« 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?
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.
Kickstarting used to be 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 ERB doesn’t stand in competition with magazines we love; it joins them, and does so in admiration. This project has made us encounter literary magazines we hadn’t read before and discover beautiful magazines in languages we wish we could read.
« 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. »
Like plots in a garden cemetery, with lamentations, good-riddances or other epitaphs.
Or, the art of the error