The Believer

Buy a copy of this issue from the McSweeney’s Store!

Follow the Believer on Twitter!

At City Lights.

The Believer — Tue, 9 Jun 2009 10:25:00 -0400

Stephen Elliott and Ross Simonini will be reading on behalf of the Believer with Joe Meno, tonight (June 9) at 7pm at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. More info here.

The June 2009 Issue.

The Believer — Sun, 31 May 2009 19:20:00 -0400

JUNE 2009

The cover depicts, clockwise from the upper left,
Nathanael West, Antonin Artaud, Gary Panter, and Judd Apatow.
Cover illustration: Charles Burns!

The American Vicarious
by Jonathan Lethem
On Nathanael West’s superb relevance to the ongoing future of American literature.

Close Encounters of the Metafictional Kind
by Garrett McDonough
Tough lessons in life and literature learned from Bret Easton Ellis’s appearance at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square.

FULL TEXT
Analects on the Influence of Artaud
by Rick Moody
Must one be willing to become mentally ill in the name of art?

Doomed Sitters
by Rozalia Jovanovic
How did the wing chair become such a reliable symbol for power, depravity, and corruption?

The Chapel on the Moon
by Michael Schulman
In 1967, the planners of a lunar church gave Johannes Somary 500 dollars and told him to compose “something to do with the heavens.”

FULL TEXT
Gary Panter
interviewed by David Jacob Kramer
A tour of the artist’s output, from the sets on Pee-wee’s Playhouse to graphic novels, light shows, and paintings of mutant cacti.

Andrea Barrett
interviewed by Ben George
A conversation with a writer whose fiction covers nineteenth-century mapmaking, epidemiology, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Christian Bök
interviewed by Jonathan Ball
“Language is like a weed that cannot only endure but also thrive under difficult conditions.”

Will Self in correspondence with Geoff Nicholson
An exchange between two brilliant, raffish British novelists who are obsessed with the cultural and psychological importance of walking.

Charles Simic
micro-interviewed by Joel Rice

FULL TEXT
Short Takes on Books That Don’t Exist
by Steve Hely

Creative Accounting: Art Installation
by Christopher Benz

FULL TEXT
Gary Copeland Lilley’s Alpha Zulu
reviewed by Stephen Burt

FULL TEXT
Michael Dickman’s The End of the West
reviewed by Dominic Luxford

FULL TEXT
Mary Miller’s Big World
reviewed by Jim Ruland

FULL TEXT
Josh Weil’s The New Valley
reviewed by Don Waters

Real Life Rock Top Ten
by Greil Marcus

Sedaratives
by Judd Apatow

B Is for Beatrice: A new poem
by Sabrina Orah Mark

From “Satellites”: Two new poems
by Dan Chiasson

Schema: Paramedic Literature
by Brandon Stosuy

SPONSORS
AMMO Books
Harper Perennial
Drawn and Quarterly

Buy a copy of this issue from the McSweeney’s Store!

Follow the Believer on Twitter!

JLG in USA at BAM.

The Believer — Sun, 31 May 2009 17:00:00 -0400

On Mon, June 1, 2009, BAMcinématek and the Believer present screenings of One P.M., directed by D.A. Pennebaker and Jean-Luc Godard, at BAM Rose Cinemas in Brooklyn. Film issues (containing the related DVD anthology JLG in USA) will be on sale, and curator Jacob Perlin will introduce the films. Showtimes: 4:30, 6:50, and 9:15pm. More info here.

The May 2009 Issue.

The Believer — Fri, 1 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400

MAY 2009

The cover depicts, clockwise from the upper left, Christine Schutt, Bob Odenkirk, O. S. Fowler, and Nick Lowe.
Cover illustration: Charles Burns!

FULL TEXT
A Scanner Darkly
by Paul La Farge
Reading The Kindly Ones isn’t a comfortable experience, or an ennobling one. So why is it so compelling?

Every Reader Finds Himself
by Christopher R. Beha
One man’s single-minded immersion in the five-foot bookshelf that birthed the modern American research university.

The Problem of Other People
by Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor
Of kindness and self-interest, which is the stronger social adhesive?

Ida, Who Vanquishes Goblins
by Hannah Frank
Running the gauntlet of naming: why Isadora will succeed and Kaydence will fail.

Dr. Octagon
by John Adamian
The nineteenth-century architect, phrenologist, and “foulest man on Earth” speaks to our simplest and most gullible elements.

Out of the Woods
by Mary Williams
The wisdom of a woman in her late thirties walking away from marriage prospects and a well-paying job to hike the Appalachian Trail alone.

Mark McGurl
micro-interviewed by Lee Konstantinou

Robert Smigel
in conversation with Bob Odenkirk
Two former SNL writers discuss the excellence of quiet, awkward comedy.

FULL TEXT
Nick Lowe
in conversation with Todd Barry
The English songwriter and producer reveals his fear of metronomes and certainty.

Christine Schutt
in correspondence with Deb Olin Unferth
“Your obligation is to know your objects and to steadily, inexorably darken and deepen them.”

FULL TEXT
John Crowley
interviewed by Ed Halter
The amateur scientist and professional author explains why the fiction section should be desegregated for his new novel.

Creative Accounting: The Puffy Chair (Dir. the Duplass Bros., 2005)
by M. Rebekah Otto

Real Life Rock Top Ten
by Greil Marcus

FULL TEXT
Joshua Beckman’s Take It
reviewed by Daniel Handler

FULL TEXT
Patrick deWitt’s Ablutions: Notes for a Novel
reviewed by Theodore McDermott

Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Senselessness
reviewed by Jascha Hoffman

Jesse Ball’s The Way Through Doors
reviewed by Blake Butler

Amina Cain’s I Go To Some Hollow
reviewed by Kate Zambreno

Stacey Levine’s The Girl with Brown Fur
reviewed by Nick Bredie

Sedaratives
by Aasif Mandvi

Call Me A Lyre, I Dare You: A new poem
by Bob Hicok

Getting In Line: A new poem
by Bob Hicok

Native: A new poem
by Jessica Fisher

Schema: The Phrenology of Cable News
by Angie Waller

SPONSORS
Merge Records
AMMO Books
Fantagraphics

Buy a copy of this issue from the McSweeney’s Store!

Follow the Believer on Twitter!

Away We Go.

The Believer — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:00:00 -0400

Believer readers are invited to a special advance screening of the new film Away We Go, written by Dave Eggers & Vendela Vida and directed by Sam Mendes, on Friday, May 1, in San Francisco. Click here for more info.

Nominated.

The Believer — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:45:00 -0400

The Believer is proud to have been nominated for a 2009 Utne Independent Press Award, in the category of Arts Coverage.

Be strong and tweet hard.

The Believer — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:20:00 -0400

The Believer is on Twitter! Follow us here!

Bring the Pain.

The Believer — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Will Eno’s superb Thom Pain (based on nothing), a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize, is currently playing in its San Francisco premiere at the Cutting Ball Theater, recently extended through April 19. Click here for tickets.

Marjorie Grene.

The Believer — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0400

“What do you think about people who see you as a role model, as a pioneering professional female philosopher?” — “I think they’re pretty silly. They have no idea how different things used to be.” Marjorie Grene, 1910-2009.

The Cheev stands alone.

The Believer — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:30:00 -0400

Just out on Knopf: Blake Bailey’s Cheever: A Life, an excerpt of which ran in our June 2008 issue as “John Cheever on the Rocks”.

The 2009 Film Issue.

The Believer — Sun, 1 Mar 2009 22:00:00 -0500

MARCH/APRIL 2009

Cover illustration: Charles Burns!

FULL TEXT
Contemplating the New Physicality of Cinema
by C.S. Leigh
As moviegoers leave dank, smoke-filled basement theaters behind, how will contemporary cinema change?

Notes from Aboveground
by Aaron Cutler
The films of Jonas Mekas are masterpieces of nothing.

Cathedral Head
by Victoria Nelson
A closer look at the deeply Gothic worldview that informs the work of Guillermo del Toro.

A Devil-Obsessed Conglomeration of Christian Misfits
by William Giraldi
How The Exorcist, by most accounts the scariest movie ever made, has become completely unscary.

Curse of the Spurned Hippie
by Steven G. Kellman
Among the small body of American movies filmed in foreign languages is a horror film starring William Shatner—shot entirely in Esperanto.

Sam Mendes
in conversation with Heidi Julavits
The director of Revolutionary Road describes the process of adapting—and preserving—Richard Yates’s prose for the screen.

John Sayles
interviewed by Antonino D’Ambrosio
The “godfather of bootstrap cinema” on vanishing finances, Bruce Lee, and how he might have invented E.T.

Julie Delpy
interviewed by Natasha Boas
The actress (Godard’s Détective), screenwriter (Linklater’s Before Sunrise), and director (2 Days in Paris) adores sci-fi and Larry David.

FULL TEXT
Mike Leigh
interviewed by Chloe Veltman
“The reason my films work is because every actor on set is very secure. They’re able to fly.”

Arthur Bradford
micro-interviewed by Dave Eggers

FULL TEXT
JLG in USA
edited by Jacob Perlin
Included with the print edition of this issue: A visual anthology of rare short films shot during Jean-Luc Godard’s various travels in America.

FULL TEXT
The Believer Book Award
by the Editors

Polish Movie Posters: One of the Great Secrets of Twentieth-Century Pop Art
by Michael Atkinson

Things Left Unsaid: Figuring Out What to Do With All the King’s Horses
by Alex Kitnick

Real Life Rock Top Ten
by Greil Marcus

The Varieties of Cinematic Experience
I: On Opening Credits by David Cairns
II: On Michael Curtiz by B. Kite
III: On Double Features by Andrea Janes and R. Emmet Sweeney
IV: On Sleeping Through Movies (1) by Jessica Winter
V: On Sleeping Through Movies (2) by Shelley Salamensky

Sedaratives
by Patton Oswalt

My Grandfather Says: A new poem
by Michael McGriff

Schema: Twentieth-Century Polish Film Posters
selected by Michael Atkinson

SPONSORS
Harper Perennial
Merge Records
CINEVEGAS Film Festival
The Film Desk

Buy a copy of this issue from the McSweeney’s Store!

The February 2009 Issue.

The Believer — Sun, 1 Feb 2009 19:00:00 -0500

FEBRUARY 2009

The cover depicts, clockwise from the upper left, Muriel Spark,
Thornton Wilder, Mary Gaitskill, and John Ashbery.
Cover illustrations: Charles Burns!

A Partisan of Eternity
by Christopher R. Beha
A reconsideration of the oeuvre of Thornton Wilder, whose plays gave their author the reputation of being the Norman Rockwell of words.

Kill All Superheroes
by Oliver Broudy
A decidedly unanarchic Democrat drives his rental car into the woods to live and train among the anarchists.

Mental Chickens
by Todd Pruzan
Proust had his madeleines; Todd Pruzan has a CD of noisy New Zealish pop from the ’90s.

FULL TEXT
Genuine Artifice
by Brock Clarke
Self-consciousness and contrivance in Muriel Spark’s work is part of the story, but it’s not the whole story.

David Levine
in conversation with Christian Hawkey
Potato farming as theater, unsolicited headshots, and the space between theatrical realism and reality.

John Ashbery
interviewed by Travis Nichols
How difficult is it to write an overtly political poem that still functions as poetry?

Heather Chaplin
in conversation with Tom Bissell
What are the implications for art, civic engagement, and emotional intelligence in a generation of gamers?

FULL TEXT
Mary Gaitskill
interviewed by Sheila Heti
The author of Veronica and Bad Behavior explains the difference between shame and guilt, between emotion and sentimentality.

Harold McGee
micro-interviewed by Rachel Khong

FULL TEXT
The 2008 Believer Book Award: Editors’ Short List

Sedaratives
by Eugene Mirman

Robyn Schiff’s Revolver
reviewed by Stephen Burt

Brian Francis Slattery’s Liberation
reviewed by Jeff VanderMeer

Lisa Russ Spaar’s Satin Cash
reviewed by Jennifer Chang

Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library #19
reviewed by Mark Edmund Doten

FULL TEXT
Bragi Ólafsson’s The Pets
reviewed by Lara Tupper

FULL TEXT
S. Yizhar’s Khirbet Khizeh
reviewed by Mark Kamine

Real Life Rock Top Ten
by Greil Marcus

The Fifty Greatest Things That Just Popped Into My Head
by Jack Pendarvis

Avian: The Loggerhead Shrike
by John O’Connor

Ground: A new poem
by Rae Armantrout

Gone Through: A new poem
by Elizabeth Bradfield

Schema: Untimely Demises of Celebrated Philosophers
by Simon Critchley

SPONSOR
Harper Perennial

Buy a copy of this issue from the McSweeney’s Store!

The January 2009 Issue.

The Believer — Thu, 1 Jan 2009 17:30:00 -0500

JANUARY 2009

Cover illustration: Charles Burns!

FULL TEXT
The Sentence Is a Lonely Place
by Gary Lutz
What is it that gives every line — in certain works of fiction — the force and feel of a climax?

On the Eve of Destruction
by Alena Graedon
Fallout shelters are just outmoded relics of a bygone Cold War paranoia. (Right?)

A Certain Kind of Murder
by Theo Schell-Lambert
How an unusually dark 1961 novel dissolved the laws of youth fiction and turned hundreds of Pennsylvania ten-year olds into adults.

Notes on the Meltdown
by Joshua Clover
The bailout is a credit bubble with nothing to buy: $700 billion to stave off the collapse of our current system by inflating it one more time.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
interviewed by Joshua Jelly-Schapiro
The author of Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun rescues the historical novel from tight dresses and Renaissance Florence.

FULL TEXT
Tom Dumm
interviewed by Jill Stauffer
A political philosopher describes how misguided American ideas of self-reliance make for an incredibly lonely society.

Gordon Lish
interviewed by John Lee and Vernon Chatman
The legendary editor of Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel, and others exchanges a series of deranged postcards with two of his friends.

Robert Alter
interviewed by Rich Cohen
The greatest translator of biblical literature in modern times describes the greatest poetry that survives from the ancient world.

Ričardas Gavelis’s Vilnius Poker
reviewed by Sacha Arnold

Nami Mun’s Miles From Nowhere
reviewed by Suzanne Kleid

FULL TEXT
Jordan Scott’s Blert
reviewed by Stephen Burt

FULL TEXT
My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer
reviewed by Travis Nichols

Michael Kimball’s Dear Everybody
reviewed by Drew Nellins

Seiichi Hayashi’s Red Colored Elegy
reviewed by Chris Lanier

Sedaratives
by Adam McKay

Real Life Rock Top Ten
by Greil Marcus

Creative Accounting: Unnamed Flaming Lips Album
by M. Rebekah Otto

He Quickly Told His Life Story: A new poem
by Michael Earl Craig

Schema: A Tree of Literary Birds
by Jesse Nathan

SPONSORS
Vertical
Nextbook.org
Tin House Books

Buy a copy of this issue from the McSweeney’s Store!