Author: Joshua Glenn
Josh Glenn, HILOBROW's editor, is a principal of the commercial semiotics agency Semiovox. He is co-author and/or co-editor of several books, including The Idler's Glossary, Significant Objects, and the bestselling family activities guide UNBORED. In the ’00s, Josh was a columnist and blogger for the Boston Globe's IDEAS section; in the ’90s, he published the zine/journal Hermenaut. He lives in Kingston, NY.
Jacko and Farrah
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Earlier this week, Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam gave my generational periodization scheme a shout-out. Beam writes: Glenn has devoted considerable time — too much time, frankly — to slicing up the post World War […]
Read This PostPeter Lorre
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From Abbott, the courtly assassin in Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, to the un-manly yet indefatigable Joel Cairo, in The Maltese Falcon, PETER LORRE (1904-64) mocked or otherwise subverted the very concept of […]
Read This PostDouble Exposure (4)
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“I am the sum of my small steps,” announce the handwritten-style notes in an advertisement torn from a recent issue of Oprah Magazine. Ecce Middlebrow’s ideal American woman, forever in pursuit of a clear (un-anxious, […]
Read This PostRepo Man Generation
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In a recent HiLobrow.com post, I casually asserted that the so-called Baby Boomers [I call them the Blank Generation] were born from 1944-53. I’m aware, of course, that America’s postwar “baby boom” began in 1946 […]
Read This PostJudging the judges
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Looking back on it all, from the vantage point of a couple months, it’s apparent that the Susan Boyle Phenomenon (SBP) had very little to do with poor Susan Boyle (SB) herself. Susan Boyle’s judges […]
Read This PostThe Trouble with Boomers
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The oldest Boomers turn 65 this year, and the youngest turn 56. By now, they’ve partially relinquished their collective death grip on the best jobs — though not the best lifestyles, which they’ll always enjoy. […]
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The Argonaut Folly (part 1 of 3)
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An abridged version of this essay appeared in the journal n+1 (Winter 2007). PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE I set out to commemorate the heroes of old who sailed the good ship […]
Read This PostDouble Exposure (3)
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Is it so small a thing To have enjoy’d the sun, To have lived light in the spring, To have loved, to have thought, to have done… SO DEMANDS THE protagonist of Matthew Arnold’s 1852 […]
Read This PostAnd we lived beneath the waves
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Psychedelic revelations about the artificial nature of reality
Read This PostQuatschwatch (1)
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OUR READERS already know that HILOBROW has a problem with — in fact, an animus against — quatsch. As of today, we’re going to start fighting back against its reign of terror. Building on my […]
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