Mythologies

...speaking of The Believer—interviews editor Ross Simonini is one half of NewVillager, and this NewVideo (for their song "RichDoors") is not only a lot of fun—"an IntegratedEvent in ten parts depicting the NewVillagerMythology"—but also features, around the 1:15 mark, our outgoing mg. ed., Andrew Leland! (And just found this, HTMLGiant likes it, too!)(And here's more on the video, at IFC News.)



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Everyone knows about this already: the latest McSweeney's is a box (painted like a head) full of good stuff: a shard of Michael Chabon's abandoned, post–Mysteries of Pittsburgh novel, Fountain City, replete with annotations; a long and funny piece by (Blvr. columnist) Jack Pendarvis, "Jungle Geronimo in Gay Paree"; a "standard" issue of McSwy's; a screenplay; a regular play; a short illustrated story...also a fun surprise by Angela Petrella and her sister. Also the box is great for putting other stuff (pamphlets!) in...



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An antipodean bookseller talks about McSweeney's/Blvr./etc.

Art issue

The Believer's Art Issue is out!

Michael Paul Mason on an art-world darling—who went on to sell doughnuts at Krispy Kreme...

The grandson of Charles and Ray Eames constructs an alternate universe...

This comics-heavy issue also features Jeff Chang on Morrie Turner (the first nationally syndicated African American cartoonist), the one and only Hillary Chute talking to Aline Kominsky, interviews with Peter Blegvad and Chris Ware, and...a new feature, called "Comics"!

Plus Michelle Tea, Greil Marcus, Joshua Cohen, and much more...

Jack Pendarvis...more...more...

Also!

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!

September Believer

The September Believer is out, with Rich Cohen on car salesmen, an interview with Rebecca Solnit, Damion Searls's take on the abridged Moby Dick; an amazing excerpt from Stephen Elliott's The Adderall Diaries, Jack Pendarvis's new column, and more (Nick Cave...Brad Neely...). I'm especially excited by Sara Gran and Megan Abbott's piece on V.C. Andrews:

You could argue that Andrews’s books are so unusual and original that critics, scholars, and other “serious” readers don’t know what to do with them. Though there’s an obvious debt to the Brontë sisters, nineteenth-century sensation novels like Lady Audley’s Secret, and Daphne du Maurier’s Gothic fiction, at heart Andrews’s novels have little in common with the genres where they ought to fit. They’re too offbeat for romance, too slow to qualify as thrillers, too explicit for Gothic, and far too dark and complex for young adult. Many booksellers shelve them with horror, but Andrews’s concerns with family, emotion, and relationships put her books firmly outside the genre. Although the supernatural makes brief appearances in Andrews’s work, her largest topic is the all-too-natural tragedy of families gone wrong.

Ultimately, Andrews’s novels constitute their own genre, in which secrets, lies, desire, and moral corruption all stem from—and are contained in—the family. In her world, parents starve their children, sister and brother become husband and wife, and grandparents punish grandchildren for being “devil’s spawn.” No one is to be trusted, and few adults are who they claim to be. Most significantly, there are no happy endings. For all their teen-girl fantasy elements, the books are also gritty, raw, and extremely dirty. There is little cynical or formulaic about them. If anything, they are too raw, too revealing of the author’s own obsessions—which, as we’ll see, might be exactly why no one ever talks about them.

(You must buy the magazine for the whole article...it's worth it™.)

February Believer

February Believer is out! It's all over the map. Don't get whiplash! Muriel Spark...New Zealand rock...Thornton Wilder's other writing...Travis Nichols talks to John Ashbery...Sheila Heti talks to Mary Gaitskill...Stephen Burt reviews Robyn Schiff's Revolver...Tom Bissell on videogames...MORE...The very funny Jack Pendarvis, with "The Fifty Greatest Things That Just Popped Into My Head"...Dzyd Khongster's food-centered micro-interviews...

Podium jitters — exquisite boredom — Sammy Davis Melville — new Believer sort of ROCKS

The new Believer is out, with some great stuff, including Dizzyhead Rachel's wonderful piece on public speaking and Dizzyhead Stubes's look at the "new" Philip K. Dick novel. (The rest of the stuff is by people who do not identify as Dizzyheads, but possibly wish they were Dizzyheads.) Don't miss Ghita Schwarz's boredom epic, John Freeman's personal take on Updike, Alec Michod's interview with Richard Powers...woah...lots of good stuff here. I tried reading Jack Pendarvis's take on Moby-Dick as written by Sammy Davis Jr. and had to stop three times because I kept laughing. Then I was able to control myself and finished it....also: Chris Bachelder, Steve Burt, David Byrne interviewing Olivia Judson (!), Carrie Brownstein (ex–Sleater-Kinney) interviewing Cheryl Hines (!!)...and more...Only a fraction of this stuff can be seen online, so you might as well subscribe!