woobiquity

The future of magazine publishing?

Maybe. (The New York Times all but suggested as much in an article yesterday.)

But in some ways self-published magazines seem more to me like the future as seen from the past. Isn't it just typical that desktop publishing would reach its apotheosis ten years after almost everybody has turned to web publishing instead. 

Or could this be the backlash at last, a wave of paper-based, niche fetishism like the world has never seen? Now, now, let's not get carried away. Let's not start dreaming of glossy literary journals or anything like that. 

'A Color of the Sky'

From 3QuarksDaily, a poem by Tony Hoagland that begins:

Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,

driving over the hills from work.

There are the dark parts on the road

                     when you pass through clumps of wood

and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,

but that doesn’t make the road an allegory. 

Continue reading 'A Color of the Sky'

It goes on to be a poem about the discomforts and sexuality of springtime. Though really it's a poem about the discomforts and sexuality of life. Which is appropriate, considering this poem appeared in a collection called (wonderful title) 'What Narcissism Means to Me'. Do I need to add that it is also a poem laced with allegory? Snicker, snicker.

Photo: the sky above where I live, taken about this time last year.

London's new literary salon (it's a hothouse)

A young Faber author reads from his new novel while wearing a cardboard box on his head. Nineteen interested peoples sit knee-to-knee on summery cushions (except for four lucky ones who nabbed the wrought-iron garden bench), and the glass hothouse doors are slid open a crack to let out some of the heat from the little birchwood-burning stove.

Where could such whimsies as this exist? I hesitate to tell you, because then there might not be room for me at the next one. But alright, it's the bookshop (a tiny conservatory) at The Wapping Project, run by the delightful, effervescent Lydia Fulton. Coming up, there's meant to be a different reading every week, though I fear the event may soon outgrow its magical confines. Which would be a shame.

The author in the photo above, taken last night, is Richard Milward, a 24-year-old from Middlesbrough in the north of England. He's funny and strange and brilliant. You might remember his debut, Apples. The book his St Martins-approved headpiece replicates, nearly, is Ten Storey Love Song, a new novel that is a single paragraph from beginning to end. Flick through it, he explained, and every page resembles a block of flats.