The Believer...

...has a Tumblr!

First post has some Spotify goodness, to listen to while reading Greil Marcus's column. Plus 31 Love Songs to accompany Rick Moody's modest proposal re the Magnetic Fields' masterpiece.

(I will occasionally tumble 4 ya.)

Notes from a screening of Grant Gee's PATIENCE (AFTER SEBALD)

If you allow yrself
to be a writer — aub___che [avalanche?]
whereas if you're a walker—you might be OK.

Pulsing laptop dot—

USE
GOOGLE
MAPS
______

Once you have time[?]—it
becomes easy
to write

(This is a doddle
(takes care of itself)

He's ripe for a cult

They don't want
the freedom
to assemble the
book by themselves
—RM [Rick Moody]


May 18 '44
Dec 14 01

mash
up

The dream life of debris

TACITA
DEAN

An objective
chance method

narrator [emphasis on second syllable]
a game of patience

Skype/speed[irp?][totally illegible]

REMIT

The reenchantment

I want to be in all the boxes. I'm not using a familiar formula. [Sebald quoted as wanting to be shelved in various sections of the bookstore.]

< Barber Hui > [??]

Sopmerleyton

yew

map [?? illegible]

Eine englische walfahrt

re-photocopying

delight

Katie Mitchell

STALKER

_______

THE 2010 MUSIC ISSUE — THE BELIEVER

It's here! The Believer's MUSIC ISSUE!

Joe Hagan's epic look at Nina Simone's life and career, through her (previously unseen) diaries and letters...Saki Knafo (aka the Best Journalist in the World) on "Orientalist Party Music" (read it here)...the fascinating Adam Kempa on unusual vinyl groove-tactics (WOW)...Rick Moody on drum machines...Ken Tucker on Tammy Wynette's other anthem...Sad TV theme songs, Rush (!?), a chart by Ben Greenman, and MORE...

There's a CD with songs—aka your summer soundtrack! Janelle Monáe! Nina Simone! MORE! Actually here's the track listing:

1. “SELF!,” DEEP COTTON
2. “HYDRA FANCIES,” OF MONTREAL
3. “DEPRAVED VALET,” ROMAN GIANARTHUR (FEAT. KEVIN BARNES)
4. “COME BACK LIKE SPRING,” CODY CHESNUTT
5. “B.S. IN A TAMPON,” SAUL WILLIAMS
6. “COLD WAR (WONDAMIX),” JANELLE MONÁE
7. “IIETYS,” BLK JKS
8. “CHAOS,” SPREE WILSON
9. “REWIND,” SCAR
10. “VELVET ROPE BLUE,” ROB ROY
11. “HAVE YOU EVER MADE LOVE TO A WEIRDO?” HOLLYWEERD
12. “OFF THE GRID,” FEAR & FANCY
13. “TURN OFF THE TV,” GEORGE 2.0
14. “BORN FREE,” M.I.A.
15. “ONE,” HOT HEAVY & BAD (JOI)
16. “COLD BOY,” TENDABERRY
17. “CLOSER 9 ¹⁄₂,” MOTHER NOVELLA
18. “I NEVER CRY,” NINA SIMONE

WOAH!!

Plus interviews! Joshua Clover coming out of music-critic retirement to interview M.I.A...Robert Christgau and Carola Dibbell talking to Go-Betweens' Robert Forster...Erik Morse convenes a forum on Warp records...Plus: regular columnists Nick Hornby, Jack Pendarvis, and Greil Marcus...plus poems and MORE...

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

* * *

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!)

Musical notes

1. A deeply moving Driftwood Singers post, which moves from Percy Sledge to...Black Flag?! (Don't miss the mind-expanding Beach Boys offering.)

2. I didn't realize Robyn Hitchcock was performing here...The Times review by Jon Pareles had me hoping that RH would invoke Roussel in some fashion (here I muse on Groovy Decoy, Gravy Deco, etc.)—

[I]n an unusual burst of straightforwardness, he explained the artistic strategy he has been using since he arrived in 1977 as the leader of the Soft Boys, a neo-psychedelic band in the punk-rock era. “It’s all not so much meaningless as inconsequential, or ultimately painless, if you find the right level to watch things from,” he said. “The trick is to have one eye full of compassion, and the other one has about 500 mil of indifference, and you kind of blend it.”

3. A long Rick Moody post is up at Moistworks.

4. A new pic is up at the Psychic Envelopes site.

5. The Waterboys' Mike Scott vs. Wikipedia in "The Day I Downloaded Myself" (which would make a great Robyn Hitchcock title, no?):

I contacted my correspondent and apologised for my bull-in-a-china-shop behaviour. He replied, welcoming my input if backed up by sources, and offered to make the changes for me if I supplied him with documentation. This I've done, finding published references to the facts and sending them to him, to see them appear in what is becoming an increasingly accurate and substantial history of the Waterboys - probably the best there is, at least until I write my own book.

(Via Zoilus.)