The Editors
5 contributions
Do we need a European Review of Books?
« If I were to do it again from scratch, » Jean Monnet, a founder of the European Union, supposedly said in the ’70s, « I would start with culture. » Well, who wouldn’t?
Europas & bulls
A logo might start as a designer’s whim. Only then does one look for meanings to fill it with. On Europas: mythic, artistic, fictional, political, psychological, satirical, and finally unfinished.
On the anti-poetry of « crowdfunding campaign »
The dominant crowdfunding platform is called Kickstarter; kickstarting was something you did to an engine. To « kickstart » the European Review of Books makes it feel like we’re riding a motorcycle in World War I. But we only want peace!
The ordinary jacket of today
One reason we believe so much in the ERB is that it doesn’t stand in competition with magazines we love; it joins them, and does so in admiration. This project has, in fact, made us encounter literary magazines we hadn’t read before, look anew at magazines we’d put aside, discover beautiful magazines in languages we wish we could read. We’re starting the ERB because of the new solidarities such a magazine can create.
The pinnacle of cartography is the pinnacle of uselessness
« 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, says the ERB’s print designer Patrick Doan, « the conviction that simple tools can grant us the power to face the god of paper. »
