Books

There have been a lot of projects this year relating to Marshall McLuhan because people are using the 100th anniversary of his birth as an occasion to re-examine his legacy and his contributions to media studies, culture, and art.

George Saunders said he was “The first among us. The most talented, most daring, most energetic and original, the funniest, the least inclined to rest on his laurels or believe all the praise.”

TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT

There are a lot of street art books on the market today but there’s never been one quite like Taschen’s Trespass: A History of Uncommissioned Urban Art. This 300-page publication links multiple genres of public intervention from the last 50 years with an amazing selection of visuals and extremely well-written essays from a number of perspectives.

A weird thing happens when you read a Perry Bible Fellowship comic. Panel after brilliant panel leads the mind to a mildly obsessive state where one strip isn’t enough. The reader must have more, a perverse reaction to the succinct manner in which it’s created. Similarly, the same occurs when speaking to its creator, Nicholas Gurewitch. Sometimes his soft voice is like talking to a lucid Crispin Glover, but with a far saner head on his shoulders, and it should come as no surprise that Gurewitch is actually quite funny.