Harvard University Press Publicity Blog

Greil Marcus - "Lipstick Traces Live" @ Columbia November 19

See Greil Marcus, author of Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century, released this year in a new twentieth anniversary edition, as well as The Dustbin of History, In the Fascist Bathroom, The Shape of Things to Come, The Old, Weird America, Mystery Train, and other books, not to mention co-editor of A New Literary History of America, out and making the rounds presently, deliver a "lecture as performance" live at Columbia University. "Lipstick Traces Live" is based on material from the book and will take place November 19 at 6pm, with a signing to follow.

click on flyer for full-sized image

More details here.

A tale of two editions

At Le Répetoire, a discussion of aesthetics -- Penguin's edition of Benjamin's seminal "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" versus our own, which carries the title "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility" (for more on the distinction, see Samuel Weber's Benjamin's -abilities, published earlier this year). For those interested in the how's and why's of how a book design gets chosen, there's a small story behind this one. Back when The New Yorker reviewed our edition of Benjamin's ruminations on hashish, they got Ralph Steadman (of "Fear and Loathing" fame) to do a couple drawings of Benjamin to accompany the review. One of them ended up not making it into the magazine, for space reasons or some such, and when we saw it we thought it was not only cool, but quite germane to our then-forthcoming edition of the "Work of Art" essay. We got in touch with Mr. Steadman, and thus a cover was born.

||| The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media

Birds, blogs

Small slide show of the inimitable Rosamond Purcell's photos from Egg & Nest, courtesy of Andrea Walker at The New Yorker's "Book Bench" blog.

Birds, drawing still cool

Ben Fry makes the case for good old-fashioned drawing as a go-to method for effective data visualization, even in this aggressively digital age, using our recently-released Audubon: Early Drawings as a jumping off point for the discussion. Really a fascinating perspective.

For your information, Audubon: Early Drawings collects the drawings made by the famous naturalist during the crucial early decade of his career. The drawings, housed in the Houghton Library here at Harvard, are published together here for the first time in large format (14x11--that's big!) and full color (complete with elegant slipcase, folks--need we urge you further to get on this?).

NYU Book Mural

A new mural at New York University depicts the work spaces of six famous writers who spent part if not all of their careers in New York. Be sure to check out the slide show that accompanies the article.

For comparison's sake, here's a photo of the work space of the writer who brings you this blog:

Sometimes the glamour even gets to me, and I work here!

Hong Kong--City Between Worlds

A superbly thorough review of Leo Ou-fan Lee's City Between Worlds: My Hong Kong in PopMatters today. Michael Buening hits all the right notes in his characterization of Lee's approach to his adopted hometown, a city whose myriad identities require an equal variety of analytic techniques if one is to even come close to capturing what it's like to be in Hong Kong, or to be a Hong Konger:

Uncertainty and transience is part of [Hong Kong's] character and in City Between Worlds Leo Ou-fan Lee uses a variety of techniques—travelogue, revisionist history, cultural deconstruction, and personal essay – to pin down what he calls this “confusion and contradiction” while uncovering the deep communal roots that often go unnoticed by outside commentators.

[...]

The very writing of this book is another way Lee gives voice and creation to “his” Hong Kong. City Between Worlds balances probing intellectual analysis, fierce criticism, and gentle warmth, all imbued with the frustrated love any city dweller will immediately recognize as the elusive grasp to define where one lives.

We couldn't have said it better ourselves. As an added bonus, don't miss Leo speaking about his book at the Harvard Coop this coming Monday (June 23) at 7pm. The Coop is located in the heart of Harvard Square--it's pretty hard to miss. Hope to see you there.

Event--ARTSCIENCE: Creativity in the Post-Google Generation

New Yorkers take note--HUP author and all-around renaissance man David Edwards will be in your area, not this coming Friday but the next (June 27). He'll be speaking at the New York Academy of Sciences on his latest book, Artscience: Creativity in the Post-Google Generation, in which he describes "how contemporary creators achieve breakthroughs in the arts and sciences by developing their ideas in an intermediate zone of human creativity where neither art nor science is easily defined."

Edwards puts his ideas into action at the newly opened Le Laboratoire in Paris, where artists and scientists come together to develop novel ways of thinking about the problems we face today. For more on the NYAS event, see their website. For more on Artscience, see our page.

Goodbye to the Caribbean monk seal

From the New York Times' "Dot Earth" blog we learn that the Caribbean monk seal, "the only subtropical seal native to  the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico," has been declared extinct. US fisheries officials have stated that this particular seal species, not seen since 1952, likely met its demise at the hands of human hunters. Given the rate of environmental destruction of both flora and fauna in the Caribbean, pretty soon the only place you'll be able to see some of these wonders of the natural world is in books like Eladio Fernández's Hispaniola: A Photographic Journey through Island Biodiversity, a photographic chronicle of one of the most spectacular, if poorly understood, troves of biota on the planet.

Fernández is a naturalist and a conservation photographer specializing in the fauna and flora of the Greater Antilles. Based in his native Dominican Republic, he is president of Sociedad Ornitologica Hispaniola, a conservation organization that works to save critically endangered birds. Fernández is also active in Societé Audubon d'Haïti, a sister organization based in Port-au-Prince, which works towards the preservation of Haiti's two remaining national parks, Pic Macaya and La Visite. Check out his website for examples of his work.

"...should be required reading for any journalist bound for Beijing"

So says China expert Jeff Wasserstrom in a review of Geremie Barmé's The Forbidden City, the latest entry in our Wonders of the World series. The China Beat, the blog Wasserstrom helps to edit, should probably also be required reading for anyone putting pen to paper on contemporary China, given that its authors, like Barmé, are able to distill sound scholarly thinking about China and its history for the layman in understandable and frankly enjoyable prose.

Also not to be missed is Barmé's web-based supplementary material for the book, including extra graphics and notes that didn't fit in our pocket-sized format, hosted at his China Heritage Project site.

"A shattering of tradition"

Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (2nd version)" (1935-36, unpublished in this form during Benjamin's lifetime):

"One might focus these aspects of the artwork in the concept of the aura, and go on to say: what withers in the age of the technological reproducibility of the work of art is the latter’s aura. This process is symptomatic; its significance extends far beyond the realm of art. It might be stated as a general formula that the technology of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the sphere of tradition. By replicating the work many times over, it substitutes a mass existence for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to reach the recipient in his or her own situation, it actualizes that which is reproduced. These two processes lead to a massive upheaval in the domain of objects handed down from the past—a shattering of tradition which is the reverse side of the present crisis and renewal of humanity. Both processes are intimately related to the mass movements of our day."

The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media is available now from HUP.

Above: Drawing of Benjamin by Ralph Steadman, 2006.