Contemporary publishing, e-media, and writing owe much to an unsung hero who worked in the trenches of the culture industry (for pulp magazines, Hollywood films, and advertising) and caroused and collaborated with the avant-garde throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Robert Carlton Brown (1886-1959) turned up in the midst of virtually every significant American literary, artistic, political, and popular or countercultural movement of his time--from Chicago's Cliff Dweller's Club to Greenwich Village's bohemians and the Imagist...

Contemporary publishing, e-media, and writing owe much to an unsung hero who worked in the trenches of the culture industry (for pulp magazines, Hollywood films, and advertising) and caroused and collaborated with the avant-garde throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Robert Carlton Brown (1886-1959) turned up in the midst of virtually every significant American literary, artistic, political, and popular or countercultural movement of his time--from Chicago's Cliff Dweller's Club to Greenwich Village's bohemians and the Imagist...

Originally published in 1929, Bob Brown's 1450-1950 is a collection of hand-written, "optical" poems." This parodic set of "scratches" extends and challenges the legacy Gutenberg's standardized type set and blurs the boundaries between scribbles, art, and literature. In this new edition, scholar and Brown biographer Craig Saper offers a new introduction to the work with several new contributions from artists, poets, and critics paying homage to Brown's impact on the Beat movement, LANGUAGE poetry, and the field of digital modernism.