3 a.m. post...

Through a tragic production error they seem to have substituted the cover for an Italian-language novelization of Cabaret. Otherwise it looks great. —Lev Grossman on the Italian edition of The Magicians

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Check out Lev's terrific piece on a pre-Virginia Leonard Woolf and his genre-loving roomie in the new Believer! It's great (and you can read it all online)! While we're at it, let's look at the rest of the May issue...Is it any good? YES. It's great, in fact!

How great? Nick Hornby returns!...Maureen Howard and Joanna Scott in conversation...Nabokov fans need to read C. Namwali Serpell's piece on "How I ruined Lolita for myself"...Lovely essay on the pleasures of Mimesis by Annie Julia Wyman...reviews by Rick Moody, Stephen Burt, Ken Tucker, and others...Interviews with Daniel Clowes (Wilson, which is great), Lawrence Schiller (name will ring a bell if you've read The Executioner's Song)...stuff about ninjas...Greil Marcus...Jack Pendarvis...and much more!

(Speaking of the Believer—two of the essays in last October's issue have been selected for the bext edition of Best American Travel Writing, including a Sebaldian epic on Dracula tourism by my former student, Avi Davis!)