at the idea of ‘branding,’ 'marketing’ and the lot. Stop it…. They (you) need to get over that. I mean, seriously: you’re a publisher, not a religion.”)

Evan Osnos: "Boss Rail"

Sunday, October 21, 2012

An exceptional piece of reporting in The New Yorker.

Steven Holl on Museum Architecture

Sunday, October 21, 2012

From a profile of the architect in ArtNews’ 09/12 issue:

There’s the neutral white box. We see that, if you take that too far, it sucks the light out of art. Then there’s the super-expressionist building by the signature architect. But if you take that too far, it totally squashes the art, so you can’t have a great feeling for any art experience in a building like that. 

And we believe there is a third way, where the sense of space in which you’re going to experience the art is silent and poetic, but when you move from one gallery to another you’re engaged by the sequence. The building draws you through and doesn’t frustrate the movement. You sense that someone wrote a musical score — that this is the way you flow through spaces.

The Leaves Outside

Sunday, October 21, 2012

"In Silicon Valley, Perks Now Begin at Home"

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Interesting piece about perks geared toward whole-life realities and peace of mind.

Chris Mills on Kickstarter

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

The other day, I tweeted some frustration about the news that a world-famous film director had turned to Kickstarter to fund a new project. 

Yesterday, I learned that one of my favorite (but maybe not yet financially set-for-life) singer-songwriters, Chris Mills, had too. That’s more like it. I’ve been listening to Chris and seeing him live since my days living in Chicago in the late 90s. Great songs, really nice guy. Happy to back him. 

Monocle 24 Turns One

Monday, October 15, 2012

A short film about the radio station’s first year. Can’t say I’ve ever connected with the music they play, but I enjoy subscribing to a handful of podcasts, with The Stack, Section D, and The Entrepreneurs at the top of the list. 

"Drunk With Power"

Sunday, October 14, 2012

In the New York Times Magazine, an in-depth look at Jon Rimmerman’s $30-million-a-year wine-selling business. It’s a tale of “vivid stories” being told through “idiosyncratic e-mails.” Wine + content strategy = article made for me.

"The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent"

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Interesting historical perspective from Chrystia Freeland, writing in the Times:

The story of Venice’s rise and fall is told by the scholars Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, in their book “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty,” as an illustration of their thesis that what separates successful states from failed ones is whether their governing institutions are inclusive or extractive. Extractive states are controlled by ruling elites whose objective is to extract as much wealth as they can from the rest of society. Inclusive states give everyone access to economic opportunity; often, greater inclusiveness creates more prosperity, which creates an incentive for ever greater inclusiveness.

Marco's "The Magazine"

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Really looking forward to checking out this new iOS magazine from Marco Arment. From his announcement:

But just as the App Store has given software developers a great new option for accepting direct payment, Newsstand has given publishers an even bigger opportunity with subscription billing and prominent placement. Yet most publishers aren’t experimenting with radical changes. They can’t — to fund their huge staffs and production costs, they can’t afford to deviate from yesterday’s model. And most individual writers can’t, won’t, and shouldn’t make their own Newsstand apps.

There’s room for another category between individuals and major publishers, and that’s where The Magazine sits. It’s a multi-author, truly modern digital magazine that can appeal to an audience bigger than a niche but smaller than the readership of The New York Times. This is what a modern magazine can be, not a 300 MB stack of static page images laid out manually by 100 people.

Making a Book @ TOKY

Monday, October 8, 2012

Mark Katzman and Gautam Yadama. Via We Are TOKY.

Kessler Continued: On Rilke, His Lips & War

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Following up on my previous post about this extraordinary 900-page book — I finished it last night — here are a few more remarkable passages around which I drew my customary lines, stars, and exclamation marks:

Paris, February 1905:

With [Théodore] Duret to Mademoiselle Courbet, Courbet’s sister. Works of Courbet from all periods, especially interesting the Demoiselles de la Seine (around ‘66) and quite early pictures from Courbet’s childhood when he was fifteen to seventeen. In the Demoiselles, although later than Manet’s and Monet’s Déjeuner, no "plain air,“ no colored shadows on the dresses (perhaps a little blue in the face of one). In the quite early pictures astonishingly there is already Courbet’s unique, completely new application of color with which he started modern painting. So Courbet achieved this revolutionary new way of painting himself. His sister confirms that he received no instruction in painting in Ornans. Everything was genial intuition. With that a major problem in modern painting is solved.

Weimar, June 1906:

Opening of the Artists League Exhibition… The most interesting thing in the exhibition the painting by quite a young artist who is exhibiting for the first time: Max Beckmann, Naked Boy on the Beach. Like Signorelli and with qualities of Courbet and Cézanne, but nevertheless strongly original in the rhythm of its accents and in its tonality, which has a marvelous unity. I introduced myself to Beckmann and congratulated him.

Berlin, two days later:

Beckmann lunched with me in the Carlton. He spoke of the romance of life that he feels so keenly, the romance of the quite common, everyday life. Poe-Whistler… He is through and through a painter, which is seldom the case with Germans.

Berlin, December 1907:

In the evening the Rilkes came to dinner. She has something great and simple, willful, almost masculine. He appears to be the more feminine of the two. When he sits, while speaking, crunched up in his chair, his legs and arms crossed, you get the impression from his thin body and his soft voice, that sounds as if were the pleading, of an ugly young girl. He spoke of Prague, Russia, Paris, always in quite long, soft, somewhat precious sentences.

Berlin, February 1910:

Met the writer Sternheim at the Meier-Graefes’ in the evening. He has a rather elegant wife off of whose money he lives. He was introduced to me yesterday by Cassirer and immediately laid out a plan for a writer’s trust. Today he launched into obscure theories about tragedy. In a tragedy, the hero is not tragic, but the world around his hero, his milieu. That’s why Hamlet for example should actually be called "the world around Hamlet,” Lear, “the world around Lear,” etc… I asked Sternheim what then was the difference between the hero and a madman? Clearly he couldn’t answer for he employed all sorts of metaphysical expressions. Meier-Graefe asked me, while I was leaving, what I thought of Sternheim. I said, “Crazy.” As Meier-Graefe later told me, Sternheim said to him, when he went back to his guests, “How happy I am to have met Count K. Finally a man who understands me!”

Paris, June 1911:

After breakfast went to the exhibition of the Henry Bernstein collection: Cézannes, Renoirs, Bonnards, Vuillards, etc. There I met Rilke, who was completely taken by the Cézannes. He is now so totally obsessed with Cézanne that he is blind to everything else. Of the mountain in the House in Provence he says, “Since Moses no one has seen a mountain thus.”

Paris, July 1911:

My attention today was fixed almost the entire time on Rilke’s enormously fat lips (especially the lower lip) and on the smell of fruit, which dominates his rooms like in the apple room of an old country house, and circulates in the fresh, warm air from outside, old-fashioned and a little old-maid like. This mouth in this atmosphere, a mixture of the old maid and sensuality. 

Paris, May 1912:

In the evening the premiere of The Rite of Spring. A completely new choreography and music… A thoroughly new vision, something never before seen, enthralling, persuasive, is suddenly there, a new kind of wildness, both un-art and art at the same time. All forms laid waste and new ones emerging suddenly from the chaos.

Budapest, February 1915:

Sat alone in the Hungaria in the evening and during this first respite from the immediate presence of the war in seven months, I reflected on it. War is a situation to which you become accustomed, alas. You form bonds in war with an intensity and naiveté such as you only do in youth (Schoeler, Below). We are fearful in normal life and only under fire, confronting death, do we ask ourselves why, like the child when the curtain falls in the theater. This “why,” this somewhat naive problem of the fear of death, becomes gradually clear to you in a war. Gradually you grow numb to shrapnel and death. Paradoxically you live life then all the more intensely: friends, nature, all beauty. War has taught me to love and admire man infinitely more, whom it has revealed to me in all of this horror, baseness, greatness, and sweetness. I have seen him as an animal and as a god.

I’ll end there, though the diaries have another few hundred (compelling, sad) pages to go. Much more of the war. A life in Switzerland. The Epilogue, by the book’s editor and translator, Laird M. Easton, is perfect.

Obviously, Journey to the Abyss is a book I highly recommend. I wish Alex Ross’ terrific essay-review, which prompted me to buy it, was by now in front of the pay wall, but it’s not. I’ve just found another long piece about the book, this time from James Fenton in The Atlantic. It’s titled, appropriately, “Everywhere Man.” About to dig in.