Thorougly Modern Miscellany

Overflow from LL

In The New York Times in March 2012, Sarah Hepola’s profile of Gloria Steinem—complete with discussion of where the next feminist icon like her might be—ran in “Fashion & Style.” And when the young (male) publisher of Jacobin magazine was profiled in the Times’s Books section in January, women editors and publishers at The New Inquiry protested—when their similarly intellectual publication was featured in the Times the previous fall, they had been in “Fashion & Style.

Absolutely gorgeous.  jackmrhughes: Virginia Woolf // The Atlantic My first portrait commission! And who better to illustrate than Virginia Woolf!

Absolutely gorgeous. 

jackmrhughes:

Virginia Woolf // The Atlantic


My first portrait commission! And who better to illustrate than Virginia Woolf!

: Banned Books Week Guernica Staff Picks

I’m totally going with FOREVER. 

guernicamag:

Nabokov (who wrote the banned book Lolita) once said: “A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.”

Here at Guernica, celebrating Banned Books Week has meant many nostalgic trips to the book store. (And helped us to finally become, ahem, major readers.) Here’s…

Alice Walker on banned books.  guernicamag: (via Alice Walker: Writing What’s Right - Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics) Guernica: What’s most at stake when a book like The Color Purple is banned? What’s at stake for women, and women of color, when a story like this is silenced? Alice Walker: Great Literature is help for humans. It is medicine of the highest order. In a more aware culture, writers would be considered priests.  And, in fact, I have approached writing in a distinctly priestess frame of mind. I know what The Color Purple can mean to people, women and men, who have no voice. Who believe they have few choices in life. It can open to them, to their view, the full abundance of this amazing journey we are all on. It can lift them into a new realization of their own power, beauty, love, courage. It is a book that unites the present with the past, therefore giving people a sense of history and of timelessness they might never achieve otherwise. And even were it not “great” literature, it has the best interests of all of us humans at heart. That we grow, change, challenge, encourage, love fiercely in the awareness that real love can never be incorrect. READ OUR BANNED BOOKS WEEK INTERVIEW  WITH ALICE WALKER READ MORE GUERNICA DAILY TELL US ABOUT YOUR FAVORITE BANNED BOOKS ON TWITTER

Alice Walker on banned books. 

guernicamag:

(via Alice Walker: Writing What’s Right - Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics)

Guernica: What’s most at stake when a book like The Color Purple is banned? What’s at stake for women, and women of color, when a story like this is silenced?

Alice Walker: Great Literature is help for humans. It is medicine of the highest order. In a more aware culture, writers would be considered priests.  And, in fact, I have approached writing in a distinctly priestess frame of mind. I know what The Color Purple can mean to people, women and men, who have no voice. Who believe they have few choices in life. It can open to them, to their view, the full abundance of this amazing journey we are all on. It can lift them into a new realization of their own power, beauty, love, courage. It is a book that unites the present with the past, therefore giving people a sense of history and of timelessness they might never achieve otherwise. And even were it not “great” literature, it has the best interests of all of us humans at heart. That we grow, change, challenge, encourage, love fiercely in the awareness that real love can never be incorrect.

“Howe has written a biographical history of modern America’s id.”  PARTY. seanhowe: Book Release Party in New York:MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD STORY, is finally hitting shelves on Tuesday, October 9. It’s the result of years of hard work, and I’m proud to say that the early reception has been very encouraging. (See below!) I’m confident that the behind-the-scenes story of Marvel Comics is one of great relevance to anyone—comics reader or not—who’s interested in the ways that art and commerce interact. To prove it, I’ll be celebrating the book’s release with an onstage conversation with the stubbornly casual comics reader Chuck Klosterman, at the PowerHouse Arena, 37 Main Street, Brooklyn, on Tuesday, October 9, at 7pm. I’d love to see you there. (And please feel free to help me get the word out!)_______“Sean Howe’s history of Marvel makes a compulsively readable, riotous and heartbreaking version of my favorite story, that of how a bunch of weirdos changed the world. That it’s all true is just frosting on the cake.”— Jonathan Lethem “A warts-and-all, nail-biting mini-epic about the low-paid, unsung ‘funnybook men’ who were unwittingly creating twenty-first century pop culture. If you thought the fisticuffs were bare and bloody on the four-color page, wait ‘til you hear about what went down in the Marvel bullpen.”— Patton Oswalt “Exhaustively researched and artfully assembled, Marvel Comicsis a historical exploration, a labor of love, and a living illustration of how the weirdest corners of the counterculture can sometimes become the culture-at-large.”— Chuck Klosterman “Page after page, Sean Howe’s Marvel Comicsmanages to be enchantingly told, emotionally suspenseful and totally revelatory. If I knew more about superpowers, I’d be able to explain how he did it.”— Sloane Crosley “Sean Howe is to Marvel Comics what Procopius was to the Byzantine Empire: a court gossip of breathtaking thoroughness and exactitude, and a sly and nuanced writer. It is imperative that this work not fall into the hands of alien species, or we’re done for.”— Luc Sante “A jittery, hilarious, anecdotal, and exhaustive history of the company…. If you’re a comics fan, this is essential reading. If you’re not, then it’s merely fascinating. Howe has written a biographical history of modern America’s id.”— GQ “Scintillating…Howe pens a colorful panorama…an indelible portrait.”— Publishers Weekly“An impeccably researched, authoritative history…nuanced and engrossing.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Howe has written a biographical history of modern America’s id.” 

PARTY.

seanhowe:

Book Release Party in New York:

MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD STORY, is finally hitting shelves on Tuesday, October 9. It’s the result of years of hard work, and I’m proud to say that the early reception has been very encouraging. (See below!)

I’m confident that the behind-the-scenes story of Marvel Comics is one of great relevance to anyone—comics reader or not—who’s interested in the ways that art and commerce interact. To prove it, I’ll be celebrating the book’s release with an onstage conversation with the stubbornly casual comics reader Chuck Klosterman, at the PowerHouse Arena, 37 Main Street, Brooklyn, on Tuesday, October 9, at 7pm. I’d love to see you there. (And please feel free to help me get the word out!)
_______

“Sean Howe’s history of Marvel makes a compulsively readable, riotous and heartbreaking version of my favorite story, that of how a bunch of weirdos changed the world. That it’s all true is just frosting on the cake.”
— Jonathan Lethem

“A warts-and-all, nail-biting mini-epic about the low-paid, unsung ‘funnybook men’ who were unwittingly creating twenty-first century pop culture. If you thought the fisticuffs were bare and bloody on the four-color page, wait ‘til you hear about what went down in the Marvel bullpen.”
— Patton Oswalt

“Exhaustively researched and artfully assembled, Marvel Comicsis a historical exploration, a labor of love, and a living illustration of how the weirdest corners of the counterculture can sometimes become the culture-at-large.”
— Chuck Klosterman

“Page after page, Sean Howe’s Marvel Comicsmanages to be enchantingly told, emotionally suspenseful and totally revelatory. If I knew more about superpowers, I’d be able to explain how he did it.”
— Sloane Crosley
“Sean Howe is to Marvel Comics what Procopius was to the Byzantine Empire: a court gossip of breathtaking thoroughness and exactitude, and a sly and nuanced writer. It is imperative that this work not fall into the hands of alien species, or we’re done for.”
— Luc Sante

“A jittery, hilarious, anecdotal, and exhaustive history of the company…. If you’re a comics fan, this is essential reading. If you’re not, then it’s merely fascinating. Howe has written a biographical history of modern America’s id.”
— GQ

“Scintillating…Howe pens a colorful panorama…an indelible portrait.”
— Publishers Weekly

“An impeccably researched, authoritative history…nuanced and engrossing.”
— Kirkus Reviews
guernicamag: The dominant 1990s narrative of Afro-pessimism—famine! war! strife!—is currently being swapped out for an equally simplistic narrative of Afro-optimism—mobile phones! emerging markets! Chinese investment! Ultimately, Afro-pessimism and Afro-optimism are both predetermined narratives with pat conclusions. Some critics of the old pessimism now claim that media coverage of Africa is getting better. But what does better media coverage of Africa mean? With a proliferation of different types of images, perhaps we can look past simple conclusions and find a more complicated narrative that leaves space for simple moments, like a woman doing laundry. (via Hipstamatic Revolution by Glenna Gordon - Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics) More from Guernica art

guernicamag:

The dominant 1990s narrative of Afro-pessimism—famine! war! strife!—is currently being swapped out for an equally simplistic narrative of Afro-optimism—mobile phones! emerging markets! Chinese investment! Ultimately, Afro-pessimism and Afro-optimism are both predetermined narratives with pat conclusions. Some critics of the old pessimism now claim that media coverage of Africa is getting better. But what does better media coverage of Africa mean? With a proliferation of different types of images, perhaps we can look past simple conclusions and find a more complicated narrative that leaves space for simple moments, like a woman doing laundry.

(via Hipstamatic Revolution by Glenna Gordon - Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics)

More from Guernica art

Books in Brooklyn.

Friends, 
I have three events coming up on September 23rd — two panels I programmed for Brooklyn Book Festival and an evening event at UnionDocs in Williamsburg. I really love all these authors and I’d love to see all your smiling faces there, so please do save the date. 
Yours, 
LL

Read More

seanhowe: (Fantastic Four #98, May 1970. Art by Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott. Words by Neil Armstrong and Stan Lee. Lettering by Artie Simek.) “Here men from the planet earth first set foot upon the moon, July, 1969, A.D. We came in peace far all mankind.” RIP Neil Armstrong.

seanhowe:

(Fantastic Four #98, May 1970. Art by Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott. Words by Neil Armstrong and Stan Lee. Lettering by Artie Simek.)

“Here men from the planet earth first set foot upon the moon, July, 1969, A.D. We came in peace far all mankind.”

RIP Neil Armstrong.

I love these.

emmastraub:

Mike and I made these posters today, for three of Laura Lamont’s fake movies. We’ll be screenprinting them soon. Stay tuned for ways to get your hands on one.