01.16.2013
Chess Match (35)
“I sought devices to enable me mechanically to abide my waking hours…. By sheer visualization under my eyelids I constructed chess-boards and played both sides of long games through to checkmate. But when I had become expert at this visualized game of memory the exercise palled on me. Exercise it was, for there could be no real contest when the same player played both sides. I tried, and tried vainly, to split my personality into two personalities and to pit one against the other. But ever I remained the one player, with no planned ruse or strategy on one side that the other side did not immediately apprehend.” — Jack London, The Star Rover (1915)
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Thirty-fifth in an occasional series.
Joshua Glenn is a Boston-based writer, publisher, and cultural semiologist-for-hire.
He is coauthor and/or co-editor of TAKING THINGS SERIOUSLY, THE IDLER'S GLOSSARY, THE WAGE SLAVE'S GLOSSARY, and — in 2012 — the object-oriented story collection SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS, and the kids' field guide to life UNBORED. He is editor of HILOBROW and publisher of the science fiction imprint HILOBOOKS; and he is co-founder of SEMIONAUT and the SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS experiment.
In the '00s, Glenn was an editor, columnist, and blogger (BRAINIAC) for the Boston Globe's IDEAS section, and he was new media producer for the paper's LIVING/ARTS section. In the '90s, he published the seminal high-lowbrow zine/journal HERMENAUT; was an editor at UTNE READER; and was co-producer of the pioneering DIY how-to website and social network TRIPOD.
Glenn produced and co-designed the iPhone app KER-PUNCH. He manages a secretive online community known as THE HERMENAUTIC CIRCLE. He does business as KING MIXER, LLC.
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