MARCO ROTH'S 'THE SCIENTISTS'

Race and class are two tales as old as the United States itself, through lines in our nation’s winding, twisted history. They are also some of American literature’s favorite obsessions, encapsulating as they do the conflicts and vagaries of a country that has spent over two centuries trying to cohere. In Stuart Nadler’s debut novel […]

Authors’ lives can veer exhaustingly between extreme exposure and near anonymity. This is a byproduct of their creative process and an outcome of its finished form. Even a story narrated through a wide lens—stretching wildly, in turn, across time and space—has the impact of exposing its author’s own history. And yet, in most cases, they pass almost invisibly down a city street, a disconnect between writer and reader that, when bridged, can strengthen their bond.

Any middle-school English teacher can tell you that there are four basic forms of conflict in literature: man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. society, and man vs. self. In Katie Kitamura’s new novel Gone to the Forest, a wrenching study of a man, a family, and a country caught in the process of being torn apart, Tom confronts all four. On a remote farmstead in an unnamed, post-colonial nation, Tom lives under the weight of his imperious father, the two men in uneasy harmony until the intrusion of a young woman explodes their tenuous balance.

I have been looking everywhere for a book I stole last year and can’t seem to find it. This may be a karmic consequence of having stolen it to begin with—of having stolen it from the library with only the best intention, researching human desire. I checked out Curiosity: A Cultural History of Early Modern Inquiry, Barbara M. Benedict’s take on 17th- to 19th-century inquisition(1) as a reference for a project I was working on at the time. I paid handsomely in the end—in library fees—because I wanted to know what the book had to say and couldn’t seem to get around to finishing it.(2) And now it’s missing, the last relic of months living on the fourth floor in the stacks at that uptown library with smuggled-in snacks and no Internet.

Steel-toed, ten-eyed jungle boots carried me through my teens. Serious shit-kickers, these Gripfasts, though I pampered them like Gucci slip-ons. Every Sunday evening I massaged Meltonian shoe cream into their coarse grained leather with an Oral-B toothbrush. I worked the bristles in tight circles, allowing the polish to settle for ten minutes before buffing it to a sheen that would have wowed even the most punctilious drill sergeant.

Photographs of the American Southwest, a new book by photographer Dan Martensen, represents nearly ten years of road trips to the aforementioned locale: a dusty, barren hotbed of distinctly American wasteland. The title may be misleading to those expecting majestic rock formations and awesome canyons. Martensen looks instead for surreal shrines left behind by man. […]

Late last month, Printed Matter and MoMA PS1 hosted the seventh annual New York Art Book Fair, which bills itself as “the world’s premier event for artists’ books, catalogs, monographs, periodicals, and zines.” Unfolding amidst a bustling chaos that recalls an exceptionally fashionable Moroccan bazaar, the NYABF is many things. Primarily, it is a surprisingly egalitarian marketplace, showcasing art objects that occupy the full range of the ideological and price spectrum—from disposable, shitty-looking zines printed on pulpy newsprint to potentially collectable monographs and limited-edition prints to scarce photo books and artist’s proofs that are already rare and hair-raisingly expensive—all rubbing shoulders with each other on folding tables arranged in rows in loosely-themed rooms, peddled by lanyarded vendors who wear an almost chillingly uniform expression of distance and emotional detachment. It is also a gathering place for wonky designers to swap notes on kerning, stock, binding methods, and print runs; a performance space and sounding board for all types of fringey agendas; and (not least of all) possibly the world’s nerdiest hipster meat market.

Todd Selby, the photographer and artist behind the ever-popular blog The Selby, is at it again. Two years ago his first book The Selby Is in Your Place offered a glimpse into the homes and happenings of some of the most engaging people throughout the creative industries. This time around, with Edible Selby, he has […]

For his Fall 2012 collection, New York-based designer Phillip Lim looked to the leading ladies of dark comics as inspiration. The theme, with the exception of a couple playful, literal takes on superhero (KA-POW sweatshirts and capes), came to life in subtle, professionally restrained form—graphic black-and-white shifts, for example, referenced duality. Now, the designer is taking his postmodern-day superheroine vision one step further, with an original Jan Duursema (Star Wars) illustrated graphic novel that will be unveiled as the clothes hit the market.