A library implies an act of faith

Posted on October 12, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

Opened in 1897 as the Chicago Public Library, the Chicago Cultural Center is housed in a beautiful Beaux-Arts building designed by George Foster Shepley, and opened in 1897. While the center is famous for its stunning Tiffany stained-glass domes, it also features a series of wonderful mosaic murals.

The mosaics are located in the staircase that leads from the Preston Bradley Hall – the site of the world’s largest Tiffany stained-glass dome. This historic hall was originally the place where people picked up the books they had requested from the Chicago Public Library.

 

 

 

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I don’t need anything from here.

Posted on October 11, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

“I Don’t Need Anything from Here”

by

László Krasznahorkai

translated by Ottilie Mulzet

I would leave everything here: the valleys, the hills, the paths, and the jaybirds from the gardens, I would leave here the petcocks and the padres, heaven and earth, spring and fall, I would leave here the exit routes, the evenings in the kitchen, the last amorous gaze, and all of the city-bound directions that make you shudder, I would leave here the thick twilight falling upon the land, gravity, hope, enchantment, and tranquillity, I would leave here those beloved and those close to me, everything that touched me, everything that shocked me, fascinated and uplifted me, I would leave here the noble, the benevolent, the pleasant, and the demonically beautiful, I would leave here the budding sprout, every birth and existence, I would leave here incantation, enigma, distances, inexhaustibility, and the intoxication of eternity; for here I would leave this earth and these stars, because I would take nothing with me from here, because I’ve looked into what’s coming, and I don’t need anything from here.

via

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The Invention of Fantasy

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

The Man Who Invented Fantasy

All those wizards, ogres, and barely-clad elf queens in the bookstore? You have Lester del Rey to thank.

by Dan Sinykin

Lester del Rey wore 1950s-style horn-rimmed glasses, an unruly billy-goat beard, and his silver hair brushed back above a big forehead. He liberally dispensed cards that said: Lester del Rey, Expert. He sometimes said his full name was Ramón Felipe San Juan Mario Silvio Enrico Smith Heathcourt-Brace Sierra y Alvarez-del Rey y de los Verdes. He was in fact born Leonard Knapp, son of Wright Knapp, in 1915 in rural southeastern Minnesota, subject to the Minnesotan fever—Jay Gatz, Prince Rogers Nelson, Robert Zimmerman—for reinventing oneself. In 1977, del Rey, then in his 60s, turned his proclivity for fabulism to profit: He invented fantasy fiction as we know it.

I always thought fantasy had existed forever. Elves and wizards were old. Stories about them must have been, too, drawn from deep history, passed from generation to generation, just as my dad read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings to me when I was 6. Part of the magic of these tales is the sense that they have always been this way; it’s thanks to that continuity with the past that we’re able to touch the enchanted premodern world, a place that hasn’t yet been rationalized by capitalism and science. With C.S. Lewis’s Lucy, I, too, walked through the wardrobe to Narnia. By middle school in the mid-1990s, I was ripping through the books of Piers Anthony’s Xanth series, with its basilisks and ogres, which were by then regularly landing on the New York Times bestseller list.

But it turns out that fantasy, as an enduring publishing genre, is hardly older than I am. All sorts of things had to go right—and wrong—to make it happen.

READ MORE

Source: Slate
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Global Poster Art

Posted on October 9, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

I was today years old when I learned that London Transport has been commissioning poster art since 1908. Now, the London Transport Museum’s new Global Poster Gallery will offer visitors a deep dive into the relationship between art and the Underground. Opening on October 20th, the inaugural exhibition is all about commissioning. How to Make a Poster will explore the poster-making process in the pre-digital age with more than 110 artworks from London Transport Museum’s huge archive.

By the 1920s and 1930s, London Transport was commissioning artists and designers from more modern artists. At the new Global Poster Gallery, audiences can expect to see work by Man Ray, Abram Games, Hans Unger, Edward McKnight Kauffer and Dora M Batty, among many others.

For more Info

www.ltmuseum.co.uk/visit/museum-guide/global-poster-gallery

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thinking about burning the bookstore down

Posted on October 8, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

In the Bookstore

By: Julia Vinograd

I went down to the bookstore this evening
and found myself in the poetry section.
But for every thin book of poems
there was a thick biography of the poet
and an even thicker book
by someone who’s supposed to know
explaining what the poet
is supposed to’ve said and why he didn’t.
So you don’t have to waste your time
on the best the writer could do,
the words he fought the darkness and himself for,
the unequal battle with beauty.
Instead you can read comfortably
about the worst the writer could do:
the mess he made of his life,
how he fought with his family,
cheated on his lovers, didn’t pay his debts
and not only drank too much
but all the stupid things
he ever said to the bartender
just before getting 86’d will be printed for you
and they’re just as stupid
as the things everyone says just before getting 86’d.
The books explaining the poet
are themselves inexplicable.
The students who have to read them
cheat.
I left the poetry section
thinking about burning the bookstore down.
Some of a poet’s work comes from his life, ok.
But most of a poet’s work comes
in spite of his life, in spite of everything,
even in spite of bookstores.
So I went to the next section
and bought a murder mystery but I haven’t read it yet.
I find I don’t want to know who done it
and why;
I want to do it myself.

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Forthcoming memoir

Posted on October 7, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

 

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NYC Runs on Coffee

Posted on October 6, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

It’s no secret that I am obsessed with coffee. I love drinking it, I love roasting coffee beans, and I love learning about all things coffee. So, I was delighted to discover that the amazing New York Coffee Festival is back this year in Manhattan. Celebrating its seventh year in NYC, the New York Coffee Festival is running from October 6 through the 8th at the Metropolitan Pavilion.

New York’s premier coffee event brings together more than 100 exhibitors for tastings, workshops, talks, and interactive demonstrations. One of the annual highlights is the Roasters Village where some of the world’s leading coffee roasters share their expertise along with the best new beans.

Best of all, this year’s profits are being donated to New York City-based nonprofit Charity:Water, which works to provide drinking water to people in developing nations across Africa, Central America, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. So far, the coffee festivals have been able to raise around $290,000 to Charity:Water. This year’s goal is to raise more than $50,000.

Details :

When: Friday, Oct. 6 to Sunday, Oct. 8, 2023, 9:30 a.m. – 6 p.m.

Where: Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011

Website: www.newyorkcoffeefestival.com

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An Audacious Throwback

Posted on October 5, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

I only gave up my print subscription to the New York Times last year replacing it with the newspaper’s excellent digital version. But I still miss that satisfying feel of a big, foldable broadside edition. Now the new County Highway, which boldly describes itself as “America’s Only Newspaper,” is offering a throwback to the golden era of America’s ink-stained broadsheets. The bi-monthly paper is a love letter to the joys of reading in print, presenting itself up as a 19th-century newspaper.

County Highway daringly eschews the digital age—it won’t have an internet edition. Its online footprint will be limited to select articles for subscribers and a narrow social media presence. Designed by the legendary team at Pentagram, the visual identity of County Highway demonstrates its commitment to print culture. Its typography pays homage to 19th-century newspapers, while headlines echo the clipped cadence of vintage journalism. Pentagram worked closely with County Highway’s co-founder and editor, David Samuels, to develop the look and feel of the publication. Samuels wanted to appeal to and cultivate an audience that is not afraid of a long read, and County Highway is really a magazine in the form of a newspaper. It has an outsider persona that is anti-digital and a nostalgia for the golden days of the newspaper.

According to co-founder and editor David Samuels (via the Guardian), the paper achieved its targets for year-three subscriptions and sales within the first three weeks of its launch in the summer, despite there being no advertising. Instead, copies of the first issue were simply displayed in bookstores and record shops in the US and Canada, relying on recognition and word of mouth.

 

 

 

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In a galaxy far, far away…

Posted on October 4, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

Although the video below is way outside of the usual remit of Travel Between The Pages, I couldn’t resist sharing it. Created with a big AI assist by London-based illustrator, designer, and editor Douggy Pledger, Star Wars 1923 will either thrill or infuriate Star Wars fans.

 

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if on a winter’s night

Posted on October 3, 2023 by Brian D. Butler

As a life-long fan of Italo Calvino’s writing, I was very excited to discover this marvelous BBC audio adaptation of his post-modern classic If on a winter’s night a traveler . 

Released On: 24 Sep 2023
Available for 22 days

Relax. Concentrate. Turn that phone off. Dispel every other thought. In fact let the world around you fade. You are about to listen to a radio adaptation of Italo Calvino’s iconic masterpiece If on a winter’s night a traveller…. Enter a labyrinth of ingeniously inventive audio worlds as you, the listener, turn detective in your attempts to get to the heart of the story and so become embroiled in a trans-global conspiracy of rogue translators, lost languages and disintegrating publishing houses. You, yes you, the heroic listener are plunged into an epic caper of disappearance, double crosses and beautiful, authentic romance. A multitude of characters are brought to life by Toby Jones, Indira Varma and Tim Crouch in BBC Audio Drama North’s premiere of Italo Calvino’s iconic post modern novel translated by William Weaver, dramatised for radio by Tim Crouch and Toby Jones and directed by Nadia Molinari. If on a winter’s night a traveller has been recorded in front of an audience at BBC Contains Strong Language Festival at Leeds Playhouse as part of BBC’s 100 years of Radio Drama.

If on a winter’s night a traveler (Italian: Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore) is a story within a story about the reader trying to read a book called If on a winter’s night a traveler. Each chapter is divided into two sections. The first section of each chapter is in second person, and describes the process the reader goes through to attempt to read the next chapter of the book they are reading. The second half is the first part of a new book that the reader (“you”) finds. The second half is always about something different from the previous ones.

 

 

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