Just My Type

A book for the general reader about fonts.  Who’da thunk it?

‘Just My Type’ by Simon Garfield opened my eyes and mind to font design and use.  Yes, it’s more than I ever wanted to know about typeface.  You might find yourself skimming through some of the more detailed history, but for the most part the writing is hip and the subject matter interesting.  Here are some of my own conclusions.  Anyone who’s worked even casually in the world of graphic design will probably react with a resounding ‘Duhhhhhh!’.  Nonetheless:

-          Font choice is yet another resource available to us for expression.  Fonts do influence the way we read and the way we interpret what we read.

-          It’s fascinating to look at our modern world through the prism of fonts.  Look around you and notice the fonts that are used in print material, online, on public signage.  Some choices are perfect; others downright offensive.  It’s fun to notice.

-          To some extent fonts reflect historical and artistic trends.

-          Readability is partly objective, but not entirely.  We learn to read what’s put in front of us.  We grow accustomed to the fonts we see most often, and they can become optimally readable, no matter what the objective criteria might indicate.

-          Font choice changes over time, and not just because the times change.  Also because we just plain get bored.  Even if a font is perfect for its time, sooner or later it will fall out of favor simply because we’re bored with it and we fail to notice it.

Maybe the book could have been a third shorter, but I don’t regret the time spent reading it.  As you would expect, the fonts being discussed are actually used in the book, so as a reader you get to experience the font in context.  Not sure how the E-book version works.  E-readers generally present text in a uniform font chosen by the device.  Some offer a limited choice of fonts.  But in this book the variation of fonts is crucial.  Maybe the E-book is presented as a series of images?  If not, this is one case where hard-copy is essential.

What’s next?  A book about the history of book binding?  It probably already exists.  For now, I’ll happily return to reading fiction, but maybe I’ll bring to it a new awareness of the influence that the shape of the letters on the page is having on my reading experience.

Something New

She won the Pulitzer.  Enough said.  Jennifer Egan’s ‘A Visit from the Goon Squad’ has been hailed as ‘wildly ambitious’, ‘audacious’, ‘dazzling’.  Far be it from me to disagree.  Sure enough, Egan seems intent on breaking new ground in this book. 

There’s nothing new about a novel which consists of a serious of interlocking stories.  Think of Colum McCann’s ‘Let the World Spin’.  By comparison with Egan, McCann’s book is strikingly traditional.  Even though the stories (chapters) are somewhat independent, the common threads are in plain sight, the plot clear, and the emotional tone is generous and full of deep feeling.

How different is Egan’s approach.  The writing is downright virtuosic.  Many distinct voices and tones.  Very snappy writing that pleased me over and over again.  But here the discontinuities rule, and the emotional tone is detached.  She seems so intent on perfect execution of the difficult technical tasks she set out for herself that there is little energy left for emotion.  Chronology is intentionally and cleverly jumbled.  Voices change with time and character.  The conscious effort required to bring that off seems evident to the reader, and it gets in the way of a more straightforward emotional experience.

I love the opening chapter and the chapter about an African safari.  Also, the chapter culminating with an attempted rape was funny, brilliant, and disturbing.  Wonderful writing here.

But for me it was a book that spoke more to my head than to my heart, and in that sense I was disappointed.  Perhaps in order to find a truly new way of writing a novel it’s necessary to destroy much of the old ways first.  Do we really have to explode the old ways in order to forge something new?  Maybe, but I do hope that the emotional detachment is not something that endures.  Call me old-fashioned (many have).  I’m willing to do some conscious intellectual work in reading fiction, but I prefer to do it in the service of a rich and rewarding emotional experience. 

Kitchen Thoughts

I’ve been doing some serious cooking for at least ten years.  I don’t bake very much, but I do cook quite a bit.  While my interests in the kitchen have taken several different turns over the years, I tend to steer towards the classics (often French), or at least dishes that grow out of traditional recipes.

Obviously I’m not alone in discovering cooking as a hobby in recent years.  Interest in food (especially high-end food) has ‘mushroomed’ in this country.  Some of it probably grew out of the affluence of the tech boom.  Some was just a reaction to the all-too-common boring home-cooked meals that we grew up with in the 50’s and 60’s.  And now we have the local/organic food movement that provides us with high-quality ingredients.  How great is that?

While I’ve had almost no formal training in the kitchen, I have experienced cooking with lots of friends and family, and I’m fascinated by the different approaches that people bring to it.  Some treat cooking like a chemistry experiment: every ingredient is carefully measured and the recipe is honored as if it were holy scripture.  I started out that way, but that all changed for me when I discovered the simple sauté.  No measuring, just choose your protein, think a little about the flavor profile you’re looking for, and start cooking.  I was quickly amazed by what can happen without much of a plan.

I’ve worked with some cooks who really don’t know what they’re going to end up when all is said and done.  They have a very vague idea of what they want when they start.  They’ve done some shopping.  In executing the dish, the dish changes significantly a few times along the way.   For those who like to work this way and are good at it, the results are both unpredictable and surprisingly good.

After all, those enshrined published recipes were developed by somebody.  And usually the recipe is just a snapshot in time of an ever-evolving dish.  If it were published a few years earlier or later it would be quite different.

For me the process of developing the menu is just as enjoyable (maybe more so) than the actual cooking.  Usually it starts with an idea for one dish, that one dish that I’ve made before but want to alter somehow, or a dish or ingredient that’s new to me that I want to try.  Then it’s a long fun process of figuring out what goes with what.  What sides, appetizers, dessert, drinks, etc.  Flavors, colors, textures all have to work together.  I often map it out on paper over and over.  Some of those dishes are specific recipes, some just general concepts.  Things change many times before I even do the shopping.  If I’m lucky, the menu I settle on is balanced, has some kind of unifying theme, and includes enough variety to keep the diner interested, pleased, and maybe even surprised here and there.  Virtual cooking, I guess.  I could almost stop there and be satisfied.

Then there’s the execution.  That’s lots of work, which can be a problem by itself.  Sometimes the concepts I’ve settled on are perfect but require more work than I can comfortably get done by myself in the allotted time.  Sometimes the opposite will happen, and I’ll be inspired to add a course at the last minute.

I wonder what these different approaches say about the cook?  What am I trying to accomplish when I cook?  Sometimes it’s just plain sustenance, sometimes fun, sometimes an experiment, sometimes a performance, sometimes I’m just keeping myself occupied during a crisis.  I love that it can be whatever I need it to be at the time.

How lucky are we that we live in a time and place in which procuring something we need to stay alive can be fulfilling in so many other ways?  The trick is in knowing what approach is appropriate for a particular occasion given my state of mind at the time.  Have I ever screwed that up any number of times!  But when I get it right, I have a good time in the kitchen and my guests enjoy themselves in the dining room.