Month in Review: May

Books Read:

Kevin Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (2005)

Jonathan Hopkin, Anti-System Politics: The Crisis of Market Liberalism in Rich Democracies (2020)

I've been listening to a couple new podcasts this month; the philosophy podcast The Partially Examined Life (PEL), and the history of conservatism podcast Know Your Enemy (KYE). Both are very good and very helpful for me in filling in some important gaps in my knowledge. My knowledge of the philosophic tradition is very thin, so PEL is useful as a kind of intro course on major thinkers and ideas. I've been mostly focusing on subjects and thinkers who address politics and economics. There was a very good series with Elizabeth Anderson that I listened to this morning. The PEL crew are all non-professional philosophers who, none-the-less, are very professional in their dedication and consideration of their subject. In contrast the KYE crew were more closely involved in the inner workings of their subject, conservative politics. They are especially strong on intellectual conservatism. The episode, "Gun Power" was particularly good. Also notable was the episode on the Koch dynasty.

Project Update:

Slow progress. The past three weeks have been unexpectedly busy with no free time after work.

Month in Review: April

Books Read:

Miguel de Montaigne; Essays, Book 2
Robert Sapolosky; Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (2017)
Daniel Kahneman; Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)
Iain M. Banks; Surface Detail (2010)
Lewis Trondheim and Olivier Vatine, Infinity 8, Vol. 2: Back to the Fuhrer
Lewish Trondheim and Fabien Velhmann, Infinity 8, Vol. 3: The Gospel According to Emma

Project Update:

Tentative Completion Date--July 4, 2020

Month in Review: March

Books Read:

Philip Pullman, The Secret Commonwealth

Montaigne, The Essays, Book 1 (rereading)

Sarah Bakewell, How to Live: A Life of Montaigne (rereading)

Project Update:

Due to the pandemic and other factors (long work hours) I haven't made much progress this month. I've switched my focus away from the illustrations to the writing of the text sections, which I've broken up into 4 parts (that I'm calling essays), each being approximately 1500 words. I've written the first of these in draft. I've come to a realization, albeit rather late, that if I don't make concrete daily goals I never make any progress. I am not good at measuring how long it will take to complete each task, but I figure if I at least set aside time each day to work on a project I will be better off than I am now. I hope to spend at least 30 minutes to 1 hour a day doing creative work (writing and drawing) and 30 minutes to 1 hour a day reading. On my days off I should be able to do more, but that will vary depending on the day.

As far as viewing goes, I've still been watching Star Trek Next Generation (about a quarter through season 6), I've rewatched Masaaki Yuasa's Tatami Galaxy (anime tv series) and Lu Over the Wall (anime film). I also finished watching with Lily Edo Oh! Rocket (anime tv series). I started a new podcast, Robert Pogue Harrison's Entitled Opinions, which I think is really good.   

Month in Review: February

Books Read:

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (read chapter 4, still reading)

William York Tindall; A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake (still reading)

Edmund Lloyd Epstein; A Guide Through Finnegans Wake (still reading)

Richard Powers, The Overstory

Barbara Maria Stafford; Visual Analogy: Consciousness as the Art of Connecting (still reading)

Bill McKibben, Falter 

Philip Pullman, The Secret Commonwealth (still reading)

Project Update:

Late in 2018 I came up with a rough idea for a graphic novel. One of the biggest considerations I had for this new story was that it would be short. I had already made a few experimental pieces, but nothing yet like a finished work. At the beginning of last year, January 2019,  I drew up a draft of the first 20 pages of that story. Most of the sketches were fairly rough. As I began to revise and flesh out the story I realized the completed project would run to well over 100 pages. My better judgement warned against commiting to such a long project. I wasn't entirely happy with the story I had begun anyways, so it was with some relief that I went back to the drawing board. From March to September I reworked it entirely. 

The inspiration for this revised version was Edmund Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar. Spenser's poem is, not surprisingly, divided into 12 months, each with a theme relevant to its season. Another influence was early full-page Sunday comics like Little Nemo in Slumberland. I liked the idea of creating a dense story confined to a limited number of panels. My comic would now be 12 chapters, with each chapter being a single 2 page spread.

I spent those seven months sketching out the first few chapters and laying out a rough plot for the entire story. I was mostly happy with the story as it was evolving and began to prepare for the next step. Since I had never written a graphic novel I began to have some hesitations on how I would go about inking and coloring it. Rather than move forward, I decided to start a new project as a chance to refresh myself while experimenting on technique. My goal was to draw a page a week over the next few weeks. I planned to make a short comic of around 10 pages (it ended up being 6). The result was a wordless impressionistic narrative titled "Simon on the Shores of Ruin." I was able to finish it by the end of the year. 

I have recommenced with my project. I've reworked it once again, significantly changing some details, while happily staying true to the original theme. Visions and revisions have rendered the story is significantly better, I believe. Since my goal is publication,  I'm considering doing revisions of the first three chapters (the first six pages) until they reach a professional level. I'd like to seek out some advice on how to bring the quality to this stage. So, there may be a bit of an intermission between the completion of the first three chapters and the remaining nine. If I am not able to bring it to the level of being publishable I will go ahead and finish it. 

I should add, one change to my latest version is the addition is a companion text to the wordless comic pages as a kind of commentary. In addition to the six comic pages there will be significantly more pages of text, perhaps as many as 24. I've written out much of this text already, and don't see that element as holding back the project's progress.

I have been on the overtime list since January and so have not had as much free time as I had from October to December of last year. I have almost no time or energy to work on anything besides my story and that intermittently at best. If I can get in a few hours of work a week, I feel lucky. I will be on the overtime list one more week after this week and then will take myself off the list for the end of January.

I do not want to think too much beyond this project, but there are a lot of other things I'm eager to work on. I'd like to read more and there are a few essays I'd like to write. I find, unfortunately, that I'm not able to work on multiple projects at once. I want to write an essay I'm calling utopian economics, which is, in part, a rebuke to libertarianism. After this, I'd like to write or at least research systems thinking, complexity, and what I call thinking in images. Lastly, I'd like to get around to reading Hans Blumenberg, but who knows when that will happen. 

Month in Review: January

Books Read:

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (read chapters 1-3, still reading)
William York Tindall; A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake (still reading)
Edmund Lloyd Epstein; A Guide Through Finnegans Wake (still reading)
Jo Walton, Farthing
Andrew Bacevich, The Age of Illusions
Richard Powers, The Overstory (still reading)
Philip Pullman, The Secret Commonwealth (still reading)
Lewis Trondheim, Dominique Bertail, ZEP; Infinity 8 Volume 1: Love and Mummies (graphic novel)
Gwen De Bonneval & Fabien Vehlmann; Last Days of an Immortal (graphic novel, still reading)
Barbara Maria Stafford; Visual Analogy: Consciousness as the Art of Connecting (still reading)

Project News:

I finished and submitted a 1500 word essay for the journal Jesus the Imagination. The essay is a tribute to Harold Bloom.

The large project I spent all of last year conceptualizing is moving ahead. I had several false starts as I've experimented with the layout of the drawings (mostly concerning how large each panel should be). The story continues to evolve, but it is reassuringly similar to my original conception, albeit in a round about way. I plan to do scans of that original conception and may post them relatively soon. I think it would make an interesting contrast to observe where the project began and where it has ended up.

I have a few writing projects I hope to tackle this year. The first is an essay on economics and utopia. I've been mulling over this essay for a long time. It may end up being divided into at least two parts. The first part being an essay on economics and literature, which will be based on the readings I did for the Amimetobios course, Imagining Money.

I also plan on writing several commentaries on Finnegans Wake. I'm already considering an essay on the figure of "the cad."

Year in Review: 2019

This post will serve as a month in review for December as well as a year in review. December is the busiest month of the year at work; coming in early, working late. That said, I still got quite a bit done. I came close to finishing the six page comic. The last page is sketched and inked and nearly colored. I'm also nearly finished with an essay for Jesus the Imagination. I still have time and may finish one of these two items tonight.

Goals for 2020: 

1. Finish new comic project. Comic will be approximately 24 pages. Hope to finish 2 pages a month. That shouldn't be too hard, right?
2. Read 2-3 pages of Finnegans Wake a day and comment on it once a week. Again, not too hard, right?
3. Finish some of the books I started or hoped to read this past year (mostly on economics).


Books read in December:

Francis Spufford, Red Plenty
Matt Stoller, Goliath: The 100 Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy
IA Richards, How to Read a Page
Andrew Bacevitch, America’s War for the Greater Middle East

All four of these books were quite good. Red Plenty is a novel, very funny. Deserves a closer rereading. Goliath was a history of 20C America. Very good. Arguably one of the best books I've read this year. IA Richards' book is a classic and foundational text for New Criticism. It was also a pleasure. I'm using it as a framework for a pictorial lexicon that will work as a framework for my next comic project. The Bacevitch book was also very good. Essential reading.

Here is the list of books I read in 2019:

1. Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World
2. Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom 
3. Jill Lapore, These Truths
4. Rick Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Regan
5. Tony Judt, Thinking the Twentieth Century
6. Tony Judt, Postwar
7. Richard White, The Republic for Which It Stands: the United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age 1865 to 1896
8. Mark Blyth, Austerity
9. Paul Cartledge, Democracy: A Life
10. Goodstein, Georg Simmel (started, plan to finish later)
11. Buchanan, Frozen Desire (started, plan to finish later)
12. Erik Loomis, A History of America in Ten Strikes
13. Plato, Apology, Crito, Charmides, Laches, Lysis, Menexenus, Ion, Gorgias, Protagoras, Meno, Euthydemus, Lesser Hippias, Greater Hippias, The Republic
14. David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years
15. Chris Hedges, America: The Farewell Tour (didn’t finish, too depressing)
16. Alfred McCoy, In the Shadows of the American Century
17. Pierson and Hacker, Winner Take All Politics
18. Kim Stanley Robinson, The Years of Rice and Salt
19. Kim Stanley Robinson, New York 2140
20. Kim Stanley Robinson, Aurora
21. Joanna Russ, We Who Are About To
22. Michel Bernanos, The Other Side of the Mountain
23. Marianne Williamson, A Politics of Love 
24. Iain M. Banks, Player of Games
25. Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons
26. Shakespeare, Cymbeline
27. Walter Tevis, Mockingbird
28. Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus 
29. Emile Zola, Money
30. John Steinbeck, In Dubious Battle
31. Jefferson R. Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class
32. Kerascoet, Beauty
33. Kerascoet, Little Miss Don’t Touch Me 
34. Mandeville, Fable of the Bees
35. Daniel Defoe, Roxanna 
36. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government 
37. Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments 
38. David Harvey, Neoliberalism (started, plan to finish later)
39. Dostoyevsky, The Gambler 
40. David B., Black Paths
41. Dylan Horrocks, Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen
42. Francis Spufford, Red Plenty
43. Matt Stoller, Goliath: The 100 Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy
44. IA Richards, How to Read a Page
45. Andrew Bacevitch, America’s War for the Greater Middle East

Month in Review: November

I was converted August 31st. The change gave me an additional day off each week, sometimes more, because now I am given off holidays in addition to my standard days off, whereas before the holiday WAS my day off. This has been a blessing. Of course, Emily was born a month and a half later and so any free time I hoped to have was largely lost. Still, we are adjusting to these changes. I have still been doing some drawing, but not much reading. I have only two pages left of my short comic, "Simon on the Shores of Ruin." I hope to finish page 5 today and the last page sometime next week. I am not entirely happy with how the colors look and am considering doing another six page comic with water colors. If I'm satisfied with this I will go forward with the longer project.

My reading was scanty. I've been picking away at Dostoyevsky's novella, The Gambler, but still haven't finished it. I've also read about 50 pages of Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments. I read all of Matt Stoller's Goliath and I reread the second half of Jill Lepore's These Truths. I read Dylan Horrock's graphic novel Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen as well. I'm finishing up Francis Spufford's Red Plenty today.

I've set myself the goal of completing one drawing a week, whether it be a page of a comic book or an illustration. I have too many projects that I hope to do, but since my drawing is not quite at the level I want it to be, I don't see a problem with jumping between projects so long as I'm drawing and putting stuff out on a regular basis. One project I want to do is a lexicon of images, inspired by I.A. Richards 100 Most Important Words as found in How to Read a Page. I would make one picture for each of the 100 words. I've already made an outline for my next short comic. It is to be a framing story around which other projects can be inserted. My Simon story, for example, will be one of the stories contained within this collection. Unlike Simon this one will not have a title attached, although I'm already pretty sure what title I will ultimately give it. My larger project will also be a story within this story. My inspiration for this structure is Dickens' Pickwick Papers and Wordsworth's Prelude, but to be honest, there are many other examples I could give, including The 1001 Nights and Don Quixote.