Ellisism

My brother-in-law (a far superior intellect) Mike McNeil gave me a copy of ‘Stuff Hipsters Hate‘ for Christmas. I’m loving this book but seriously wondering how he really feels about ME (and my super-cool John Varvatos casual wear).

Brenna Ehrlich and Andrea Bartz have created a great reading experience. It’s full of notes, illustrations, random thoughts and photos.

They are talented, funny and good writers. Love their style.

Here’s a backgrounder from the publishers site.

Based on the author’s popular tumbler blog stuffhipstershate, which has been called Depressingly astute by theThe New Yorker and Wickedly funny by The Frisky, comes the ultimate book on hipsterdom. From the dive bars of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg to the dirty alleys of San Francisco’s Mission, the urban hipster has redefined American cool with a sighing disdain for everything mainstream. Hipsters are easily identified by their worn-out shoes, fixies and PBR tallboys, but until now no one had investigated beyond the hipster look to the even more hilarious hipster psyche. With personally researched articles, revealing illustrations and helpful charts and graphs, Stuff Hipsters Hate exposes the bottomless well of impassioned scorn that motivates the ever-apathetic hipster, including: MATING AND SOCIAL HATES (buying you a drink | monogamy | texting back in a timely fashion), APPAREL AND GROOMING HATES (high heels | muscles | being asked about their tattoos) and WORK AND LIFE HATES (full-time jobs | knowing their bank balance | enthusiasm).

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If you received an e-reader or a bookstore gift card this Christmas, here are a few recommendations for winter reading. Many of these suggestions come from members of the barely famous Wheatsheaf Literary Society in Toronto.

A Fan’s Fare Adam Uxley

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius David Eggers

Billy Bathgate E.L. Doctorow

Blood Meridien Cormack McCarthy

Dirty Sweet John McFetridge (Toronto writer)

Disgrace J.M. Coetzee

East of Eden John Steinbeck

Factotum Charles Bukowski

Fight Club Chuck Palahniuk

For Whom The Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway

Getting Away With Murder Howard Engel

Gould’s Book of Fish Richard Flanagan

High Fidelity Nicolas Hornby

I Know This Much is True Wally Lamb

Legends of the Fall Jim Harrison

Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel García Márquez

Master and Commander Patrick O’Brian

Moby Dick Herman Melville (See “Why you should read Moby Dick“)

Skinny Dip Carl Hiaasen

Suttree Cormack McCarthy

The Great Santini Patrick Conroy

The Long Goodbye Raymond Chandler

The Mambo Kings Sings Songs of Love Oscar Hijuelos

The Man Who Was Late Louis Begley

The Night Manager John le Carré

The Rotters Club Jonathan Coe

The Sportswriter Richard Ford

The Stowaway Robert Hough

The Van Roddy Doyle

Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller

Trust Fishing in America Richard Brautigan

The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien

The Final Confession of Mabel Stark Robert Hough

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera

The General in his Labryth Gabriel García Márquez

The Road Cormack McCarthy

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At the core of this great little book is a fundamental question: How do we create value? Charles Saatchi, like all great advertisers, knew how to create perceived value in the products his agency sold. He practiced the same basic formula that all of use to one extent or another. We turn features into benefits and hope to create a value proposition that’s powerful enough to influence choice.

This term “value proposition” shows up in most briefs north or south of “positioning” in the list of jargon. Value is, and always has been, the relationship between price and quality. At some price the bundle of a product’s rational and emotional benefits become worth it. But art is a different story.

The value of a painting is arbitrary. There’s no accounting for the cost of materials or the time spent in its creation. There is only the emotional and economic value assigned to a thing for it’s rarity. All technical aspects aside, all paintings are just canvas and coloured goo. What makes one worthless and another worth four hundred million is purely a matter of perceived value.

In ‘Artoholic‘, Saatchi answers questions about his life in advertising and his role in the art world. He denies, or a least downplays, his power as a rain maker but there’s no doubt that he’s a factor in the perceived value of the art that he collects or unloads. That’s what make the book so interesting.

See also: Charles Saatchi on Mad Men.

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