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.
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 […]
Read This PostChristopher Lasch
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An intellectual historian and historian of intellectuals, CHRISTOPHER LASCH (1932-94) picked up the torch offered by negative-dialectical curmudgeons (T.W. Adorno, Dwight Macdonald) who’d rejected the shibboleths of liberals and conservatives alike. Pinpointing the social, political, […]
Read This PostT.H. White
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“To and fro/Stop and go/That’s what makes the world go round…” Ugh. I pity the fool who sees Disney’s 1963 adaptation of The Sword in the Stone (from which these insipid lyrics are quoted) before […]
Read This PostMy Wes Anderson Problem — And Ours
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WES ANDERSON’S Bottle Rocket (1996) raised the hopes of hilobrows everywhere, and his Rushmore (1998) fulfilled those hopes in spades. So what happened? Anderson once knew how to get a great performance out of his […]
Read This PostImmortal New Gods
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A year ago this month, I identified a generational cohort of Americans and Western Europeans: the New Gods. Born between 1914 and 1923, the New Gods are — to translate my periodization into the middlebrow-speak […]
Read This PostHilobrow Cover Art (10)
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This is the final installment in our HiLobrow Cover Art series. Thanks to Luc Sante, Jonathan Lethem, and everyone else who sent in examples. It’s been fun! Check out the entire series. *** *** *** […]
Read This PostHilobrow Cover Art (9)
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Special edition in the HiLobrow Cover Art series! Not esteemed fiction, this time, but classical music with racy cover imagery. Check out the entire series. *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** […]
Read This PostHilobrow Cover Art (8)
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Will wonders never cease? These covers keep flooding in. Thanks to everyone who’s contributed to this important cultural archaeology project. Check out the entire series.
Read This PostHilobrow Cover Art (7)
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Our circle of hermenautic comrades has turned up several other examples of esteemed authors published in racy paperback editions. Enjoy! Check out the entire series. *** *** *** NB: Hoagland’s Cat Man won the 1954 […]
Read This PostHilo at Pazzo
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On Thursday, the editors of HILOBROW discussed the particulars of our project during a weekly meetup with Brian and Tom Nealon, proprietors of the excellent Pazzo Books (located in the Boston neighborhood of West Roxbury). […]
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