| |
| |
| DESIGN |
 |
Spoon
by the editors of Phaidon Press
|
 |
 |
 |
| Published: |
September 2002 |
| Pages: |
444 |
| Publisher: |
Phaidon Press |
Links:
Official site
Look inside
|
|
|
Synopsis
A lively overview of contemporary industrial design, featuring the work of 100 creative talents chosen by 10 experts in the field, who also select a design classic.
Review
One look at this hefty publication and your concept of contemporary living will forever change. An extraordinary survey of current lifestyle products by an international range of designers — from sleek electronics to organic and geometric furnishings to dynamic means of transportation — Spoon offers creative options to meet the timeless challenge of style. Though mostly a picture book, it's an entirely engaging read, with every object on every page demanding and meriting our attention.
Organized from A-to-Z, Spoon begins with A-POC (A Piece of Cloth), innovative fashions made from computer-generated cloth by Issey Miyake and his young collaborator Dai Fujiwara, and ends with Michael Young's colorful molded polyethylene furniture, including a doghouse fit for a cartoon. Some objects are recognizable — such as Apple Design Team's spiffy iPod, Frank Nuovo's flamboyant phones for Nokia, Martin Lotti's architecturally compelling Nike women's footwear, and Marc Newson's hip hair appliances for Vidal Sassoon — while others are surreal interpretations of the everyday. The Campana Brothers make striking chairs from vibrant dyed-cotton cord, Pia Wallen fashions bowls from felt, Arash Kaynama makes candles that resemble Bic lighters, and Marre Moerel casts clusters of Dutch clogs as sumptuous ceramic wall lamps.
There are items with funny names like Flamp, Marti Guixe's energy saving lamp that recharges from natural light, and Modu-licious, a building-block storage system from Blu Dot. Olivier Peyricot's lounge-y Body Props let you live close to the floor or on top of Fabio Novembre's playful carpet made from whorls of rope all flowing from a central spine — a good spot to watch time fly by on Yugo Nakamura's internet clock or a cozy place to curl up with Spoon, one of the best design tools you can possibly own. (PL)
|
| back to top |
 |
| |
|
|
|
Synopsis
This funny, whimsical memoir in encyclopedia form records the small things that have defined one woman's personality and nurtured her creativity over the years.
Review
Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life not only breaks the rules of memoir writing, but barely even acknowledges any existed in the first place. Choosing to tell her life story in alphabetical rather than chronological order, Amy Krouse Rosenthal delivers a wise, moving, silly, and incredibly readable collection of memories and obsessions. She also manages to pull off a meditation on creative writing while avoiding the detachment of fiction.
The book is packed to the gills with eccentric-yet-spot-on observations ("Inserting a Q-Tip deep into your ear is a great, undiscussed pleasure") and peculiar personal beliefs ("If you really love someone, you want to know what they ate for lunch or dinner without you"). We learn the little things that make up Amy: train schedules and vending machines give her anxiety, while whole triscuits and m&m's remind her of childhood; she mourns for her favorite coffee shop when it closes, and cringes at people who complain that they're "busy." While some of her observations seem superficial at first, they always hint at something deeper — a riff on dying starts out as a laundry list of the almost-ridiculous things we should be afraid of when we walk out the door in the morning, but the entry builds into an outpouring of grief over her sister-in-law, who died during childbirth while still a young woman. Because she writes in the voice of a close friend, we feel this moment of pain both through her and with her.
There are moments of laughter and even absurdity, too. Amy stuffs envelopes with a small amount of money, a self-addressed postcard, and a little note asking the recipient to write to her and let her know how the money was spent — and leaves them all over Chicago. It sounds like a crazy idea at first, but she infuses it with the generous and curious spirit that fills these pages. (ML)
|
| back to top |
|
| |
| NONFICTION: INTERVIEWS |
|
Talk to Her
by Kristine McKenna
|
 |
 |
|
| Published: |
August 2004 |
| Pages: |
272 |
| Publisher: |
Fantagraphics Books |
Links:
McKenna interview with Exene Cervenka
McKenna article on Bob Dylan's Chronicle
|
|
|
Synopsis
Journalist Kristine McKenna interviews an eclectic group of creative luminaries on the lessons of love, life, and making art.
Review
Since her career began in the '70s, journalist Kristine McKenna has profiled an impressive array of pop culture icons for the LA Times, the NY Times, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair, among others, and Talk to Her collects her interviews with 25 artists and visionaries, ranging from poet Allen Ginsberg, philosopher Jacques Derrida, and singer-songwriter Ricki Lee Jones, to rock maven Iggy Pop, film director Robert Altman, and journalist-cum-cartoonist Joe Sacco.
Certainly the roster of subjects McKenna has assembled is near awe-inspiring, but what's more remarkable is her unconventional approach to interrogation. Eschewing the typical tack of constellating questions around the artist's most recent album, book, etc., McKenna casts herself as an intensely curious student of the creative mind, plying her subjects with broad, philosophical questions. Thus, although the bulk of interviews included were conducted during the '80s and '90s, they still retain an untarnished freshness and resonance years later.
McKenna manages time and again to elicit amazing insights from her interviewees, which are by turns hilarious, utterly unexpected, and inspiring: asked to define the subconscious, nutty Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin describes it as "a bog filled with sperm and eggshells and old teabags and discarded statuary"; when McKenna inquires what's most likely to ruin the music-making process, Joni Mitchell exclaims, "Cocaine!"; and curator Walter Hopps, asked whether he's easily bored, responds with characteristic lust for life, saying, "the world is absolutely, unbelievably enchanting. It's just amazing, and it's all happening all the time."
From the perspective of an artist, one reads these interviews as much for the reality checks — about drugs, "the industry," and fame — as for the revelations about creative process. Nonetheless, the collection as a whole does happily reinforce our romantic notions about the artist, as certain leitmotifs of hope surface over and over: the idealistic beliefs that love never dies, that great creativity often springs from arduous circumstances, and that the American Dream is still intact — hard work and determination can pave the way to success. McKenna's exuberant introductions to each interview and the renderings of each subject by recognized cartoonists only enrich a compendium which truly lives up to all of its marquee names. (JKG)
|
| back to top |
|
| |
| FICTION |
|
Home Land
by Sam Lipsyte
|
 |
 |
|
| Published: |
January 2005 |
| Pages: |
240 |
| Publisher: |
Picador |
Links:
Lypsyte interview
|
|
|
Synopsis
In a series of wickedly funny rants addressed to his high school alumni newsletter, a never-has-been comes to terms with his less than remarkable life.
Review
Sam Lipsyte's jaded and hilarious sophomore novel takes the form of a series of rants from thirtysomething loser Lewis Miner, who's still known by his unfortunate high school nickname, "Teabag." That title isn't all that haunts him about his acne-ridden years: worn down by the deluge of smirking hagiographies in his high school alumni newsletter, he finally snaps and writes in with a few updates of his own. In these searingly funny missives, he chronicles his epic failures and creeping disappointments for all the rock stars, politicians, and professional athletes from his past.
In high school, Miner and his best friend Gary were the weirdos smoking pot out by the tool shed during class. Years later, they're still wasting time and smoking more pot, having never left their podunk New Jersey hometown. Terminally apathetic, Miner fritters away his considerable writing talents inventing trivia for a soda company's newsletter, while Gary pretends to be a recovering alcoholic (his sponsor also serves as his drug dealer). As he takes stock of his life, Miner he decides to forgo shame and embarrassment by writing an honest portrayal of himself for all the movers and shakers. With a new sense of pride, he walks with his head held high into his high school reunion, where he is working as a busboy.
Like all great satires, Home Land brims with a cast of ridiculous and absurd characters, some of whom wouldn't be out of place in Toole's Confederacy Of Dunces. Miner must contend with a wannabe mafioso landlord and his persistent ex-principal, who just happens to be an alcoholic and a fetishist. By ruthlessly roasting all the stereotypes and prejudices of suburban America, Home Land becomes an anthem for teenage outsiders. "Teabag" is as honest, angry, and disillusioned as Salinger's most celebrated protagonist; one can only wonder what would have happened if he had taken Holden under his wing, and told him to lighten up a little bit. (JM)
|
| back to top |
|
| |
FEATURE
|
|
As mainstream houses seem to merge every day and even devoted book-lovers become overwhelmed by choices, several innovative indie publishers are taking a page from magazines to meet their readers halfway. The mavericks at Clear Cut Press split profits 50/50 with authors, and sell all their books by subscription: for $65 you'll receive two new genre-bending titles, as well as six books from their edgy backlist, which includes new work from Charles D'Ambrosio and Robert Glück, as well as Lisa Robertson's much lauded Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture.
On the lit-mag front, the no-nonsense folks at One Story conquer the magazine-guilt phenomenon by sending you a single short story every three weeks. Creative new forms of distribution could be the cure for the common book. (TW)
|
| back to top |
|
| |
BOOK NEWS
A few notable bits of recent book news.
|
Remembering Hunter
|
Everyone from Tom Wolfe to Christopher Hitchens has weighed in on Hunter Thompson's death, but one of the fondest obits came from his frequent sidekick and illustrator Ralph Steadman.
|
A literary royal rumble (The Morning News)
|
The Morning News' first annual Tournament of Books finished in style, with Philip Roth's The Plot Against America throwing down against an upstart super-heavyweight, David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas.
Whose prose reigned supreme?
|
The masked man writes again (Reuters)
|
Elusive Zapatista scribe Subcomandante Marcos has raised eyebrows worldwide by collaborating with prolific Mexican writer Paco Ignacio Taibo II on a mystery novel, entitled Uncomfortable Deaths.
|
Writers team up for charity (BBC News)
|
To raise money for tsunami victims, a star-studded group of writers have published an anthology of new work, entitled New Beginnings. Helen Fielding has written the introduction and the 16 other top-shelf names include Nick Hornby, Stephen King, Margaret Atwood, Paulo Coelho, J.M. Coetzee, and Ian McEwan.
|
Joe Sacco in Iraq (The Guardian)
|
An 8 page comic/dispatch from the celebrated journalist and author of Palestine and Safe Area Gorazde. Note: the pdf is 3.5MB, so we recommend that you right-click the above link and save it to disk before you view it.
|
"I don't know what remedy there is for your condition but some hard knocks"
(Bookslut)
|
No-wave icon and rebel poet Richard Hell turns on an interviewer like a rabid cobra.
|
From Dickens to Dizzee Rascal (The Guardian)
|
Novelist Zadie Smith discusses the rise of UK hip-hop with her brother,
rapper Doc Brown.
|
Harry Potter Turns Green (The Guardian)
|
J.K. Rowling's hefty new tome will be printed on paper from sustainable
sources.
|
|
| back to top |
| |
|
|
