This photo, of Alex Chilton and Paul Westerberg (the Replacements), was snagged from The Lives They Lived, a Times Magazine feature celebrating the lives of knowns and lesser-knowns who died in 2010. Just on a visual level, the feature has a lot to recommend it: the photography is fantastic throughout, and I really dig the little black-and-white monograms they designed for each entry.
Jules de Balincourt, U.S. World Studies II, 2005
This past week I hand-delivered a massive block of writing from SF to Berkeley. It’s the sort of menial errand that internships are notorious for, but I usually perform these little unglamorous tasks with gusto, cheerfully. But 1200 pages? To Berkeley? If it weren’t for the recipient of this bricklike parcel, I may have bristled at the task. However! In a scratchy hand on a to-from sticker: “Greil Marcus”!
My internship is rewarding and joyless by turns. Most workdays involve phoning publishers, requesting review copies of books, fact checking, probably a burrito, maybe a mail run. Today I was asked to contribute a few entries to a fake bibliography that’s part of a forthcoming book. The biblio runs fully 5 pages, not including my additions, and half the titles have nothing whatever to do with the book. Favoritest assignment so far.
A pretty great essay on T.S. Eliot.