MEDIA DIET

By: Mark Kingwell
March 9, 2026

A weekly series exploring the media “input” of a group of people — HILOBROW’s friends and contributors — whose “output” we admire.

Mark has been a valued HILOBROW contributor since 2009. His first post was on the topic of LOUIS ALTHUSSER. His most recent contributions to this publication include: ONCE UPON A HONEYMOON | TEARS OF A CLOWN | and with Josh Glenn he coauthored the recent epistolary sci-fi conversation BROKEN KNOWLEDGE.

Toronto…

HILOBROW: What forms of media do you “take in” the most regularly/frequently, during a typical day or week?

MARK KINGWELL: News websites every day: NYTimes and three Canadian ones (Globe, Star, Post — centre, left, and right, respectively). I mostly go for opinion columns and word puzzles. Then random links to webzines or substacks, the weather, HiLoBrow, and sometimes a philosophy blog. But morning sports highlights, first and always. Love sports, love sports clips!

HILOBROW: What work of literature (old or new) would you recommend to someone trying to make sense of today’s world?

MARK KINGWELL: Hmm. The Great Gatsby? Gravity’s Rainbow? White Noise? For right this minute, though, I’ll go with Jenny Offill’s Weather and Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend. Now that’s how you write political fiction without any hint of didacticism.

HILOBROW: What work of nonfiction (old or new) would you recommend to someone trying to make sense of today’s world?

MARK KINGWELL: Plato’s Republic? No, I’m going to say John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society (1958). Witty, incisive, prescient. JKG reminds us of the existential emptiness yawning beneath our relentless drive for wealth and productivity.

HILOBROW: What are your reading habits?

MARK KINGWELL: I read fiction in bed before going to sleep, and also when — too often — I wake up in the small hours. Non-fiction, usually philosophy, sometimes economics or history, I read in my office. I can only do the latter in short bursts now. Flown are the days when I could read Habermas or Gadamer for eight hours straight in a hushed library. That’s young-man work.

HILOBROW: What’s the best movie you’ve seen recently?

MARK KINGWELL: One Battle After Another, d. PTA. It was a now-rare cinema visit for me, and the excellent source material (Pynchon’s Vineland), cool soundtrack, and long wide-angle shots left me breathless. The performances were also pretty great. The politics are murky, as maybe befits our moment.

HILOBROW: What’s the best movie you’ve ever seen?

MARK KINGWELL: North By Northwest (1959, d. Hitchcock), because of its seamless (also shameless) mix of thrills, charm, humour, and smarts. I love that the MacGuffin in this movie is an empty set: George Kaplan, the secret agent who does not exist. Also that Cary Grant’s immaculate grey suit, exactly matching his distinguished temple hair highlights, is the unsung hero of the story.

HILOBROW: What’s the best TV series you’ve seen recently?

MARK KINGWELL: Task, I think, which featured Mark Ruffalo as a former priest and now clapped-out FBI agent investigating small-time gang crime in rust belt Pennsylvania. It was depressing and uplifting all at once, brilliantly acted, a really memorable bit of TV in the midst of all the slop.

HILOBROW: What’s the best TV series you’ve ever seen?

MARK KINGWELL: Got to be The Wire, which felt like TV drama where quality was the point, not an accidental property. But I’m going to slide in Mad Men and Succession. These series really are the sprawling social-realist novels of our time, especially when most contemporary fiction is a junkyard of self-important identity politics or autofictional writing-program wankery. And/or.

HILOBROW: What music — genres, particular artists and songs — do you listen to during a typical day?

MARK KINGWELL: I have an internet station, Indie Pop Rocks, on for background when I’m writing — a nice mix of old and new “alt” music (recent scroll: Flaming Lips, Broken Social Scene, Iron and Wine, Decembrists, Vampire Weekend, Belle & Sebastian). In my office I have a CD player and stacks of discs. Recent ones on repeat: Glenn Gould playing Orlando Gibbons and William Byrd; Keith Jarrett Kõln Concert; Radiohead Kid A; a bootleg of the Canadian band Stars; some Teenage Fanclub; and the Bryan Ferry album of covers called Another Time, Another Place.

HILOBROW: What music did you love as a teenager? Do you still listen to it today?

MARK KINGWELL: Mostly British punk and New Wave: Clash, Jam, Elvis Costello, Buzzcocks, Stranglers. Also a lot of Bowie, Nick Lowe, XTC, and Graham Parker. I like watching old first-gen music videos of these tunes on YouTube, but the music itself tends to make me melancholy. Age, man! Stuff from my pre-teens, courtesy my older brother or the schoolyard grapevine, sounds better to me now: Slade, Three Dog Night, CCR, Simon and Garfunkel, The Band, Joni Mitchell, early Springsteen. We were also really into Grand Funk Railroad and Alice Cooper, ha.

HILOBROW: Do you subscribe to any magazines or newsletters that you’d strongly recommend?

MARK KINGWELL: Harper’s, because I’m still on the masthead there, but I don’t read it as thoroughly or with as much enjoyment as I used to. Also the Canadian art quarterly Border Crossings, where I contribute occasionally, and the beautiful UPenn design periodical LA+ (likewise).

HILOBROW: How do you use social media, these days?

MARK KINGWELL: I have no accounts. Also: flip phone.

HILOBROW: Share a media “input” of yours that wasn’t listed above.

MARK KINGWELL: During a recent long car trip my wife Molly introduced me to “The Rest Is History,” which features two very entertaining Englishmen dissecting historical events in extended plummy riffs. Brilliant! I’m also addicted to the “Honest Trailers” videos on YouTube — better than film class.

MEDIA DIET

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