HILOBROW 1Q2017

By: HILOBROW
March 30, 2017

Here’s what HILOBROW published in January, February, and March 2017. Enjoy!

We’re very grateful to first-time HILOBROW contributors Jennifer Krasinski, Rob Baedeker, L.A. Kauffman, Carolina A. Miranda, Stephen Duncombe, Marisa Silver, Virginia Heffernan, Kenya (Robinson), Kathryn Davis, Chenjerai Kumanyika, Alex Kalman, Gary Dauphin, Anne Boyer, Cathy Park Hong, Benjamen Walker, Tom Frank, Steven Heller, Anne Elizabeth Moore, Lizzie Skurnick, and Stuart Ewen; as well as to our regular and frequent contributors.

BEST OF HILOBROW: 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 1Q2020 | 2Q2020 | 3Q2020 SNEAK PEEK.

POLITICAL OBJECTS

During 1Q2017, HILOBROW published POLITICAL OBJECTS, the first volume of 25 nonfiction object stories in a new and ongoing enterprise. PROJECT:OBJECT is a sequel to Josh Glenn and Rob Walker’s much-discussed SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS experiment. Over the course of 2017, PROJECT:OBJECT will publish four themed volumes of 25 stories apiece.

Here’s the POLITICAL OBJECTS introduction. And here’s the complete lineup.

Thanks to the generosity of our contributors, and to sales of limited-time-only PROJECT:OBJECT objects — including t-shirts, hoodies, totes, notebooks, and other gear at our Threadless shop — at the end of 1Q2017 we donated $500 to to the American Civil Liberties Union! We look forward to doing the same after each of the next three P:O volumes, too.

Josh Glenn and Rob Walker are the editors of PROJECT:OBJECT. They are very grateful to all of the POLITICAL OBJECTS series’ contributors.

Thanks, Rick Pinchera, for the POLITICAL OBJECTS logo. And thanks, SEMIOVOX, for sponsoring PROJECT:OBJECT.

Thanks, BoingBoing, Kottke.org, Design Observer, Paola Antonelli, The Awl, and everyone else who’s given PROJECT:OBJECT a shout-out.

Subscribe to the P:O newsletter.

THE TWENTIETH DAY OF JANUARY

HILOBROW’s Josh Glenn occasionally makes an appearance, in character as “Josh Glenn,” a globe-trotting semiotic brand analyst, on Benjamen Walker’s popular Radiotopian podcast, THEORY OF EVERYTHING. Just in time for Inauguration Day, Josh and Ben recorded a new THEORY OF EVERYTHING episode about a 1981 spy thriller, The Twentieth Day of January.

The transcript is here; and you can listen to the episode here.

Excerpt:

“JOSH GLENN”: The plot is ridiculous. A Republican — Logan Powell — has just been elected president. This guy has never been in politics before, but he beats a crowded field of experienced politicians to become first a senator, then president. He’s from a wealthy East Coast family, but he sells himself as a populist. And his big idea is — he wants the US and Russia to be friends. And despite opposition from within his own party, this guy wins the election.

THEORY OF EVERYTHING: This is kind of a weirdly prescient novel!

“JOSH GLENN”: I’m just getting started! With only a month to go before the inauguration — on the 20th day of January — an officer in Britain’s intelligence service (!) who’d spent years under diplomatic cover working for the agency, MI6, in Russia and Paris and London, gets wind of a plot by the Kremlin to influence the US election.

THEORY OF EVERYTHING: Whoa!

“JOSH GLENN”: The FBI is too political and can’t be trusted with this intel. So the CIA get involved. But they’re reluctant to investigate — because they don’t want to meddle in the electoral process. And because this guy is about to be their boss. It turns out that nobody, not even the Democrats, wants to reveal the truth about this guy’s ties to Russia. They don’t even want to know the truth.

HILOBROW’s transcript of the THEORY OF EVERYTHING episode has been viewed over 15,000 times! Thanks, BoingBoing, Forward.com, Mark Scott and innumerable other folks on Twitter for spreading the word.

THIS:

During 1Q2017, Adam McGovern’s culture-critical (and sometimes memoiristic) column, THIS:, appeared weekly at HILOBROW — keeping readers informed about theater, comics, music, and more.

In January, Adam’s Q&A with visionary comic-book writer Mark Russell (PREZ, The Flintstones), broke the news that Russell’s next project, Snagglepuss, would imagine Hanna-Barbera’s pink mountain lion as a midcentury gay Southern Gothic playwright. Breitbart News was nonplussed; others were ecstatic.

1Q2017’s THIS: installments included the following.

JANUARY: LIFELINES | RE-SISTER | ONE YEAR | LOOK AT THOSE CAVEMEN GO | CONSUMER CULTURE.

FEBRUARY: OUTSIDE THE BLACK BOX | DRAWN IN BLOOD | THE GATHERING BRAINSTORM | BLUE LIFE

MARCH: BAD DREAMERS | LET THEM EAT TAKE-OUT | IMAGINARY ENEMY | SECOND TIME AROUND

MORE POSTS by ADAM McGOVERN: OFF-TOPIC (2019–2024 monthly) | textshow (2018 quarterly) | PANEL ZERO (comics-related Q&As, 2018 monthly) | THIS: (2016–2017 weekly) | PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HELL, a 5-part series about characters in McGovern’s and Paolo Leandri’s comic Nightworld | Two IDORU JONES comics by McGovern and Paolo Leandri | BOWIEOLOGY: Celebrating 50 years of Bowie | ODD ABSURDUM: How Felix invented the 21st century self | CROM YOUR ENTHUSIASM: C.L. Moore’s JIREL OF JOIRY stories | KERN YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Data 70 | HERC YOUR ENTHUSIASM: “Freedom” | KIRK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Captain Camelot | KIRB YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Full Fathom Five | A 5-part series on Jack Kirby’s Fourth World mythos | Reviews of Annie Nocenti’s comics Katana, Catwoman, Klarion, and Green Arrow | The curated series FANCHILD | To see all of Adam’s posts, including HiLo Hero items on Lilli Carré, Judy Garland, Wally Wood, and others: CLICK HERE

#SQUADGOALS

In January, HILOBROW began publishing #SQUADGOALS, a weekly series in which HILOBROW contributors wax enthusiastic about their favorite squads. We’re off to a terrific start!

#SQUADGOALS installments in 1Q2017 included the following.

JANUARY: Annie Nocenti on THE WILD BUNCH | Alice Boone on PRETTY LITTLE LIARS | Gordon Dahlquist on BOWIE’S BAND | Rob Wringham on THE HOME GUARD.

FEBRUARY: Jennifer Krasinski on WATERSHIP DOWN RABBITS | Annalee Newitz on ROBIN HOOD’S MERRY PALS | Adrienne Crew on THE BLOOMSBURY GROUP | Mark Kingwell on THE HONG KONG CAVALIERS.

MARCH: Adam McGovern on KAMANDI’S FAMILY | John Overholt on THE CLUB | Greg Rowland on THE VULTURE SQUADRON | Sara Ryan on BETSY, TACY & TIB | Chelsey Johnson on VI ÄR BÄST!

Josh Glenn is editor of the #SQUADGOALS series. He is very grateful to the series’ contributors.

MORE ENTHUSIASM SERIES at HILOBROW

INTO THE GROVE

During 1Q2017, we began publishing INTO THE GROVE, a series — by long-time HILOBROW friend and contributor Brian Berger — celebrating perhaps America’s most exciting and controversial publisher, Barney Rosset’s Grove Press.

Here’s 1Q2017’s INTO THE GROVE lineup.

NAKED LUNCH and NOVA EXPRESS. “Endlessly quotable, hilarious, scarifying and pensive.”
BEFORE & AFTER KUHLMAN. “Immersed in the city’s great creative foment, Kuhlman transformed himself, from painting to design, and from realism to abstract expression.”
TO THE HAPPY FEW. “Rosset’s interests were broad and eccentric, and he would have been a terrific publisher even if he weren’t also a troublemaker which, happily for American letters, he was.”
CHINESE & JAPANESE TRANSLATIONS. “Barney Rosset’s Grove Press didn’t just look to Europe and America for inspiration. Its purview would be the world, and its Chinese and Japanese offerings were remarkable.”
SPANISH OLD WORLD & NEW. “[Unamuno] was primarily a non-conformist, a spiritual rebel in the tradition of great heretics: a searcher for a truth that was not rational but that living sort which man has to find within himself.”
IN AMERICA. “George Washington Harris might be the most important antebellum American fiction writer almost nobody reads anymore.”
KUHLMAN IN PURPLE. Purple book covers — what did they signify, coming from Kuhlman?
SAMUEL BECKETT. The grand pooka of post-Joycean slapstick modernism.

This series will continue into 2Q2017 — stay tuned!

PLANET OF PERIL

Each month, during 1Q2017, HILOBROW friend and contributor Lynn Peril published a new installment in the series PLANET OF PERIL, which is devoted to Lynn’s favorite obscure historical fads and figures.

Here’s the 1Q2017 PLANET OF PERIL lineup.

I CAN TEACH YOU TO DANCE. How Vera Caspary, before she wrote Laura, helped invent Marinoff’s School of Classic Dance, whose fictional founder took on a life of his own.
WEARING THE PANTS. Could a woman war worker maintain her femininity while wearing menswear and doing men’s work?
LIBERATION CAN BE TOUGH ON A WOMAN. Advertisers in the late 1960s and early ’70s coopted the women’s movement’s language and imagery to sell everything from wigs to white-out.

MORE LYNN PERIL at HILOBROW: PLANET OF PERIL series | #SQUADGOALS: The Daly Sisters | KLUTE YOUR ENTHUSIASM: BLOW-UP | MUSEUM OF FEMORIBILIA series | HERMENAUTIC TAROT: The Waiting Man | KIRB YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Young Romance | CROM YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife | HILO HERO ITEMS on: Tura Satana, Paul Simonon, Vivienne Westwood, Lucy Stone, Lydia Lunch, Gloria Steinem, Gene Vincent, among many others.

STUFFED

In March, HILOBROW friend and contributor Tom Nealon’s first book, Food Fights and Culture Wars: A Secret History of Taste, was published in the US! (It appeared in the UK last year.) Food Fights and Culture Wars grew out of Tom’s HILOBROW food-history series, STUFFED.

Each month, during 1Q2017, Tom published a new installment in the STUFFED series. Here’s the 1Q2017 STUFFED lineup.

TRUMPED. What the menu at Chicago’s Sixteen Restaurant (in Trump Tower) portends. This item inspired a great satirical piece, by Tom, in The Boston Globe‘s FOOD section, on January 31.
CHILES EN MOVIMIENTO. Long before there was a U.S. or a Mexico, our countries have been bound together by beans, corn, chile, tomatoes. An investigation of tacos al pastor, paprika, New Mexico chiles, and hues rancheros.
THE GREAT EATER OF KENT. The Admirable Teeth and Stomach Exploits of Nicholas Wood, of Harrisom in the County of Kent — His Excessive Manner of Eating Without Manners, In Strange and True Manner Described.

BEST ADVENTURES

During 1Q2017, we published the following seven installments in the BEST ADVENTURES series — which chronicles Josh Glenn’s ongoing attempt to identify the 10 best adventures from each year of the 20th century. Each installment originally appeared as 10 individual posts.

10 BEST ADVENTURES OF 1907, from The Secret Agent to Ozma of Oz.
10 BEST ADVENTURES OF 1912, from Tarzan to The Night Land.
10 BEST ADVENTURES OF 1917, from Piccadilly Jim to Walpurgisnacht.
10 BEST ADVENTURES OF 1922, from Captain Blood to The Worm Ourouboros.
10 BEST ADVENTURES OF 1927, from Red Harvest to Witch Wood.
10 BEST ADVENTURES OF 1942, from Assignment in Brittany to The Secret of the Unicorn.
10 BEST YA & YYA ADVENTURES OF 1967, from The White Mountains and The Outsiders to Taran Wanderer. This post was republished by Boing Boing.

MORE ORIGINAL MATERIAL

During 1Q2017, in addition to the series described above, we published the following original posts.

BOBO SHAW. In January, Luc Sante memorialized the drummer Charles “Bobo” Shaw. “Basically, we got high together a lot. In our small way we were enacting the death of the old Lower East Side at the hands of those twin devils: heroin and real estate.”
HYPOCRITE IDLER. An annual post about Josh Glenn’s work, un-work, action and inaction during the previous year. Here’s the 2016 edition.

CURATED SERIES

HILOBROW curated the following reprint series, during 1Q2017.

12 MORE DAYS OF SIGNIFICANCE. In January, we finished up a series of posts reprinting stories written by 12 HILOBROW contributors for Josh Glenn and Rob Walker’s 2009–2010 SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS project. January installments by: Barbara Bogaev, Dan Reines, Jenny Offill, Katie Hennessey, and James Hannaham.

monster planet from Michael Lewy Visual Artist on Vimeo.

NOT OF THIS EARTH. HILOBROW friend Michael Lewy is an artist whose current work explores midcentury sci-fi and horror movie practical effects; we were pleased to present this curated series of 10 videos that he’s recently created.

We are very grateful to the authors, all of whom are HiLobrow friends and contributors, for permitting us to gather and republish their work.

On to 2Q2017!

***

BEST OF HILOBROW: 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 1Q2020 | 2Q2020 | 3Q2020 SNEAK PEEK.

HILOBROW 1Q2017

Categories

Tags