New Believer is out!

No, that's not some prototype for this month's cover—the whited-out parts are an extension of Jeannie Vanasco's essay, "Absent Things As If They Are Present," one of the last pieces that I edited. It's a lovely, learned piece, combining memoir with a smart take on the aesthetics of erasure—one of my pet interests, fittingly enough. (Discussed are Tom Phillips's A Humument and Jen Bervin's NETS, both of which I regularly taught to my Gallatin students, as well as Jonathan Safran Foer's Tree of Codes, the Jefferson Bible, Mary Ruefle's A Little White Shadow, and more.)

Also in this issue—a great Meghan Daum piece about her encounter with online venom, Daniel Handler/Greil Marcus/Nick Hornby/Jack Pendarvis columnic brilliance, Alec Michod talking to Fred Tomaselli, Amanda Stern chewing the fat with Laurie Anderson, Michael Schulman on Polari (postwar UK gay argot), Benjamin Weissman, Blake Butler, and (what a treat) Laird Hunt talking to the one and only Harry Mathews. And of course there's MORE...

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There's always more—but for me, no more, on the Believer front.

In the notes and apologies area of this issue is an amazing, tear-jerking (but funny) piece about...well...me.

It's been a wonderful I-can't-believe-it's-been-nine years. I'm too choked up to get into it right now....I'll save it for my memoirs...........oh, some exclamation points for my amazing brilliant co-editors and constant inspirations: Heidi! Vendela! Andrew!...Dave of course!.....Ross! Karolina!..Andi!...Sheila!...Meehan!...Matthew Derby of yore—Jason Polan—Brandon Stosuy!...Max!...and all the terrific writers and artists (I'm not even going to begin to list them)...(maybe I'll do a post some day and try to list all of them, the ones I've worked with.....)

The farewell asks, "What will we do without Ed Park?" Simple! Continue being the best magazine around!

(I'm blown away by this illo from the pen of Tony Millionaire.)

The Eno–Humument connection

I had no idea that the cover image for Brian Eno's Another Green World was taken from a painting by A Humument creator Tom Phillips. Yet another reason to check Bill Poundstone's Ann Coulter: A Human Document!

AC:AHD also points out that Phillips's artwork is featured on The Who's Face Dances album—the WEB tells me that my memory is not quite correct in thinking that the band was touring behind this album when the infamous stampede in Cincinnati occurred (that was 1979, the album was 1981)...

Time to listen to Another Green World! And then "You Better You Bet"!

Emo rats Had Rain, Cans

On the Fourth of July, William Poundstone—a sort of Edgar Cayce for our time—had this dream:

Everyone was talking about the clever new website that takes Ann Coulter's words and subjects them to the Tom Phillips A Humument treatment — producing random phrases of great wit and poetry.

"In the morning," he writes, "I realized that this idea (though stupid) was easily realized."

Putting dream into action, he has started a new blog, "Ann Coulter: Human Document," where he submits the conservative pundit's column to a Phillipsian process to come up with brave new meanings. Here's a small sample:

Last week — Teaching notes

I. Via L.G. Thos.: George and Weedon Grossmith's The Diary of a Nobody is now online as a blog. (I'll be teaching this book next semester.)

II. Speaking of teaching: Last Tuesday, for my final short story class, I had my students read various short-shorts, including the liner notes to The Best of Leonard Cohen, which is one of my favorite very short collections of very short prose—exquisitely world-weary, self-deprecating, droll, and surprising.

Lady Midnight
This was finished in the Henry Hudson Hotel on 58th Street in New York. Yafa was doing tricks with her silver bangles. I owe her the last verse. It was recorded in Nashville. The voice is uncertain. In those days it took me fifteen minutes to decide whether or not I should wear my cap when I went outside and a half hour whether or not I should take it off when I came back.

Then today I saw that someone at The Millions blog included them on Friday (as part of its year-in-reading series)!

III. Also last week: Jenny D's post on Oscar Wilde's reading habits mentioned W.H. Mallock's book The New Republic. Why did the name "Mallock" ring a bell?

A: Because he is the author of A Human Document, which Tom Phillips transformed into A Humument...topic of my final Friday class!

I was also happy to find that A Human Document is available in its entirety as a Google Book.