I am the clay

The latest Believer—the Art Issue—is out! The one and only (F.S.) Avi Davis is back, fresh from his appearance in the current Best American Travel Writing, with a terrific piece on the "dubious clay menagerie of Waldemar Julsrud." (Wha?! Just trust me, it's good.) Ed Lin—the man, the myth!—on the secret behind that Bodies exhibition! The International Necrological Society's "Declaration on the Notion of 'The Future.'" Interviews (John Baldessari, Clare Rojas)...Karolina Waclawiak on a dollhouse with tiny but original works by pretty much every British writer who was around in the ’20s that you can think of...C.S. Leigh on Jack Goldstein...David Humphrey on Carol Dunham...plus Lawrence Weschler, the Greil Marcus/Jack Pendarvis/Nick Hornby trifecta—and much more!

Science-Gossip

(Via Avi)

Disambiguations™ for October 1, 2009

I. October Believer is out! A sorta "travel issue": Avi Davis on Dracula and tourism; August Kleinzahler on Alaska; Ginger Strand and James Wallenstein on Cuba; J.C. Hallman on the history of cruise ships...plus Jonathan Ames interviewed, Sheila Heti talking to Agnès Varda, Jack Pendarvis's "Musin's and Thinkin's" Southernish humor column, and more! (Derek Walcott poem... Stephen Burt poetry review...Greil Marcus as always...Regional fast-food chart from Lincoln Michel...still more...including EYE-POPPING interior art by JING WEI!)

II. Amber Tamblyn is blogging at the Poetry Foundation's Harriet?! It's kind of amazing:

"Look at you, spell-checking the word ‘aficionado’ and correcting it. You can’t even spell. You’re a Hollywood actress who can’t spell, who doesn’t even live in Hollywood but none the less that’s what you are, because I am your subconscious and I say so."

III. I'm astonished—or maybe I'm not??—that there's no Nabokov love in the comments at Paper Cuts (vis-à-vis Rosenbaum/Laura/Slate) in fact there's no mention of Nabokov at all.

IV. Thanks to all who came out to the reading last night — that was a lot of fun!

Rara Avi

My preternaturally talented former student, Avi Davis, has a blog—based somewhat, he tells me, on the blogwork we did in class. Good stuff! (He's also got a piece on the Archimedes Palimpsest in the current big five-oh issue of Der Believer.)