Ask and they will tell you

In this week's newsletter: the value of a good editor, defacing books for art, and more...

In this week's newsletter: the value of a good editor, defacing books for art, and more... View this email in your browser Hey y'all, Better late than never. Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:  Let's get Black Friday out of the way: If you're starting your holiday shopping, might I recommend my books signed and personalized and shipped anywhere from Bookpeople? (Also, here's some of my favorite pens, notebooks, etc. and my favorite books.)   It took some effort, but I finished Richard Powers' The Overstory. Meanwhile, I read a lot of comics at the breakfast table: Chris Ware's Rusty Brown, Kevin Huizenga's The River at Night, and Eleanor Davis's The Hard Tomorrow.     A good editor is hard to find.   From the mailbag: "Is it okay to deface books for art?"   What Joe Biden can't bring himself to say. (There's been some terrific writing lately about stuttering.)   Music: A great profile of Beck Hansen. (I had forgotten how much Beck I listened to in the 90s.)   Movies: Last year, I started a site to archive my friend Lance's Christmas movie recommendations. (Some of my favorites: Bad Santa, Christmas in Connecticut, The Thin Man, and Die Hard.) This year Lance is recommending movies to watch on Christmas Day, and he's started with a bang, recommending two of my favorite movies in a row: Jackie Brown and Amadeus.   TV: I really enjoyed season 3 of The Crown. (I'm a big Olivia Colman fan — she's starred in a bunch of my favorites, including Fleabag, The Favourite, The Night Manager, Hot Fuzz, and The Lobster.)   RIP cartoonist Gahan Wilson, who was suffering from dementia and whose family had to raise his healthcare funds through GoFundMe, but was still drawing. (I sometimes wonder when artists die, Where do their images go?)   RIP writer Clive James, who praised the NHS for helping to extend his life for decade so he could keep writing. (I'm grateful to him and all the poets who leave us away messages.) Thanks for reading. If you like this newsletter and want to support it, forward it to someone who'd like it or, even better, buy them a book! If you're seeing this newsletter for the first time, you can subscribe here. xoxo,  Austin Austin Kleon is the author of Steal Like An Artist and other books. Subscribe to this newsletter   Copyright © 2019 Austin Kleon, All rights reserved. My mailing address is: Austin Kleon 1101 W 34th St Box #102 Austin, TX 78705 Please read this before sending me snail mail! You're getting this email because you signed up for it at austinkleon.com. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. Amazon Affiliate links offset the cost of sending these missives.

Art is everywhere (if you say so)

In this week's newsletter: the magic of the brush pen, how art can be found anywhere, and more... 

In this week's newsletter: the magic of the brush pen, how art can be found anywhere, and more... View this email in your browser Hey y'all, Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week: I've been warming up with my trusty old brush pen and making trash collages to get started in my morning diary.   I can't stop reading Richard Powers' novel, The Overstory. (Thanks, Wendy!)   The 50 best nonfiction books of the past 25 years. (Lots on there I've missed, but some personal favorites from the list: Fun Home, Columbine, Far From The Tree, and Barbarian Days. New-to-me but sadly out-of-print: Madeleine's World: A Child's Journey from Birth to Age Three.)   The art of Corita Kent.   What Quakers can teach us about the politics of pronouns. (Related second-person pronoun reading: "American English needs 'Y'all.'")   My friend Dan Roam and I draw and talk about the ideas in my book, Keep Going.   Movies: Nice guy Tom Hanks plays Fred Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. (And now it turns out they're sixth cousins?) If you, like me, feel like you can't probably can't handle weeping in public to another Mr. Rogers movie right now, you can read Tom Junod's original 1998 Esquire article that the new biopic is based on. (I might just re-watch California Typewriter or finally get around to Joe Versus the Volcano.)   TV: We have been sucked into the world of "'Letterkenny,' a Surreal Canadian Comedy to Rival 'Schitt's Creek.'" Helen Rosner said it's like the webcomic Achewood if it were a TV show, which, in my opinion, is the highest praise.   "I had made a significant change in my relation to the place: before, it had been mine by coincidence or accident; now it was mine by choice."   Art is everywhere, if you say so. Thanks for reading. If you like this newsletter and want to support it, forward it to someone who'd like it or, even better, buy them a book! (My friends at Bookpeople are offering signed and personalized copies of my books for the holidays!) If you're seeing this newsletter for the first time, you can subscribe here. xoxo, Austin PS. Remember this t-shirt from Steal Like An Artist? My friends at Wire and Twine are reprinting it! Austin Kleon is the author of Steal Like An Artist and other books. Subscribe to this newsletter   Copyright © 2019 Austin Kleon, All rights reserved. My mailing address is: Austin Kleon 1101 W 34th St Box #102 Austin, TX 78705 Please read this before sending me snail mail! You're getting this email because you signed up for it at austinkleon.com. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. Amazon Affiliate links offset the cost of sending these missives.

Art is the fossil record of the artist

In this week's newsletter: art, secrets, uncertainty, neurodiversity, and more... 

In this week's newsletter: art, secrets, uncertainty, neurodiversity, and more... View this email in your browser Hey y'all, Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week: "Art is the fossil record of the artist."   Books: This week I drove to Bookpeople, bought Lynda Barry's Making Comics, drove home, and read the whole thing in one sitting. I also read Caitlin Doughty's Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory. (At the breakfast table, I'm catching up on back issues of Illustoria.)   Philip Glass on lineage vs. legacy.   I try not to miss a Werner Herzog interview. (Re: "Do not underestimate the Kardashians," my friend Matt Thomas has been saying this for years.) Bonus read: Herzog on WrestleMania.   Questions I like to ask when I interview creative people.   It really helped me as a parent (and a human and an artist) when I learned about neurodiversity from books like Steve Silberman's Neurotribes and Andrew Solomon's Far From The Tree. In his essay "Stammer Time," journalist Barry Yeoman writes about how he thinks his stuttering makes him better at his job and how he and other stutterers are starting to feel that fluent speech is overrated. (This is a topic near and dear to my heart, as I'm both fascinated by stories of how disabilities and physical shortcomings lead to signature work and the proud parent of a stutterer!)   Teach your tongue to say, "I don't know."   Eye candy: I wrote about the things we hide in our work after we watched Phantom Thread for the sixth time. (We followed it with Hitchcock's Rebecca, which was excellent.)   Ear candy: I had no idea the Breeders recorded country-tinged demos before Pod, I really like the new Billie Eilish song (I became a fan after watching Finneas's tour of their childhood home), and my son has me listening to Aphex Twin's Syro after school pickup.   RIP comics journalist Tom Spurgeon. Here's a lovely essay about his life in comics he wrote during a life-threatening health problem. (I wrote a little bit about him in this post about appreciating life through images of death, "Ain't it good to be alive?") Thanks for reading. If you like this newsletter and want to support it, forward it to someone who'd like it or, even better, buy them a book! If you're seeing this newsletter for the first time, you can subscribe here. xoxo, Austin PS. This week's Keep Going inspiration: Austin Kleon is the author of Steal Like An Artist and other books. Subscribe to this newsletter   Copyright © 2019 Austin Kleon, All rights reserved. My mailing address is: Austin Kleon 1101 W 34th St Box #102 Austin, TX 78705 Please read this before sending me snail mail! You're getting this email because you signed up for it at austinkleon.com. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. Amazon Affiliate links offset the cost of sending these missives.