The End of the Book

I am writing about books these days, working on a book about books and bookstores as endangered species. About the book as something on paper you can (or used to be able to) hold in your hand. As something that doesn't require electricity, except after dark. I did this illustration a few years ago for Mary Parsons at the Atlantic. Looking at it again it could work as a depiction of the virtual library in which fonts and words are divorced from their protective covers. Once all the books are virtual they can all be burned with a flick of a switch. It makes me shudder. Booksellers and librarians are the curators of our culture. We need them.

Visualizing Words, Chapter 1

Illustration is harder than it looks. None of the effort is supposed to appear on the paper. And a lot of my work time is spent with my eyes closed or looking into space, trying to visualize a metaphor. This drawing is one of a series I did for WWWord, the new online magazine for word people: editors, writers, poets, teachers, readers, grammarians, crossword puzzlers, scrabble players.

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Late Night Comedy Without a Net

For a few years I've done regular illustrations for the L. A. Times about the entertainment business. I did this one during the recent writer's strike. The idea was to describe the difficulty late night hosts have being clever without writers to write their repartée, but it's very hard to illustrate something that isn't there. I solved that problem when I realized that without writers there are no cue cards.