Art | Raging Biblio-holism

The Last Days of New Paris

August 15, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: It’s 1950 and the war still rages in Paris – but it’s no longer just Nazis and Resistance fighters. A Surrealist bomb has remade Paris and peopled the streets with Surrealist art made manifest. In this impossible city, a young Surrealist fighter named Thibaut meets an American photographer named Sam who believes that these are the last days of New Paris – for something else stalks these streets as well… The Review: Anyone who has ever gazed upon […]

Categories: Fantasy, Fiction, Literature • Tags: Alternate History, Art, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, China Miéville, Culture, Fantasy, Fiction, Literature, Paris, Reviews, Speculative Fiction, Surrealism, Surrealist Fiction, The Last Days of New Paris, Weird, Weird Fiction, World War II

An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter

March 30, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: An Episode… recounts the story of one Johann Mortiz Rugendas, a German landscape painter who traveled to Argentina twice during his life. On that first trip, as he strives to capture something new, an accident changes and mars him for life – but also, perhaps, provides the door he had been seeking… The Review: When is a biography not a biography? Presumably when it makes up facts – but what is the line between what is made up […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: Argentina, Art, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, César Aira, Fiction, Johann Moritz Rugendas, Latin America, Literature, New Directions, Painting, Reviews, TNBBC

Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewlery

March 23, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: An auction catalog from 2009, featuring the personal effects of a couple from roughly the beginning of their courtship to the end of their relationship over the span of roughly five years, reveals the truth of two people through nothing more than their everyday objects. The Review: What a fascinating book. It is designed, down nearly to the letter and excepting really only the spine and back cover (and a few early/late pages, I guess) to look […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: Art, Auction Catalog, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Experimental, Fiction, Graphic Novel, Harold Morris, Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Important Artifacts..., Lenore Doolan, Literature, Metafiction, Reviews

Dark Sparkler

April 15, 2015 by Drew

The Short Version: A collection of poems musing on the lives and, in most cases, deaths of actresses – both famous and unknown. It’s also one individual actress musing on fame, life, and art. The Review: I’ve never been to Los Angeles, but I’ve seen it. Read about it in books – Less Than Zero set any desire I might’ve had back by several years – but those images, too, are forever influenced by the washed out darkness of Collateral or Mulholland Drive. […]

Categories: Non-Fiction, Poetry • Tags: Actresses, Amber Tamblyn, Art, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Brittany Murphy, Dark Sparkler, David Lynch, Harper Perennial, Hollywood, Marilyn Manson, Poems, Poetry, Reviews

The Originals Series: Aleksander Hemon & Velibor Božović

April 8, 2015 by Drew

(from left: David Haglund, Aleksander Hemon, Velibor Božović) Last night’s Apple-store-hosted conversation between Aleksander (Sasha) Hemon and Velibor (Veba) Božović might not’ve been billed like other Originals Series events, but I think it’s safe to call it one: it had that same sense of curiosity, of doing something interesting and different with an author event, that the series’ somewhat looser events have had in the past. It’s just that the “something interesting and different” this time included putting on the show […]

Categories: Events, Features • Tags: Aleksander Hemon, Apple, Apple Store, Art, Bosnia, Conversation, David Haglund, Events, FSG Digital Originals, FSG Originals, My Prisoner, Politics, Recap, Recaps, The Originals Series, Velibor Božović, Video

The Bellwether presents NOCTURNE

February 14, 2015 by Drew

(photo credit: Dani Lencioni) I’ve never been a poetry guy. I mean, I respect the craft and do enjoy certain poets – but they are, without exception, poets who fall squarely inside my frame of reference: old white guys. Or at least they were. I started reading Saeed Jones’ Prelude to Bruise last week (much belatedly, I’ll admit) and while I’ve not finished it yet (so I won’t say too much and will save it for the review), it’s just about the […]

Categories: Events, Features • Tags: Art, Brooklyn, Design, Events, Installation, Jordan Kisner, Music, Nocturne, Performance, Poetry, Prelude to Bruise, Recap, Saeed Jones, The Bellwether, The Cave

A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall

February 11, 2015 by Drew

The Short Version: Owen Burr is meant to play water polo in the Athens Olympics but after an accident in his last collegiate game leaves him blind in one eye, he takes off to Berlin where he falls in with a dangerous artist crowd. Meanwhile, his father sets off in his footsteps to try and find him – inciting a minor international incident or two in the process. Their stories take them from California to Athens to Berlin to Iceland, a minor […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall, Academia, Art, Athens, Berlin, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Fiction, Iceland, Liminalism, Literature, Mythology, Olympics, Philosophy, Reviews, The Tournament of Books 2015, Will Chancellor

American Psycho (footnotes)

January 14, 2015 by Drew

The Short Version: “American Psycho was created by sending the entirety of Bret Easton Ellis’ violent, masochistic and gratuitous novel American Psycho through GMail, one page at a time. [Huff & Cabell] collected the ads that appeared next to each email and used them to annotate the original text, page by page. In printing it as a perfect bound book, [they] erased the body of Ellis’ text and left only chapter titles and constellations of our added footnotes. What remains is American Psycho, […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: Advertising, Algorithms, American Psycho, Art, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Bret Easton Ellis, Commentary, Consumerism, Fiction, Footnotes, Gmail, Google, Jason Huff, Literature, Metafiction, Mimi Cabell, Philosophy, Reviews

Not That Kind of Girl

December 4, 2014 by Drew

The Short Version: Lena Dunham, writer and actress and director and twentysomething provocatrix, tells you a little bit about what she’s “learned” in essays and lists and stories that are heartfelt, funny, sad, moving, enraging, and pretty much every other range of emotions. The Review: You’re not reading this book if you don’t have some appreciation for Lena Dunham. I mean, let’s just put that out there, straightaway: she’s a polarizing figure in our culture and there are plenty of […]

Categories: Memoir, Non-Fiction • Tags: Advice, Art, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Essays, Film, Girls, HBO, How-To, Lena Dunham, Memoir, Non-Fiction, Not That Kind of Girl, Reviews, Television, Tiny Furniture

Raging Biblio-holism

The overwhelming urge to collect, consume, and consider books

Tag: Art