Books
5 entries- Aug 21Notenewest
These books — they have desires. They creep and sneak slowly onto my table until soon there is a pile. Each falling over another eager to have its interiority claim a bit of mine. Most are content with one such ride. Others, oh they jump over and over from the precipice of the bookshelf — where they inexplicably find …
- Dec 8Essay The Tortured Artist Is So Yesterday
41 years ago, Samuel Lipman wrote that an artist’s life is a “constant—and constantly losing—battle” against one’s own limits. That image has lasted because print culture taught us to imagine the …
3 min - Dec 6EssayWorld Machines Four Early-Modern Tempers for a World That Can Summon Itself
This is a partial synthesis of the books read through 2025 in the Contraptions Book Club. We live in a moment when the whole of human culture has become strangely available, no longer just an archive …
8 min - Jul 31EssayWorld Machines Looking Forward to Montaigne
As part of the Contraptions book club we will be reading the Essays of Montaigne. I actually started to read the Donald Frame translations, but felt I needed more context. In the book club, Paul …
2 min - Jul 27Essay On Protocols, Wagons, and Associated Acrobatics
Years ago, maybe a decade even, I fell in love with this software called Scrivener. I could never justify buying it because I didn’t actually write. But having that software would represent a little …
3 min