February 1st, 2012
Zoom orbooks: A sneak peek at The New Inquiry’s beautiful new digital magazine! Keep your eye out as their re-design and subscription site goes live next week… As a fan of TNI, I’m looking forward to this.

orbooks:

A sneak peek at The New Inquiry’s beautiful new digital magazine! Keep your eye out as their re-design and subscription site goes live next week…

As a fan of TNI, I’m looking forward to this.

Reblogged from Real Life!
15 notes
January 23rd, 2012
If I were to a) believe in a meta-narrative that predicts the inevitable setting of America’s sun beyond the watery horizon of late-capitalist decadence, and b) set out to invent a cultural phenomenon that perfectly exemplified this setting, then c) I’m sure I could do no better than the bucket list. (#72. Write impossibly convoluted lede. CHECK.)

Today’s column: Against Bucket Lists.

plus ça change
January 20th, 2012

Save the Date

Just a note that I’ll be reading February 8 at WORD bookstore in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, along with Joyland founders Emily Schultz and Brian Joseph Davis. You might have read Laura Miller’s Salon piece about buying e-books from indie bookstores and this event will be all about that. In fact, if you buy a Joyland e-book from WORD—like, say, mine—you get a free copy of Joyland’s new print anthology, Joyland Retro, at the event. Reverse showrooming/born digital reverse engineering for the win!

1 note
December 25th, 2011
You got an e-reader for Christmas? I’ve just got this not-so-subtle hint. 

You got an e-reader for Christmas? I’ve just got this not-so-subtle hint. 

self-promotion
ebookpocalypse2011
December 19th, 2011
Zoom “Although they’re very funny, I can’t stand to watch episodes of The Bob Newhart Show, for example. (The one in Chicago, not Vermont.) Something about the epaulets and the wide collars makes me feel vaguely hopeless — knowing that no matter how we feel now we’re going to look ridiculous in forty years.”  In today’s column, year-end lists and existential crisis.

“Although they’re very funny, I can’t stand to watch episodes of The Bob Newhart Show, for example. (The one in Chicago, not Vermont.) Something about the epaulets and the wide collars makes me feel vaguely hopeless — knowing that no matter how we feel now we’re going to look ridiculous in forty years.” 

In today’s column, year-end lists and existential crisis.

plus ça change
December 14th, 2011
Nice. Why They Cried gets an honorable mention on this list of favorite book covers of 2011. Not bad for an ebook. All credit to David A. Gee, who designed it.

Nice. Why They Cried gets an honorable mention on this list of favorite book covers of 2011. Not bad for an ebook. All credit to David A. Gee, who designed it.

December 12th, 2011
I’d been enjoying this great story. It had dozens of compelling characters and exhibited an incredible attention to detail. It was a commentary on society with leitmotifs of greed, desperation, and hope. I took in a few chapters at a time, put it down, then picked it back up later. I was near the end and I was kind of bummed about it. The story was so good, I didn’t want it to end.

In today’s column: TV shows based on novels might be trending, as Laura Miller suggests,  but can the novel really compete with the second golden age of television?

plus ça change
December 6th, 2011
The original name of the island whereupon the squadron of Communipaw was thus propitiously thrown is a matter of some dispute, and has already undergone considerable vitiation — a melancholy proof of the instability of all sublunary things, and the vanity of all our hopes of lasting fame; for who can expect his name will live to posterity, when even the names of mighty islands are this soon lost in contradiction and uncertainty!

Washington Irving, A History of New York

2 notes
December 6th, 2011
Zoom Here’s my Storyville short “@M1racleM0m,” stitched together in Storify.

Here’s my Storyville short “@M1racleM0m,” stitched together in Storify.

December 6th, 2011
K8lin!’ I yelled, hitting the screen with a rolled up People. K8lin winced, balancing on her juice-stained little wings.

So begins my Twitter serial, “@M1racleM0m,” being tweeted today — from now to 3pm — via @storyvilleapp. There are Easter eggs, for those who would find them. My story “Miss Tennessee” — from my collection Why They Cried — is featured this week in the Storyville iPhone app.

lit
twitlit
December 5th, 2011
13 notes
new york magazine
December 1st, 2011
Like Ami Greko, I’m not exactly sure what the cover of this week’s New Yorker is trying to say. Books are dead? E-books are bad? Old white men are befuddled? In any case, my friend Daniel Radosh long ago taught me the appropriate response to non sequiturs in The New Yorker. That’s right: a caption contest. There is a prize.

Like Ami Greko, I’m not exactly sure what the cover of this week’s New Yorker is trying to say. Books are dead? E-books are bad? Old white men are befuddled? In any case, my friend Daniel Radosh long ago taught me the appropriate response to non sequiturs in The New Yorker. That’s right: a caption contest. There is a prize.

3 notes
plus ça change
lit
November 17th, 2011
You know that salesperson who asks for your name? So they can use it over and over again, in an attempt to engage you? Do you like that? Are you more likely to buy something from them, or less likely? Please. Don’t answer.

Community managers like to ask a lot of questions in order to engage you. I would like them to stop it. 

plus ça change
November 14th, 2011
Zoom I took last week off from Plus Ça Change to write a longer essay for the Reanimation Library. If you’re not familiar with it, the library is a private collection in Brooklyn that saves discarded and out-of-date books for use by artists and others. Founder Andrew Beccone recently started a featured called “Word Processor,” where he asks writers to consider a volume from the collection. In my essay, I consider the Fourth Edition of Otto Kleppner’s Advertising Procedure an introductory advertising textbook that has been continuously revised since 1925. But “the advertising spiral”—shown here—abides as the centerpiece of the book, all the way to the current edtion. Head over to the library’s site to learn more.

I took last week off from Plus Ça Change to write a longer essay for the Reanimation Library. If you’re not familiar with it, the library is a private collection in Brooklyn that saves discarded and out-of-date books for use by artists and others. Founder Andrew Beccone recently started a featured called “Word Processor,” where he asks writers to consider a volume from the collection. In my essay, I consider the Fourth Edition of Otto Kleppner’s Advertising Procedure an introductory advertising textbook that has been continuously revised since 1925. But “the advertising spiral”—shown here—abides as the centerpiece of the book, all the way to the current edtion. Head over to the library’s site to learn more.

1 note
plus ça change
November 4th, 2011
And the winner for best title and best cover design of 1905 is … Miss Nonentity my L.T. Meade. Ms. Meade wrote over 300 (!) books for girls, including “A Gay Charmer, Wild Kitty, Daddy’s Girl, etc.” I assume that is Ms. N, not the author, there on the cover.

And the winner for best title and best cover design of 1905 is … Miss Nonentity my L.T. Meade. Ms. Meade wrote over 300 (!) books for girls, including “A Gay Charmer, Wild Kitty, Daddy’s Girl, etc.”

I assume that is Ms. N, not the author, there on the cover.

1 note
plus ça change
ephemera friday

PRAISE FOR
WHY THEY CRIED



"... demonstrates real insight into the way we live now."
 –The Rumpus

"Reminiscent of George Saunders and James Thurber, Why They Cried is a great collection of modern tales."
–Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief and co-founder of One Story

"Jim Hanas has a remarkable talent for imagining and crafting uncanny little worlds that make me vaguely nervous. And yet I never want to leave."
–Rob Walker, co-founder of Significant Objects

"A tender and smart assembly of fiction about people trying to communicate—with each other, the world—and all the ways they fail. Fail better, fail beautifully."
–Fiona Maazel, author of Last Last Chance

Jim Hanas is the author of the short story collection Why They Cried (Joyland eBooks/ECW Press) and social media editor at The New York Observer.

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