By: Matthew Battles

Today, at long last, I saw the Ether Dome. It’s not a fan remix of a Mad Max movie, nor is it a fancifully named head shop. One of Boston’s most neglected historic sites, the […]

By: Matthew Battles

We’re happy that French-Canadian animator Patrick Boivin likes to play with toys. Ever wonder who’d win a Bruce Lee/Iron Man action figure smackdown? Ah, but things aren’t so simple as that–not by half.

By: Matthew Battles

Flickr user Tim Bean created a photographic tour of Boston locations mentioned in the novel Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1962-2008). Bean’s photos are annotated and geo-tagged for reference. We’re looking for other great […]

By: Matthew Battles

Herbert Pfostl is an artist we’d like to know more about. His work combines found images and text with figural notions of animals and herbs, half-finished rubbings, and archetypal blots and smudges. Pfostl’s drawings and […]

By: Joshua Glenn

More hilobrow cover art! Check out the entire series. *** Mad props to Jonathan Lethem for this one. And for reminding us of the following hardboiled-style treatments of Faulkner and Fitzgerald. Readers, please keep the […]

By: Joshua Glenn

Check out the entire series. *** *** HiLobrow.com offers thanks and praise to Luc Sante for these images from his collection. Do Murger and Zola count as highbrow? Not sure. Still… *** *** HILOBROW COVER […]

By: Joshua Glenn

Long Island, Summer of 1954 — what’s that hardcover book that Marilyn is reading? Daphne du Maurier’s Mary Anne? Irving Stone’s Love is Eternal? Can’t… quite… make it out. Can we zoom in, please? Oh!

By: Joshua Glenn

OK, maybe “highbrow” is not the way to describe the books we’re going to display in this series. But esteemed, anyway. Check out the entire series. *** *** *** HILOBROW COVER GALLERY: Orwell’s 1984 | […]

By: Joshua Glenn

By: Matthew Battles

Hardcore anti-legend and bibliophile Glenn Danzig talks about his library, which seems to be located in a grotto bathed in the glow of bioluminescent aquatic creatures. His bookishness calls to mind Jorge Luis Borges, who […]

By: Matthew Battles

The hilo grip on culture may be esoteric, but it’s intimate and comprehensive. It’s a storied jazz combo from the mid-twentieth century — featuring Grammy winner Gene Puerling! It’s a high-concept, low-budget film festival ( […]

By: Joshua Glenn

Hi-Lo Foods is a Jamaica Plain, Mass., supermarket whose sign we’ve always found inspirational.

By: Matthew Battles

YouTube channel of the week: poetryanimations, where portraits and photographs of the likes of Baudelaire, Dickinson, and Tennyson are moved to recite their works, often in the poets’ own voices. My attention was captured by […]

By: Matthew Battles

Wong Fei Hung (played by the great Kwan Tak Hing) gives Master Ko a writing lesson. From The Magnificent Butcher (1979), directed by Sammo Hung.

By: Matthew Battles

We’d like to think the L and the B signify Low Brow. But they more likely represent the initials of engraver M. Lucas Brunn, who made this memento mori in Germany around 1600. From the […]