Midweek Miscellany, June 17th, 2009

Claustrophobic and Irrational — I love these elegantly understated designs by Rodrigo Corral and Christopher Brand Jason Ramirez for Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley books published by W.W. Norton.

A Strategy For Authenticity — Don Linn, prolific Twitterer and publisher at The Taunton Press, on O’Reilly’s Twitter Boot Camp and Twitter as a marketing channel:

I’m relatively new to twitter, but what I’ve loved about it since discovering it is its immediacy and its spontaneity. That’s where the joy is and, in my opinion, that’s where the power is (witness #iranelection and related topics). My fear is that the suits will “Clear Channel” (yes, that’s a new verb) this simple little application into nothing but a giant vanilla message board filled with thinly-disguised spam, planned spontaneity.

Cars and Books — Sean Rogers discusses Dutch cartoonist (and cover artist) Joost Swarte at The Walrus:

Swarte has some mild fun, on the Walrus cover, with the nutty rush out of the city that clogs our highways every summer. But the assignment also offers Swarte the opportunity to clear-line the hell out of some cars and books, a couple preoccupations that crop up all over his work.

Why Ulysses? — To coincide with Bloomsday , Gary Dexter explains how Joyce’s masterpiece got its title:

The paradox of Ulysses is that one needs to read it to understand twentieth-century literature, but one needs to read twentieth-century literature to build up the stamina to read Ulysses.

The problem starts with the title. Early readers of Ulysses, exhilarated and appalled after 800 pages, were often still left thinking ‘Why Ulysses?’ Ulysses is barely mentioned.

And lastly… I can’t thank the chaps at the BCA enough for the link love . You are gentlemen and scholars.

And thanks to the scarily talented Nate for creating the Paradox of Awesome album cover yesterday afternoon and sharing on Twitter. Hilarious. Or maybe you just had to be there… It made my day anyway…