HILOBROW’s 2016

By: HILOBROW
January 3, 2017

Here are some highlights from HILOBROW’s 2016. We’re very grateful to our contributors!

BEST OF HILOBROW: 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 1Q2022 | 2Q2022 | 3Q2022 | 4Q2022 SNEAK PEEK.

GROK MY ENTHUSIASM

Each week during 2016, we published a new installment — written by HILOBROW friends and regular contributors — in the GROK MY ENTHUSIASM series. Here’s the complete 2016 GROK lineup.

Josh Glenn edited GROK MY ENTHUSIASM. He is very grateful to the series’ contributors.

QUIRK YOUR ENTHUSIASM

In August, we published our latest summer ENTHUSIASM series. QUIRK YOUR ENTHUSIASM featured 25 posts, by 25 contributors, on the topic of our favorite New Wave songs from c. 1977–1982. Here’s the QUIRK lineup.

Mark Kingwell on Soft Cell’s TAINTED LOVE | Joanne McNeil on Gary Numan’s METAL | Devin McKinney on Suicide’s FRANKIE TEARDROP | Douglas Wolk on Family Fodder’s SAVOIR FAIRE | Elina Shatkin on Marianne Faithfull’s BROKEN ENGLISH | Steph Burt on Altered Images’ HAPPY BIRTHDAY | Greg Rowland on Jilted John’s JILTED JOHN | Gordon Dahlquist on XTC’s RESPECTABLE STREET | Adrienne Crew on D-Day’s TOO YOUNG TO DATE | Jonathan Lethem on The Blue Nile’s I LOVE THIS LIFE | Josh Glenn on Tim Curry’s I DO THE ROCK | Molly Wright Steenson on Missing Persons’ WORDS

Anthony Miller on The Nails’ 88 LINES ABOUT 44 WOMEN | Luc Sante on The Normal’s WARM LEATHERETTE | Mimi Lipson on Dolly Mixture’s HOW COME YOU’RE SUCH A HIT WITH THE BOYS, JANE? | Tim Carmody on Talking Heads’ LIFE DURING WARTIME | Ingrid Schorr on Ian Dury’s CLEVOR TREVER | Adam McGovern on Lene Lovich’s LUCKY NUMBER | Deb Chachra on Rough Trade’s HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL | Tor Aarestad on Oingo Boingo’s LITTLE GIRLS | David Smay on The B-52’s’ DANCE THIS MESS AROUND | Jessamyn West on Blondie’s HANGING ON THE TELEPHONE | Drew Daniel on The Human League’s MARIANNE | Erik Davis on Tuxedomoon’s TIME TO LOSE | Dan Fox on Thomas Dolby’s EUROPA & THE PIRATE TWINS

Josh Glenn edited QUIRK YOUR ENTHUSIAM. He is very grateful to the series’ contributors.

THIS:

Each week, during 2016, Adam McGovern contributed a new installment in his THIS: series. Here’s the THIS: lineup.

More THIS: to come in 2017!

PLANET OF PERIL

HILOBROW friend and contributor Lynn Peril published eleven installments in a new series, PLANET OF PERIL, which is devoted to Lynn’s favorite obscure historical fads and figures. Here’s the 2016 PLANET OF PERIL lineup.

More PLANET OF PERIL to come in 2017!

THE KALEVALA

During 2016, we published THE KALEVALA — a year-long cycle of poems, by HILOBROW friend and contributor James Parker — which respectfully bastardize portions of a Finnish sequence of folkloric songs, runes, and charms.

Here’s the complete KALEVALA lineup!

STUFFED

STUFFED is a series of posts by Tom Nealon, author of Food Fights and Culture Wars: A Secret History of Taste (British Library Publishing, October 2016), which is forthcoming in the US, in March — from Overlook. Here’s 2016’s STUFFED lineup.

More STUFFED to come in 2017!

THE BOURNE VARIATIONS

We published a year-long cycle of poems, by HILOBROW friend and contributor James Parker, inspired by scenes from the Jason Bourne movie franchise. Thrilling, witty, mythomaniacal, THE BOURNE VARIATIONS are a triumph of film criticism and fanfic.

Here’s the complete BOURNE VARIATIONS lineup!

“The Goddess of Memory Speaks to Jason Bourne” | THE BOURNE IDENTITY: “The Duellists”. THE BOURNE SUPREMACY: “Congratulations, You Have Just Met Jason Bourne” | “The Graduates” | “The Murder of Agent Daniel Zorn, in Berlin, by CIA Section Chief Ward Abbott”. THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM: “Big Daddy” | “The Assassination of the Journalist Simon Ross” | “Full Priority Situation”. THE BOURNE LEGACY: “Alaska, Alone” | “Aaron Cross to the Wolf” | “Fairy Story”. JASON BOURNE: “Watching the Jason Bourne Trailer” | “The Bourne Travesty”.

HERMENAUTIC TAROT

During 1Q2016, we concluded our HERMENAUTIC TAROT series, a comic-book rorschach creative writing experiment in symbol-making and oracular speechifying that kicked off in 2015. Here’s the 1Q2016 HERMENAUTIC TAROT lineup.

John Hilgart and Josh Glenn edited the HERMENAUTIC TAROT series. They are very grateful to all of the series’ contributors.

ON BEYOND ZARATHUSTRA

We published a 15-part serialization of a section of Nietzsche’s lost graphic novel, On Beyond Zarathustra. According to John Holbo, Nietzche’s text prompts us to ask, about the later prose-poem Thus Spake Zarathustra: Do the townspeople ignore Zarathustra because his proposed transvaluation of values is too radical? Or is it because, like Dr. Seuss’s Gerald McGrew or Morris McGurk, he tends to rattle on and spiral off?

HILOBROW was the first to publish these never-before-seen extracts. We also published Holbo’s exclusive-to-HILOBROW essay, “On Beyond Zarathustra: A Double-Parody For All And None.”

SÉRIE NOIRE

During 2016, we published an eight-part series by HILOBROW friend and contributor Alix Lambert. SÉRIE NOIRE revisits the crime movies that most influenced Alix when she was a child and young adult. Here’s the complete SÉRIE NOIRE lineup.

JOSH’S SERIES

During 2016, we published a few hundred installments in the following original series by HILOBROW editor Josh Glenn.

BEST ADVENTURES: The following 16 installments — each of which first appeared as 10 separate posts — in Josh’s ongoing effort to revisit his favorite 10 adventures from each year of the 20th century. Best YYA Lit 1966 | 1906 | 1911 | 1916 | 1921 | 1926 | 1931 | 1936 | 1941 | 1946 | 1951 | 1956 | 1961 | 1971 | 1976 | 1981.

RADIUM AGE 100. We wrapped up this long-running series, via which Josh identified the best 100 science fiction novels published during the genre’s Radium Age (1904–33). THANKS! to Annalee Newitz at Ars Technica for writing a very nice story, in May, about the RADIUM AGE 100 series. We’re also grateful to sci-fi author Cory Doctorow, who in June wrote a Boing Boing item about the RADIUM AGE 100 series.

GOLDEN-AGE SCI-FI 75. Josh identified the best 75 science fiction novels published during the genre’s Golden Age (1934–63). THANKS! to Boing Boing, for directing lots of sci-fi fans to the complete Golden Age sci-fi list.

JOSHENILIA. Embarrassing documents, doodles, and photographs from Josh’s crazy, mixed-up files.

More BEST ADVENTURES installments to come in 2017!

MORE ORIGINAL WRITING

LIMERICKANIA. We published four installments in Douglas Wolk’s amazing, though very sporadic, series in which he writes limericks inspired by comic-book details from the 4CP archive.

We published a few final-ish items in our long-running (1,400 installments!) HILO HEROES series: Anthony Miller on STANLEY BOOTH and EDWARD ABBEY, and Devin McKinney on ALISON STEELE. Plus: Josh Glenn’s seventh and final RONDEL FOR HILO HEROES, an acrostic poem celebrating HILO HEROES.

CURATED SERIES

HILOBROW is on a mission to gather in far-flung writing and artwork by our friends — we want to collect it all in one place. During 2016, we published the following curated series. We’re very grateful to all our friends who contributed.

ALL MY STARS. Each week, we reprinted Joanne McNeil’s ALL MY STARS newsletter — which tracks and reacts to her latest media and exhibition input. It was an extraordinary run — and she’ll keep publishing the newsletter in 2017. Subscribe here.

AMERICA OBSCURA. The legendary Andrew Hultkrans allowed us unparalleled access to his archives. We republished several pieces of his brilliant journalism — extracted from the archives of print and online publications.

KEEPERS. HiLobrow friend and contributor Steph Burt is a literary critic, poet and a professor, who teaches at Harvard University. In July, we published 10 of Steph’s poem’s about everyday objects and pop-cultural phenomena.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM. HiLobrow friend and contributor Colin Dickey is author of Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places, among other terrific books. In August, we reprinted six essays he has published, here and there, over the years, about… animals!

MONSTOBER. HiLobrow friend and contributor Rick Pinchera’s InkTober series — a drawing a day, during the month of October — was dedicated to those monsters that scared and amused him most when he was growing up in the ’80s.

HEATHCLIFF, FOR WHY? The Andy Kaufman-like anti-comedy antics of Heathcliff have nonplussed newspaper funny pages readers since 1973. Brandi Brown investigated.

12 MORE DAYS OF SIGNIFICANCE: A holiday-season series of posts reprinting stories written — by 12 HiLobrow contributors — for the 2009–2010 Significant Objects project, which was co-edited by HiLobrow’s Josh Glenn. Contributors: Annalee Newitz, Cintra Wilson, Jen Collins, Joanne McNeil, Jonathan Lethem, Sarah Weinman, Shelley Jackson, Barbara Bogaev, Dan Reines, Jenny Offill, Katie Hennessey, James Hannaham.

DAILY DRUMPF — a series of political cartoons by HiLobrow friend and contributor Rick Pinchera.

BIGFOOT ISLAND — a sampling of images and movies from artist Michael Lewy’s multimedia project, BIGFOOT ISLAND, which conjures up a Land of the Lost-esque cryptid habitat and adventurescape via a combination of Cinema 4D software and analog special effects.

BEDROOM AIRPORT — scenes from an aerodrome, constructed of cardboard and masking tape, in a Brookline bedroom. By an adolescent collective known as “Parson Edwards.”

Thanks, HILOBROW readers! On to 2017…

HILOBROW’s 2016

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