Mark Lanegan
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The apex of MARK LANEGAN’s (born 1964) visibility came more than fifteen years ago as the lead singer of the feral Seattle band Screaming Trees during the apogee of that city’s fame as the rebirthplace […]
Read This PostAuthor: Tor Aarestad
Tor Aarestad lives in Boston where he spends much of his time walking his dogs.
Zygmunt Bauman
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Although other scholars have been cited as soothsayers of the mechanics of our Great Recession, ZYGMUNT BAUMAN (born 1925) has been unerringly the Prophet of its ethos. Since his retirement from active teaching at the […]
Read This PostWilliam Steig
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Perhaps the most prolific cartoonist ever for the high-middlebrow/nobrow New Yorker, and creator of the story that inspired the quatsch film Shrek, WILLIAM STEIG (1907-2003) might not seem an obvious hero for HiLobrow.com. Ladies and […]
Read This PostStiv Bators
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Though Iggy Pop did Iggy first (and better), STIV BATORS (1949-90) did Iggy with a striver’s zeal in the right place and at the right time. The arrival of the Dead Boys in 1977 marked the […]
Read This PostHarlan Stone
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Along with Justices Brandeis and Cardozo, Justice (later Chief Justice) HARLAN STONE (1872-1946) was counted among the Three Musketeers — the progressive minority of the Supreme Court during the early years of FDR’s presidency. Since […]
Read This PostRoald Dahl
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We’re riding a swell of black-humored children’s literature, these days — the Lemony Snicket books are just a whitecap. However, as dark as these contemporary tales may be, none is so misanthropic as those of […]
Read This PostClifford Geertz
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The most widely known American anthropologist since Margaret Mead, CLIFFORD GEERTZ (1926-2006) was instrumental in turning anthropology into the respectable and (more importantly) theory-poachable discipline it became in the 1970s and ’80s. How? Though he […]
Read This PostTove Jansson
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In all of her writing and art TOVE JANSSON (1914-2001) paid keen attention to the beauty and detail in the natural world. But the descriptions and illustrations of people (or their fantastical stand-ins: hemulens, fillyjonks, […]
Read This PostBruce Dickinson
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With the ouster of original vocalist Paul Di’Anno and the hiring of BRUCE DICKINSON (born 1958) just before the release of their immortal third album, The Number of the Beast, Iron Maiden had finally completed […]
Read This PostElias Canetti
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In 1927, ELIAS CANETTI (1905-94) threw himself into a Viennese crowd protesting an acquittal in a murder trial. The crowd went on to burn down the Palace of Justice, and Canetti’s feeling of selflessness and […]
Read This PostThomas Kuhn
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A self-described “physicist turned historian for philosophical purposes,” THOMAS KUHN (1922-96) was largely an autodidact in his eventual home — the then-new field of the history of science. With his scattershot academic background, it seems […]
Read This PostEmma Goldman
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What was it about EMMA GOLDMAN (1867-1940) that made her, at the turn of the twentieth century, the most dangerous woman in America? Was it her early support of violent Attentats, such as her partner […]
Read This PostJürgen Habermas
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Perhaps JÜRGEN HABERMAS (born 1929) is most dear to us for developing and elaborating over the course of decades an intricately woven Grand Theory founded in the notion that sincere, earnest public discussion is the […]
Read This PostMark Mothersbaugh
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Although other rock frontmen had been strange before MARK MOTHERSBAUGH (born 1950), none had been so aggressively strange or so brazenly uncool. Devo was the soundtrack of a life spent stumbling on uneven pavement, knocking […]
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