By: Joshua Glenn

Did Ing­mar Berg­man invent the death-playing-chess meme?

By: HILOBROW

When did murder in a bookshop or library become a middlebrow meme? Example: After all, although some bookshops and libraries may be middlebrow, there’s nothing inherently middlebrow about these institutions. It’s their sentimentalization by “booklovers” […]

By: Joshua Glenn

Here PROSPERO discovers FERDINAND and MIRANDA playing at chess MIRANDA: Sweet lord, you play me false. FERDINAND: No, my dearest love, I would not for the world. MIRANDA: Yes, for a score of kingdoms you […]

By: Joshua Glenn

*** An occasional series, which follows up on themes explored in the ten-part HiLobrow Cover Art series.

By: Joshua Glenn

My little love, do you remember, Ere we were grown so sadly wise, Those evenings in the bleak December, Curtain’d warm from the snowy weather, When you and I play’d chess together, Checkmated by each […]

By: Joshua Glenn

In the latest issue of Print Magazine, the graphic designer and design critic Steven Heller introduces perhaps the most ineradicable of all design viruses: the cutoff-torso-spread-leg framing device known as the “A-Frame.” Digging into the […]

By: Joshua Glenn

*** An occasional series, which follows up on themes explored in the ten-part HiLobrow Cover Art series.

By: Joshua Glenn

“Chess is so inspiring that I do not believe a good player is capable of having an evil thought during the game.” — William Steinitz, Austrian-American chess player and the first undisputed world chess champion, […]

By: Joshua Glenn

“The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from […]

By: HILOBROW

Meta-commentary: Researching pulp cover illustrations in which books are featured is exceedingly difficult. Try googling the phrases “book on book” or “book cover featuring book cover” some time, and see for yourself. *** Twelfth in […]

By: Joshua Glenn

“At present my life can almost be likened to what a chess-piece in a game must feel when the opponent says: This piece is not to be touched — like an idle onlooker; for my hour […]

By: Joshua Glenn

DINNER. Not a little fit, not a little fit sun sat in shed more mentally. Let us why, let us why weight, let us why winter chess, let us why way. Only a moon to […]

By: Joshua Glenn

But O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag — It’s so elegant So intelligent ‘What shall I do now? What shall I do?’ ‘I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street ‘With […]

By: Joshua Glenn

ORANGE: Egmont, our interests have for years weighed upon my heart; I ever stand as over a chess-board, and regard no move of my adversary as insignificant; and as men of science carefully investigate the […]

By: HILOBROW

House of Mystery #201 (April, 1972). Cover illustration by Michael Kaluta. *** Ninth in an occasional series.