Hey y’all,
Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:
- I had some more thoughts on genius vs. scenius.
- If I taught a course about art, copying, and appropriation, I would use this scenario as a final exam essay question.
- This story from Michael Robbins’ Paris Review interview reminded me of Lynda Barry’s ideas about “the image,” so I’ve been flipping back through her creativity guide/collage masterpiece What It Is, a book so good it makes me want to quit.
- What’s on Jeffrey Tambor’s
bookshelf floor. Lots of love for public libraries — they need it in these anti-tax days — which reminds me, I need to read this book of photo essays. If you ever get to see one of his acting workshops, I highly recommend it. His new memoir is called Are You Anybody?
- Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s daughter, Paris, is remembering her mom on a special Instagram account. (See my post about AKR: “pay attention to what you pay attention to.”)
- Neal Pollack talks to his son Elijah about their “hipster homeschooling” podcast, Extra Credit, a kind of sequel to his book, Alternadad.
- Eye candy: movie posters without text (found via @chappelltracker’s excellent weekly design roundup), Frans Masereel’s The City, a big bunch of maps, a Twitter of great movie stills @oneperfectshot, jazz album covers by Andy Warhol, and a poster for artists in dark times.
- More eye candy: I watched the re-release of Michael Mann’s Heat this week and loved it. Here’s an interview looking back after 20 years and a super thorough post about its making. Oh, and speaking of Michael Mann, sometimes I get the theme to Last of the Mohicans stuck in my head for days — did you know the composer got most of it from this track?
- Ear candy: I’ve been listening to a lot of Reagan-era music lately (gee, I wonder why?), like X’s More Fun In The New World and Elvis Costello’s King Of America.
- RIP Chris Cornell, frontman of Soundgarden. I don’t believe in guilty pleasures, but if I did, they would be one. They’ve served, many times, as my “deadline” band: I play Superunknown really loud, almost as a kind of punishment, until the work is done. Here’s a nice interview on the WTF Podcast from 2014.
Thanks for reading. If you like this newsletter, forward it to a friend, or tweet me some love.
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xoxo,
Austin
PS. We’re in full-on graduation season (my advice for grads is here) and you can always get signed copies of all my books from Bookpeople. (They ship everywhere!) Plus, the ebook of Steal, as I write this, is still $1.99.
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