Time Machine

Of novels and salons.

Last week, Sam Kahn dropped his latest serialized novel Time Machine on his new Substack for long-form fiction—complete with cover art by yours truly. Check out Cult Classic:

Time Machine

This is the second novel I’ve illustrated for Sam. The first one was uproarious, and along with doing the cover art, I made a drawing for each chapter. If you missed Henchmen you can read it on Sam’s OG Substack Castalia :

Sam also has a Substack called The Republic of Letters dedicated to contests, debates, and polemics on literary and cultural themes.¹ At this point, you might be wondering if Sam is addicted to creating Substacks. And you would be right! I had the pleasure of meeting him in person for the first time this month (he lives in Kyrgyzstan but came back to New York for a visit), and I witnessed him get the itch firsthand. It might be time to stage an intervention.

I had, of course, met Sam virtually before. Back in December, I hosted an Interintellect salon with him about “The American Literary World of Today”:²

While he was in town, I gave him one of the chapter drawings I made for Henchman as a gift, with the ulterior motive of sending my artwork all the way to Kyrgyzstan—I wonder how many artists can say that their work is collected there? Sam says that he has “yet to have a conversation with anybody in America who knows anything about Kyrgyzstan—it’s in a part of the world that, from a Western perspective, is completely off the radar—but that’s basically just parochialism.”

Here’s the drawing embarking on that journey:

If you would also like to collect my artwork, you can take out a Founding Membership to Fashionably Late Takes. Founding Members get an archival, limited edition print of a drawing every year. You can also take out a regular paid subscription and I’ll mail you a postcard with my drawing on one side, and a handwritten thank you note on the back. This year’s print comes from my essay “‘America was supposed to be Art Deco.’”:

1. Another collaborator of mine, the indomitable Liza Libes , just came out with a piece in The Republic of Letters:

Substacking While Female

Liza and I made this visual essay together a while back:

2. My next Interintellect salon with Anna Gát is tonight, in collaboration with the French Embassy in Manhattan, as part of a celebration of the Enlightenment coinciding with the 250th anniversary of American Independence:

Interintellect joins the French Embassy in the USA at the Villa Albertine on March 31