"Triple Canopy Launches Sarajevo Residency"
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Art in America reports on this very interesting project: On June 21, Brooklyn-based online magazine Triple Canopy will begin a two-week residency called Perfect Strangers, in Sarajevo. While in the Bosnian capital, where several of the country’s national cultural institutions were closed earlier this year due to inadequate government support, Triple Canopy will initiate a program of workshops, site-specific visual and textual works, lectures, and publishing. Artworks and other project components will examine Bosnia and Herzegovina’s fraught history and national identity.
Len Gutkin on "J R"
Saturday, June 9, 2012
I love seeing meaty new pieces on William Gaddis’ J R, which has just been released by Dalkey and remains one of the best novels I’ve ever read. Describing the book in one paragraph is tough, but Gutkin, [writing for Bookforum](https://www.bookforum.com/culture/-9277), does pretty well: J R follows the rise and fall of JR Vansant, an eleven-year-old sixth-grader in Long Island who builds a massive financial operation by telephone. Gaddis assembles an enormous cast of characters around JR, all of whose lives come to intersect in some way with the sixth-grader’s paper empire.
Sugimoto on Light
Friday, June 8, 2012
"> <figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " style="max-width:592px;"> <div style="padding-bottom:66.554054260254%;" class=" image-block-wrapper has-aspect-ratio "> <img src="http://sschenkenberg.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/2a3b7-image-asset.jpeg" alt="" /><img class="thumb-image" alt="" /> </div> </figure> </div> From T magazine's brief piece on the great photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto, who has a new collaboration with Hermès: “Light is my medium to be investigated,” says the Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto, who spent years chasing bands of prismatic color around his studio in Tokyo and capturing them, with what was for him rapid-fire succession, using a Polaroid camera.
The Wire: An Oral History
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Odd that it’s in Maxim, but I would have read it anywhere.
"The World’s First and Only Completely Honest Résumé of a Graphic Designer"
Monday, June 4, 2012
A gem by Marco Kaye at McSweeney’s: In my portfolio, you will see that unproduced package redesign for Squirtburst, inspired by kinetic typography popular in the West Coast concert posters of the 1960’s. In this designer’s opinion, it creates a visual appeal unprecedented in the beverage aisle. The client called it “uninspired” and said it would make kids “vomit if they stared at it for too long.” Next time you’re at the grocery store, please, pick up any Squirtburst drink and compare our taste levels.
David Grann: "The Yankee Comandante"
Sunday, June 3, 2012
An incredibly absorbing 26-page article by David Grann about William Alexander Morgan and the Cuban Revolution. (This follows “A Murder Foretold,” Grann’s equally extraordinary piece for The New Yorker that ran last year at this time.)
Eastman & Gass on Screen
Thursday, May 31, 2012
"> <figure class=" sqs-block-image-figure intrinsic " style="max-width:971px;"> <div style="padding-bottom:75.386199951172%;" class=" image-block-wrapper has-aspect-ratio "> <img src="http://sschenkenberg.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/fc34a-image-asset.png" alt="" /><img class="thumb-image" alt="" /> </div> </figure> </div> Tonight I spent some lovely time interviewing William H. Gass and Michael Eastman about our Abstractions Arrive project. I’ll be integrating some of the best video clips into the e-book in the coming week. (Anyone who already purchased it will see an updated version on their iPad when it happens.
Craig Mod: "Hack the Cover"
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
As ever, Mod offers smart, forward-looking thoughts on books and publishing. His central question: [I]f so much of what book cover design has evolved into is largely a brick-and-mortar marketing tool, then what place does a ‘cover’ hold in digital books? Especially after you purchase it? But, more tellingly, even before you purchase it? If you’re interested in the questions, you’ll be interested in the entire essay. Recommended.
Tamara Looking at Art
Saturday, May 26, 2012
clear"> <div class="slide"> <div class="margin-wrapper"> <a class="image-slide-anchor content-fill"> <img src="http://sschenkenberg.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/400be-tumblr_m4nd4tphxt1qaqkgvo1_1280.jpg" alt="Art Institute of Chicago" /><img class="thumb-image" alt="Art Institute of Chicago" /> </a> </div> </div> <div class="slide"> <div class="margin-wrapper"> <a class="image-slide-anchor content-fill"> <img src="http://sschenkenberg.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/1fc31-tumblr_m4nd4tphxt1qaqkgvo2_r1_1280.jpg" alt="de Young Museum" /><img class="thumb-image" alt="de Young Museum" /> </a> </div> </div> <div class="slide"> <div class="margin-wrapper"> <a class="image-slide-anchor content-fill"> <img src="http://sschenkenberg.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/01520-tumblr_m4nd4tphxt1qaqkgvo3_1280.jpg" alt="Pulitzer Arts Foundation" /><img class="thumb-image" alt="Pulitzer Arts Foundation" /> </a> </div> </div> <div class="slide"> <div class="margin-wrapper"> <a class="image-slide-anchor content-fill"> <img src="http://sschenkenberg.
"Not His Riches, But Ours"
Sunday, May 13, 2012
A member of the Wallace-L listserv posted this Pascal quote this morning, commenting (insightfully) on how it brings to mind many statements DFW made about reading and indeed love: When a natural discourse paints a passion or an effect, one feels within oneself the truth of what one reads, which was there before, although one did not know it. Hence one is inclined to love him who makes us feel it, for he has not shown us his own riches, but ours.
"A Different Puff Than Yours"
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Barack Obama, writing in his early twenties with confidence and style to girlfriend Genevieve Cook, as published in Vanity Fair: Moments trip gently along over here. Snow caps the bushes in unexpected ways, birds shoot and spin like balls of sound. My feet hum over the dry walks. A storm smoothes the sky, impounding the city lights, returning to us a dull yellow glow. I run every other day at the small indoor track [at Columbia] which slants slightly upward like a plate; I stretch long and slow, twist and shake, the fatigue, the inertia finding home in different parts of the body.
"Dilemma Protests"
Thursday, May 10, 2012
From “Protesters in Moscow Try New Tactics to Avoid Arrests,” in the NYT: The evolving tactics in Moscow are not novel. In a primer on nonviolent protest, “Sharp’s Dictionary of Power and Struggle,” Gene Sharp, an American intellectual, described a “dilemma protest” as a performance of an action so inchoate and unorthodox that police are trapped. If they let it happen, they are encouraging it, but if they arrest people they risk looking either silly or arbitrary and unjust, which is the point….
Gary Wills: "The Myth About Marriage"
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
The Catholic writer, in a post at the New York Review of Books blog: Those who do not want to let gay partners have the sacredness of sacramental marriage are relying on a Scholastic fiction of the thirteenth century to play with people’s lives, as the church has done ever since the time of Aquinas. The myth of the sacrament should not let people deprive gays of the right to natural marriage, whether blessed by Yahweh or not.
"Postscript: Adam Yauch"
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Terrific piece by Sasha Frere-Jones at The New Yorker’s website. Yauch’s transition from celebrated youthful knucklehead to enlightened (and hugely productive) grown-up was admirable. I can still remember listening to “Licensed to Ill” in 1987 for the first time, on a tape my 8th-grade classmate Chris made me. My parents were away at the time, and I was staying at my grandparents’ apartment here in St. Louis. I listened to the tape on headphones before falling asleep on the sofa in their den.
Michael Silverblatt Interviews William H. Gass
Friday, April 20, 2012
The Bookworm host has previously referred to Gass as “our greatest living writer of prose in America.” Here, he calls him "one of my true living heroes.” Speaking of admiration, I love this interview bit from Gass about Henry James: James’ world is not to be found anywhere in the world. It’s too wonderful for that.
Paul Ford on Facebook and Instagram
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
At NYMag.com: First, to understand this deal it’s important to understand Facebook. Unfortunately everything about Facebook defies logic. In terms of user experience (insider jargon: “UX”), Facebook is like an NYPD police van crashing into an IKEA, forever — a chaotic mess of products designed to burrow into every facet of your life.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R1Eb92HfbQ?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=https://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]
Great new addition to YouTube: William Gass reads from The Tunnel and discusses literature and philosophy. Recorded at The Village Voice Bookshop in Paris, February 6, 2007 (by Villagevoice75).
Skepticism in Montaigne's Day
Sunday, April 8, 2012
A surprising and interesting passage from Sarah Bakewell’s How To Live: Or a Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, which I’m reading now: There was only one exception to [Montaigne’s] “question everything” rule: he was careful to state that he considered his religious faith beyond doubt. He adhered to the received dogma of the Catholic Church, and that was that. This can come as a surprise to modern readers.
Craig Mod on Building an App (and a Book)
Thursday, March 29, 2012
As thoughtful and personal as his previous pieces.