June 2021
A rather disproportionate intervention
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An excerpt from Ijoma Mangold’s memoir, Das Deutsche Krokodil (The German Crocodile), available in English translation from the DAS Editions imprint of Digitalback Books
A messy optical process
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On orthodoxies & heresies of typography. To serif, or sans-serif?
The myth of 1922
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What does modern mean? In Brazil, it often meant an embrace of newness as the possibility of reinvention. In Modernity in Black and White: Art and Image, Race and Identity in Brazil, 1890-1945, Rafael Cardoso unravels the myth of 1922.
The pinnacle of cartography is the pinnacle of uselessness
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« Europe », drawn from memory or intuition. Thick and thin strokes of charcoal: a nod to the coal and steel on which the polity of modern Europe is founded. But more mystical, too: these drawings represent « the conviction that simple tools can grant us the power to face the god of paper. »
By misadventure
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A short story about vertigo from the author of Utopia Avenue, Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green. « Possibly a dare, or a rite of passage, hung in the air. Remember their age: most late teenagers are immortal. »
Football is not football
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How do literary movements arise? About thirty years ago, I watched one emerge out of nothing: the subgenre of « literary » football books and magazines. Not exactly the birth of modernism, but it still taught me something about how cultural transmission works within Europe.
A kayak in Zierikzee
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Was a Dutch town founded by Inuits in the 9th century? On American discoveries of Europe.