NO!vember

10 things worth sharing this week + saying no

“In November, a man will eat his heart, if in any month.”
—Henry David Thoreau, 1852

Hey y’all,

Here are ten things I thought were worth sharing this week:

1. I’ve been saying “no” to a lot of stuff and spending more time alone, working in the studio. When it comes to invitations, a helpful question I ask myself is, “Would I do it tomorrow?” If not, here’s how to graciously say no to anyone. (More in the “Build a Bliss Station” chapter of my book, Keep Going.)
   
   

2. Arnold: “When you take the time to sit alone with your thoughts, you can find who you want to be; not who your parents want you to be, not who your friends want you to be, and definitely not who some shyster on Instagram or TikTok wants you to be.” (Blaise Pascal: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”)
   
   

3. “I can learn only from bad films. The good ones I watch in the same spirit in which I watched when I was a kid. The great ones, even when I see them many times, are just an enigma.” It took me lots of drawings, collages, and side-missions in Zelda, but I finally finished the audiobook of Werner Herzog’s memoir, Every Man for Himself and God Against All. He’s a good writer! His advice for artists: “Read, read, read, read, read.”
   
   

4. “I don’t read. I don’t read any books. Every book is just the most words. It doesn’t let up. Every page is more words…. Put some blank pages in there. Let me get my head above water for two seconds.” Comedian Nate Bargatze hosted SNL and knocked it out of the park with his opening monologue and “Washington’s Dream” skit. My friend took me to see him at a comedy club in Cleveland in 2019 and it has been so fun to watch him blow up. (I can’t help but add: his gripe about books is why I design mine the way I do!)
   
   

5. Comics: The Secret Coders series was a big hit with my 11-year-old, so I finally picked up Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese. It’s great. There’s an interview with Yang in The Believer by cartoonist Amy Kurzweil, who has her own graphic novel out about her and her dad using AI to connect with her dead grandfather. (See #2 in my “3 stories about artificial intelligence.”)

   
   

6. More pictures and words: An excerpt from Edward Carey’s new novel, Edith Holler. (I’m a big fan and have a bunch of his drawings up in the studio. Here’s an interview we did back in 2021.)
   
   

7. Ear candy: I gave it a mention back in April, but Yo La Tengo’s latest album This Stupid World has sounded so good in the studio this week. I think I’ve been listening to them for over half my life now, and they somehow keep making great records. (I’m watching their KEXP performance as I type this letter.)
   
   

8. Assorted eye candy: Ruth Asawa’s sketchbook drawings, John Berger’s drawings of pansies, a complete archive of Whole Earth catalogs, and a volvelle for writing cartoon gags.
   
   

9. Poem: “When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, / I all alone beweep my outcast state, / And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries…” Judi Dench recites Shakespeare. (”Sonnet 29.”)
   
   

10. RIP artist Robert Irwin, who said it was his job “to make you a little more aware than you were the day before of how beautiful the world is.” (I highly recommend Lawrence Weschler’s conversations with Irwin, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees and his remembrance of his friend.)
    

Thanks for reading. This is a hand-rolled, algorithm-free, completely reader-supported publication. If you’d like to support my work, buy my books, hire me to speak, or become a paid subscriber:

xoxo,

Austin

PS. Coconut abides.