By: Peggy Nelson

Attention gets a lot of attention these days. Mostly as currency, as in, how to make paying attention pay off. Switch one value proposition for another, dissolve everything in the universal $olvent. I’m going to […]

By: HILOBROW

HiLobrow.com is not opposed to the “guest blogger.” But it’s a waxy concept, sticky and vexing, isn’t it? Guests have been deployed by too many blogs for everything from vacation coverage to boredom-bandaging. Uncanny guests […]

By: Matthew Battles

In an impulsive experiment in cross-platform grandiosity, I’ve published a collection of three stories that originally appeared here at HILOBROW in an edition for the Kindle. Entitled The Sovereignties of Invention, it includes the title […]

By: Joshua Glenn

“That pig was telling me exactly what to do.”

By: Jason Grote

If there were to be a patron saint for misfit smart kids who do poorly in school, it would have to be MADELEINE L’ENGLE (1918-2007). A gifted writer from the age of 5, she was […]

By: Ingrid Schorr

According to DAWN POWELL (1897-1965), there was no trick to writing satire. You just describe people as they are, and add a motive. If you substitute vision for motive, then what you get is romance. […]

By: Matthew Battles

Over at the group philosophy blog Crooked Timber, John Holbo is conducting a discussion of sans serif type and its connection to twentieth-century Modernist art and design. The post’s lengthy comment thread captures a vital […]

By: Matthew Battles

I have written about Candyland in another connection. But until yesterday I hadn’t played it in ages. While we waited for the button on the turkey to pop, a session of Monopoly erupted. This is […]

By: Joshua Glenn

In 1963, BRUCE LEE (1940-73), an immigrant from Hong Kong who’d been studying philosophy at the University of Washington in Seattle, dropped out in order to teach the Chinese art of kung fu. Impatient with […]

By: Joe Alterio

Monster: “Vivacious, Bipolar, Rat-Terrier” — by David Huyck *** Robots and Monsters, a website that swaps custom-designed cartoons and pop art in exchange for a donation to charity, was field-tested in May 2007 by our […]

By: Joe Alterio

CHARLES M. SCHULZ (1922-2000) might seem an unlikely hero for HiLobrow.com, because his comic strip Peanuts and, particularly, the animated Peanuts TV specials, are so mainstream. A casual reader might even perceive Peanuts as a […]

By: HILOBROW

Readers! As you’ve noticed, we’ve recently redesigned HiLobrow.com. Many thanks to Rob Tourtelot, for all his work on our behalf. Why did we go from four to three boxes across on the homepage? Because we […]

By: Tor Aarestad

The apex of MARK LANEGAN’s (born 1964) visibility came more than fifteen years ago as the lead singer of the feral Seattle band Screaming Trees during the apogee of that city’s fame as the rebirthplace […]

By: Matthew Battles

HE STOOD THERE with the box torn open, with ribbons of packing tape and flaccid little packing-bags strewn about on the table. And in the midst of this mess, the prize — the shiny tool […]

By: HILOBROW

“It will pay all to remember the shape of this head and face.” *** According to Louis Allen Vaught, the purpose of Vaught’s Practical Character Reader (1902) is to acquaint readers “with the elements of […]