McCloud 9 — Mots sans frontiéres

The new Believer is out, and—I love it. Brothers Scott and James Browning visit the North and South Pole, respectively—each with their mom (but not each other). You need to see this in print—the top half of each page consists of Scott's journey, the bottom half is taken up by James's.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Taylor visits the house of the great "I hate Austria" Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, and learns (among other things) that the author was a Prince fan—a wonderful piece, often echoing TB's style, that can be enjoyed even if you're not yet a Bernhardian.



And there's much more: Dizzyhead Paul on allonymic lit—books falsely published under an author's name...Conversations with Namesake director Mira Nair and with Omnivore's Dilemma writer Michael Pollan...Online you can read Hillary Chute's great interview with Understanding Comics author/artist Scott McCloud (Hillary's also co-edited the Winter 2006 number of Modern Fiction Studies, devoted to Graphic Narrative—a must for brainiac graphic novel aficionados.)

This is no April Fool's!

Time to subscribe? Definitely. I can't believe how cheap it is!

(Believer illustration by Tony Millionaire.)

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The new anthology Words Without Borders looks terrific—writers I've heard of (Jonathan Safran Foer, Edwidge Danticat, Javier Marías, et al.) introducing writers I haven't heard of: Italy's Giorgio Manganelli, Korea's Jo Kyung Ran, Norway's Johan Harstad. Perfect eclectic subway reading. (Thanks to Dizzyhead Gautam, who worked on the book.)