HERMENAUTICA (19)
By:
May 13, 2023
One in a series of posts featuring pages from Hermenaut, a DIY intellectual zine/journal published by HILOBROW’s Josh Glenn from 1992 through 2000-01.
We invite you to
WRITE FOR HERMENAUT!Submit articles to us, on any topic which seems appropriate, immediately. But please read the following writers’ guidelines first.
Hermenaut is a scholarly journal, but not an academic journal; it’s for the intellectual in everyone, not for the intellectual class; and it questions received wisdom, whether from mainstream culture, the groves of academe, or the hipster demimonde.
So… Be brave enough to be uncool. Take your ideas seriously, even if they’re ridiculous. You don’t have to be zany and unthreatening to be heard. Express your personality in your writing. Know what you think. Don’t be afraid to be obsessed.
Sure, applying high art notions to pop culture can sometimes reveal hidden truths, but that’s mostly a sucker’s game. Don’t try to be right, but do your research anyway.
Internalize big ideas and apply them; don’t just tack them on for effect.
Jargon, verbosity, and obscurity — the tools of the academician’s trade — are tedious. But dumbing your ideas down is not OK, either. Try to avoid the extremes of highbrow or lowbrow, without becoming middlebrow: High-lowbrow is the goal.
Because academic publications insist on a “scientific” writing style, footnotes have become the primary outlet for the funny, intuitive, personal, and therefore truly interesting ideas of the scholar. We want all that in the article itself! So no footnotes…
Pub. Date: 1997
Theme: Camp
Hermenaut: Wilde
Pages: 190
Print Run: 3.000
MORE HERMENAUT on HILOBROW: HERMENAUTICA series | MEET THE HERMENAUTS | HERMENAUT’s last five issues | Snapshots | Letters to HERMENAUT | Dialectical Design | Josh Glenn on CAMP, KITSCH & CHEESE | Josh Glenn on DANIEL CLOWES: Q&A | Clarke Cooper on APOCALYPSE ALREADY | Lisa Carver on THE ART OF BEING UNCOMFORTABLE | Josh Glenn on FAKE AUTHENTICITY | Chris Fujiwara on ZOOMING THROUGH SPACE | John Marr on CAMPANILE FREE-FALL | Clarke Cooper on THE WILL TO SCORN | Dan Reines on PURE EVEL | Chris Fujiwara on ROADWORTHY JAZZ | Dan Reines on LETTER FROM LA | Mary E. Ladd & Julie Wiskirchen on ONWARD CHRISTIAN TOURISTS | Chris Fujiwara on SAVED BY BETRAYAL | Margaret Blonder on MEMORIES OF THE BIOSPHERE | Josh Glenn on HERMENAUT: PHILIP K. DICK | Ingrid Schorr on ROCKVILLE GIRL SPEAKS.