Saturday Night/Sunday Warning S2E4: I coulda been a newsletter writer...
An episode of weekly recommendations and miscellaneous entertainments.
This is the weekly round-up of things I liked in the past seven days (which is free) + extra content for paid subscribers. Read on for the free bit before the paywall politely falls like an apologetic anthropomorphic velvet rope in a Pixar movie…
5 Things I Actually Enjoyed This Week
1. ARTICLE
The mystery of the Dune font by Florian Hardwig for Fonts In Use
Florian Hardwig has a very cool name and a very cool job. This essay on the origins of the ‘Dune’ font “that defined the visual identity of the science fiction series and its author, Frank Herbert” is a gloriously nerdy deep dive; I commend it to the house:
In the six decades since the publication of the original Dune novel in 1965, the science fiction franchise has gone through many different typographic identities. Notable examples include the use of Giorgio for the British paperbacks by NEL (c. 1968) and Albertus for David Lynch’s movie adaptation (1984). But another typeface has even stronger ties to Dune and its author. It appeared on the covers of dozens of books, including the classic Dune trilogy and its sequels, and also on other titles by – or about – Frank Herbert, from various imprints. Strangely enough, the name of this typeface is barely known even among die-hard fans.
Davison Art Nouveau was drawn by lettering artist Meyer M. “Dave” Davison for Photo-Lettering (PLINC), a typesetting company in New York City. It was first shown in PLINC’s 1967 Alphabet Yearbook. Basically a bold all-caps roman with long bracketed serifs, Davison Art Nouveau comes in three variants of increasing ornamentation: Art Nouveau with Flourishes, Modified, and Ornate.
(I would like to be Mic Wright with Flourishes; I am not so deluded as to think I could ever ascend to the heights of Mic Wright Ornate.)
2. ALBUM
H’art songs by Moondog
Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify
[His life] is one of the most improbable lives of the twentieth century: a blind and homeless street musician becomes a legendary eccentric in New York City and rises to prominence as a major-label recording artist and internationally respected composer. He became an honorary member of the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in the late 1940s. His unique, melodic compositions were released by the Prestige jazz label, and the late 1960s Viking-garbed Moondog became a pop music sensation on Columbia Records…
— Moondog The Viking of 6th Avenue (authorised biography), Robert Scotto (2007)
Moondog’s instrumentals are some of the most beautiful and mesmerising music of the 20th Century but the use of ‘High On A Rocky Ledge’ at the end of an episode of Our Flag Means Death sent me back to H’Art Songs (1978), a collection of his songs with vocals which combines deceptive simplicity in music and lyrics with sentiments that seem to unfold ever more with each listen. I prescribe' Do Your Thing' if you’re having a bad day this week.
3. ESSAY
Layoff brain by
Layoffs are the worst for the people who lose their job, but there’s a ripple effect on those who keep them — particularly if they keep them over the course of multiple layoffs. It’s a curious mix of guilt, relief, trepidation, and anger. Are you supposed to be grateful to the company whose primary leadership strategy seems to be keeping its workers trapped in fear? How do you trust your manager’s assurances of security further than the end of the next pay period? If the company actually “wishes the best” for the employees it let go, why wouldn’t they fucking recognize the union whose animating goal was to create a modicum of security for when the next layoff arrived, as we all knew it would?
While Petersen is focused on America and comes at this from the perspective of someone in the media, there’s a lot of good stuff in the essay that applies to any industry and it’s worth chewing on as another wave of strikes tries to secure proper pay and conditions for many different groups of workers in the UK.
4. PODCAST
’169. The Box’, an episode of The Allusionist, by Helen Zaltzman
I’m a long-term fan of Helen Zaltzman’s The Allusionist, “a podcast about language” and this is a particularly powerful (and difficult episode). It explores the renamings that have resulted from wider knowledge and outrage about the fact that Erwin Schrödinger abused children — which was known while he was still alive — and why changing the name of the equation that bears his name is a lot harder.
Happy anniversary to Helen and Martin Austwick (who is also a guest on this episode)!
5. INTERVIEW
Sometimes a Little Bullshit Is Fine: A Conversation with Charles Simic
by Chard deNiord for The Paris Review
INTERVIEWER
Have you been writing much lately?
SIMIC
That’s all I do.
INTERVIEWER
Your new book has a foreboding title, No Land In Sight. While there are no overt references to politics or current events in the book, your title seems to imply that the world is lost at sea. Am I reading too much into it?
SIMIC
It’s not pessimistic. Everything is just fucked up.
Beyond the paywall: This week’s list of newsletters that nearly got written, a micro-essay, the weekly playlist, and a special bonus recommendation…
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