I used to write regularly for the marvelous and utterly sui-generis Cabinet Magazine, and have very fond memories of that time. It was in writing for Cabinet that I began to find my voice as a non-fiction essayist, and to break free of the oppressive norm of enforced flatness that I had learned in graduate school. I was consistently satisfied with the work I was able to do at Cabinet, and can honestly say that my experience being edited by Sina Najafi and Jeff Kastner was the only case in my writing career when I came out feeling that the work was made better by the meticulously close readings of my editors. I doubt by contrast that I will ever bother to compile a similar archive of the far less substantial work I published with n+1 during roughly the same period, which always left me feeling alienated from the finished product, denatured and deformed as it was by an editorial crew that did not, to say the least, share my sensibility or my aims.
I have not reread most of this material in preparation for sharing it here, and I cannot say that I would be as satisfied with it now as I was at the time of its publication. But I have no doubt it bears some significant genetic relation to the work I’ve been doing here at The Hinternet these six years past.
I have shared the pdf version of my pieces wherever I have been able to find it, though that is not the case for nearly as many of them as I had expected when I first got the idea to create this little archive. Perhaps more pdf’s will resurface over time, and I will add them as they become available.
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“On the Market,” Cabinet Magazine, February 25, 2020. On my much-delayed first forays into investing (online only).
“The Non-Boundary,” Cabinet Magazine, Issue 66 — Skin (Spring, 2018). On Jacques Derrida on Jean-Luc Nancy’s meatus, etc.
“Onfim the Artist,” Cabinet Magazine, Issue 64 — The Nose (Summer, 2017). On medieval Novgorod birchbark letters, and on a noteworthy adolescent doodler.
“Astronymy,” Cabinet Magazine, Issue 59 — The North (Fall, 2016). On having an asteroid named after me, and on my father’s death. “ASTRONYMY is really and truly great.” —Jamaica Kincaid
“Between the Mine and the Stream,” Cabinet Magazine, Issue 61 — Calendars (Summer, 2016). On Herbert Hoover, Johann Agricola, The Compleat Angler, etc.
“The Internet of Snails,” Cabinet Magazine, Issue 58 — Theft (Summer, 2016). On Jules Allix and the Pasilalinic-Sympathetic Compass.
“Cactus Life,” Cabinet Magazine, Issue 55 — Love (Fall, 2015). On Soviet defectology, Helen Keller, Maxim Gorky, etc.
“Wonders Taken for Signs: An Interview with Michael Witmore,” Cabinet Magazine, Issue 54 — The Accident (Summer, 2014).
“It’s All Dark,” Cabinet Magazine, Issue 50 — Money (Summer, 2013). On Johannes Kepler, Pink Floyd, the Soviet space program, etc.
“Louis Riel: Dissertation on Monads” (translation of Mémoire sur les Monades),” Cabinet Magazine, Issue 49 — Death (Spring, 2013).
“Montana Monadology: Louis Riel in Exile,” Cabinet Magazine, Issue 49 — Death (Spring, 2013). On Louis Riel, Métis resistance, oddball Leibnizianism, etc.
“Who Better to Punish than the Innocent?” Cabinet Magazine, Issue 46 — Punishment (Summer, 2012). On Mesoamerican rubber-ball games, etc.
“Just Deserts: An Interview with Danielle Allen ,” Cabinet Magazine, Issue 46 — Punishment (Summer, 2012).
“The Politics of Curiosity,” in Curiosity and Method: Ten Years of Cabinet Magazine (2012).
“The Ethics of Rubbernecking,” Cabinet Magazine, Issue 42 — Forgetting (Summer, 2011). On Plato’s Leontius, car accidents, etc.
“Pattern Baldness,” Cabinet Magazine, Issue 40 — Hair (Winter, 2010-2011). On my hairline (which worried me more then than it does now).
“The Raw and the Cooked: An Interview with Cătălin Avramescu,” Cabinet Magazine, Issue 39 — Learning (Fall, 2010). On An Intellectual History of Cannibalism (Princeton University Press, 2009, translated by Alistair Ian Blyth).
“The Soul Is a Trapped Gas,“ Cabinet Magazine, Issue 37 — Bubbles (Spring, 2010). On Pynchon, Jean-Baptiste van Helmont, flatulence, fermentation, etc.
.“Leibniz’s Syrup of Ipecac,” Cabinet Magazine, Issue 36 — Dust (Fall, 2009). On you know who.
It is a joy, working with a great editor. Glad to see this archive.