HILOBROW 2019

By: HILOBROW
December 31, 2019

Here’s what HILOBROW published during 2019 — our 11th year (10th full year) in business. Many thanks to our first-time contributors, as well as to our many regular contributors and long-time friends!

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

Also see: HYPOCRITE IDLER 2019.

SPECIAL SERIES

In August, HILOBROW published CONVOY YOUR ENTHUSIASM, a series analyzing and celebrating 25 of our contributors’ favorite action movies from the Seventies (1974–1983). Here’s the lineup:

INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn

Josh Glenn edited CONVOY YOUR ENTHUSIASM. He is very grateful to the series contributors, many of whom donated their fees to the ACLU.

The weekly ENTHUSIASM series, at HILOBROW during 2019, was: SERIOCOMIC. We invited 52 of HILOBROW’s friends and contributors to wax enthusiastic about some of their favorite comic books and strips. Here’s the 2019 lineup:

Josh Glenn edited SERIOCOMIC. He is very grateful to the series contributors, many of whom donated their fees to the ACLU.

This year, HILOBROW published Adrienne Crew’s AFROFUTURISM, a series exploring the aesthetics and visual rhetoric of Afrofuturist movies, TV, fiction, and more. Here’s the series lineup:

INTRODUCTION by Adrienne Crew

PROJECT:OBJECT

Josh Glenn and Rob Walker are co-editors of PROJECT:OBJECT, which publishes true stories about surprisingly significant objects. In 2019, HILOBROW published two new P:O series. Josh and Rob are grateful to the series contributors, many of whom donated their fees to the ACLU.

During 2Q2019, HILOBROW published FETISHES, a series featuring 25 stories about objects with which Project:Object’s contributors are obsessed, to which they are devoted, and from the influence of which they cannot escape. Here’s the lineup:

INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn and Rob Walker

Thanks, Chris Piascik, for the uncanny FETISHES volume logo.

Illustration by Ben Katchor for his own LOST OBJECTS v. 2 story

During 4Q2019, HILOBROW published LOST OBJECTS vol. 2. Josh and Rob invited 25 writers to reminisce about an object which they no longer possess. (Perhaps they lost it, or it was stolen, or they gave it away, sold it, or destroyed it?) Some of the stories were assigned to illustrators; and in a new twist, some of the stories were illustrated by their authors. Here’s the lineup:

INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn and Rob Walker

Geoff Manaugh on MOROCCAN TRINKET (ill. Mariana Pita) | Joe Yonan on MACRAMÉ ART (ill. Theo Ellsworth) | Laura Lippman on LABYRINTH GAME (ill. Laura Didyk) | Ben Katchor on LUCITE CARRYING CASE | Neil LaBute on PICKLED OCTOPUS (ill. Disa Wallander) | Miranda Mellis on SEQUINED SCARF (ill. Adam Goldberg) | Chris Piascik on GENERAL HUSTLER BMX | Jenny Kroik on MISSING TOY PIECES | Anita Kunz on FLOWER NECKLACE | Debbie Millman on GLASS POODLE | Heather Kapplow on CERAMIC ARTWORK (ill. Matt Wuerker) | Lydia Millet on ROCKY HORROR NOVEL (ill. Berta Valló) | Ben Greenman on WARHOL CAN (ill. Clara Selina Bach) | Leah Hennessey on BATMAN RING (ill. Dean Haspiel) | Kathryn Davis on PRAYER CARD (ill. Dina Noto) | Mikita Brottman on PINK ELEPHANTS (ill. Sarah Williamson) | Nathaniel Rich on AUTOGRAPHED BASEBALL (ill. Ellen Rose) | Charles Glaubitz on TRACK SHOES | Seth on ENTERPRISE MODEL | Becky Stern on SKELETON SWEATER (ill. Monica Garwood) | Mark Dery on GRANDFATHER PHOTO (ill. Kelli Anderson) | Paola Antonelli on VINYL SKIRT (ill. Guillermo Meraz) | Sara Ryan on FINGER PUPPET (ill. Steve Lieber) | Alex Gerasev on KARMA PARKA | Margaret Wertheim on ECCENTRIC BOOK (ill. Armando Veve).

ONGOING SERIES

Lynn Peril continued to surface and dimensionalize examples of “pink think” — ideas and attitudes about what constitutes proper female behavior — among other things, in her PLANET OF PERIL series. Here’s the 2019 PLANET OF PERIL lineup:

Alas, the PLANET OF PERIL series won’t return in 2020. Lynn Peril is working on an exciting new venture that will require all of her attention. We’re sorry to see her column go, but thrilled about what she’s planning…

Tom Nealon continued to interrogate suspect food history, and embellish his findings with outlandish, yet compelling theories of his own, in his series STUFFED. Here’s the 2019 STUFFED lineup:

Adam McGovern’s new, irregular series OFF-TOPIC delivered over-the-transom, on-tangent essays, dialogues and subjective scholarship. Here’s the 2019 OFF-TOPIC lineup:

Also, in October Adam reviewed Annie Nocenti and Flavia Biondi’s new Dark Horse comic, Ruby Falls.

Peggy Nelson’s revived series EYE CANDY investigated art and the virtual life. Here’s the 2019 EYE CANDY lineup:

Amy Friend’s punctured photography | To capture your selfie you have to slow down | The shelves are alive, with the sound of barcodes | Krystmasse is icumin in….

Peggy also edits a new series, here at HILOBROW: CROSS-POST. The 2019 CROSS-POST lineup features selected posts from Marc Weidenbaum’s blog, disquiet:

INTRODUCTION by Peggy Nelson

That’s not all! Peggy’s latest series, SIMULACRA, is concerned with copies, reenactments, repetitions and revisionings. Here’s the 2019 SIMULACRA lineup:

MALKOVICH, MALKOVICH, MALKOVICH | THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN | THE BATHROOM MIRROR STAGE.

BEST ADVENTURES PROJECT

We published the following 19 new installments in Josh Glenn’s BEST ADVENTURES. The series chronicles Josh ‘s ongoing, years-long attempt to identify his favorite 10 adventures from each year of the 20th century. Here’s the lineup:

Each BEST ADVENTURES installment was first published as 10 individual posts. ALso, with the end of the BEST ADVENTURES project in sight, this year we grouped its various installments into the following handy pages:

100 BEST ADVENTURES OF THE OUGHTS (1904–1913) | 100 BEST ADVENTURES OF THE TEENS (1914–1923) | 100 BEST ADVENTURES OF THE TWENTIES (1924–1933) | 100 BEST ADVENTURES OF THE THIRTIES (1934–1943) | 100 BEST ADVENTURES OF THE FORTIES (1944–1953) | 100 BEST ADVENTURES OF THE FIFTIES (1954–1963) | 100 BEST ADVENTURES OF THE SIXTIES (1964–1973) | 100 BEST ADVENTURES OF THE SEVENTIES (1974–1983)

ALSO: 100 BEST YA & YYA ADVENTURES OF THE SIXTIES (1964–1973)

This year, we began publishing a new weekly lit-list series, DIAMOND AGE 75, which aims to identify Josh Glenn’s 75 favorite science-fiction novels published during the Eighties (1984–1993) and Nineties (1994–2003). Here’s the 2019 series lineup:

Early this year, we wrapped up the weekly NEW WAVE SCI-FI 75 series, which identified Josh Glenn’s 75 favorite sci-fi novels published during the Sixties (1964–1973) and Seventies (1974–1983). Here’s the 2019 lineup:

During 2019, we published Josh Glenn’s LISTEN, HOLLYWOOD!, a 10-part series offering unsolicited advice to producers looking to adapt great, overlooked 20th-century adventure novels for movies or TV. Here’s the lineup:

Michael Innes’s FROM LONDON FAR | P.G. Wodehouse’s LEAVE IT TO PSMITH | Peter Dickinson’s CHANGES TRILOGY | Robert Heinlein’s GLORY ROAD | Poul Anderson’s THE HIGH CRUSADE | Edgar Rice Burroughs’s TARZAN AND THE FOREIGN LEGION | G.K. Chesterton’s THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL | Michael Innes’s THE JOURNEYING BOY | Alfred Jarry’s EXPLOITS AND OPINIONS OF DR. FAUSTROLL, PATAPHYSICIAN | André Gide’s THE VATICAN CAVES [LAFCADIO’S ADVENTURES].

Finally, we published Josh Glenn’s A IS FOR ADVENTURE, an irregular series featuring notes towards The Adventurer’s Glossary, a work in progress which — like his previous books, The Idler’s Glossary and The Wage Slave’s Glossary — will smuggle ideology critique into a simple defining vocabulary or clavis. Here’s the lineup:

HILOBOOKS

In his September 25 Washington Post column, book critic Michael Dirda offered a belated but heartfelt shout-out to HiLoBooks’ reissue of E.V. Odle’s Radium Age sci-fi novel The Clockwork Man. Excerpt:

This edition features an excellent introduction by Annalee Newitz, who opens with a funny but accurate summary of the novel:

“If you don’t stop making war on each other, one day women will team up with benevolent, naked aliens and implant you with a clock that controls your behavior and sends you into a timeless multiverse. Oh and also? That timeless multiverse will be full of hat and wig stores.”

Is The Clockwork Man, then, serious or slapstick? In fact, it’s both, very much in the manner of H.G. Wells’s comparably serio-comic The Invisible Man and The First Men in the Moon.

“Given ongoing advances in robotics and medical technology, not to mention the possibility of uploading consciousness into a computer,” Dirda’s review concludes, “The Clockwork Man seems, so to speak, both timely and alarming.”

Radium Age Science Fiction fans, take heart! HiLoBooks is negotiating with a (great) publisher to revive this series, in 2021…

CURATED SERIES

In January, we finished publishing ANOTHER 12 DAYS OF SIGNIFICANCE, a series that reprinted object-oriented fiction originally written for Josh Glenn and Rob Walker’s 2009–2010 anthropological-literary experiment SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS. Here’s the 1Q2019 ANOTHER 12 DAYS OF SIGNIFICANCE series lineup:

Rachel Axler on FORTUNE-TELLING DEVICE | Sean Howe on PABST BOTTLE OPENER | Susannah Breslin on NECKING TEAM BUTTON | Tim Carvell on ROUND BOX | Susanna Daniel on SHARK AND SEAL PENS

In February and March, HILOBROW curated #FX, a selection of video art by Michael Lewy, whose current work explores midcentury sci-fi and horror movie practical effects. You can purchase a digital copy of Bigfoot Island: Chapter 2 here. Music and sound design by N.sputnik.

DOWNTOWNE, comprising illustrations and text from an as-yet unpublished middle-grade illustrated novel, Henry Hudson and The Nethermen, written and drawn by HILOBROW friend Bradley Peterson.

SENTINELS. Just in time for Walpurgisnacht — celebrated on the last night of April, when witches meet on the Brocken mountain and hold revels with the Devil, according to German folklore — we were pleased to present an original horror story by HILOBROW friend Charlie Mitchell. Illustrations by Mister Reusch.

In July, we presented HERE BE MONSTERS, a 10-part series featuring monster drawings by the talented artist-illustrator and HILOBROW friend Mister Reusch.

In October, we republished “Trump Agonistes” — a screed by HILOBROW friend Mandy Keifetz. The text originally appeared as a broadside created for the group show “Screed,” at the Brooklyn-based gallery Asphodel. Excerpt: “In ideal dystopia, the evil head of the EPA is a mad scientist, not a drooling CEO. The Vice-President is a brilliant Iago, not a deformed elf, cowering before the very spectre of sex. ”

In November–December, the reprint series MRS. K. brought us 10 excerpts from HILOBROW friend Heather Kasunick‘s Inktober drawing efforts. Each drawing was inspired by a song lyric, which in turn was inspired by an official Inktober prompt word.

At Christmastime, HILOBROW published eight installments in this year’s 12 DAYS OF SIGNIFICANCE series — which reprints object-oriented stories originally contributed to Josh Glenn and Rob Walker’s SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS. The 2019–2020 selection will bring the series total to 60. Here’s the 2019 lineup:

Four more stories to follow, in January…

In November–December, HILOBROW reprinted a baker’s dozen of stories about significant objects — originally published in the 2007 collection Taking Things Seriously (Princeton Architectural Press), edited by Joshua Glenn and designed by Carol Hayes. Here’s the TAKING THINGS SERIOUSLY series lineup:

Here at HILOBROW during 2019, HiLoBooks serialized P.G. Wodehouse’s LEAVE IT TO PSMITH (1923) — the last and most rewarding of four novels featuring the dandy, wit, and would-be adventurer Psmith.

***

On to 2020…

HILOBROW 2019

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