The New Face Of Literary Publishing In Dallas | Art&Seek

~ Mark

My buddy Will Evans is starting a publishing house called Deep Vellum, and I’m so stoked. And now I remember one of the classic economic arguments for reading works in translation…

Tyler Cowen, the economist, advises readers to “snap up foreign fiction translated into English, if only because the selection pressures are so severe”: in order for a publisher to think a work of fiction worth the risk of translating and promoting to a foreign audience, its quality has on average to be higher than the average for homegrown work.

Or, as Colin Marshall puts it: “Snag the stuff that had to see hell to get to to you, no matter where you may be.”

The New Face Of Literary Publishing In Dallas | Art&Seek

Magic Hours

~ Mark

I read Tom Bissell’s Magic Hours, a good collection of nonfiction. Just gonna pull out a few parts I really liked. On small towns:

In a small town, success is the simplest arithmetic there is. To achieve it, you leave – then subsequently bore your new big-city friends with accounts of your narrow escape.

Thinking about Stories We Tell last night reminded me of this, on documentaries:

Explanatory impotence is not unique to the documentary but in some ways is abetted by the form. Inimitably vivid yet brutally compressed, documentaries often treasure image over information, proffer complications instead of conclusions, and touch on rather than explore. When a documentary film […] charts the mysteries of human behavior, an inconclusive effect can be electrifying.

Along the same lines, later, on nonfiction…

In the end, great nonfiction writing does not necessarily require any accuracy greater than that of an honest and vividly rendered confusion.

Overall, I enjoyed most of it, but not nearly as much as I liked his more focused, and somewhat more personal book Extra Lives.

~ Mark

Body my house
my horse my hound
what will I do
when you are fallen

Where will I sleep
How will I ride
What will I hunt

Where can I go
without my mount
all eager and quick
How will I know
in thicket ahead
is danger or treasure
when Body my good
bright dog is dead

How will it be
to lie in the sky
without roof or door
and wind for an eye

With cloud for shift
how will I hide?

May Swenson, “Question” (via malevichsquare)

I’ve come back to read this a dozen times.

Watching Details Move Through Time at Anrealage

~ Mark

Watching Details Move Through Time at Anrealage | The Cutting Class. Anrealage, AW12, Tokyo.

Anrealage, AW12, Tokyo.

In the same way that some of the Futurist artists used stuttering lines to indicate speed and movement, Japanese label Anrealage was able to give the impression of blurry human movements, seen as though captured through the passing of time for the Autumn-Winter 2012 collection.

At first some of the garments trick the viewer into believing the photos are out of focus, with exaggerated silhouettes enhanced using prints and patterns that blur on the edges. However the effect is created through carefully considered print placements and precise pattern cutting.

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Blows my mind.

~ Mark

Rivalries are born from teams that play each other a lot. When you’re not in the rivalry and you look back at it, you’re thinking, Well, I hated that guy because he would have made a great teammate.

Scot Pollard. Cf. Carolyn Hax: “Competitive people are most annoying to other competitive people.”
~ Mark

Doubt is what drives me, the nervousness that I don’t have it anymore. There’s nothing a coach or anyone can say to me that’s more powerful than my own fear that I can’t do it anymore.

Shane Battier.

Demons Hate Fresh Air

~ Mark

My father was a very disciplined and punctual man; it was a prerequisite for his creativity…. No matter what time you get out of bed, go for a walk and then work, he’d say, because the demons hate it when you get out of bed, demons hate fresh air.

Linn Ullmann talking about her father Ingmar Bergman. Via Matt Thomas.