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The Believer November/December 07 Issue

This Book Is About

A unique monthly magazine with lots of illustrations, few ads, and an eclectic mix of subjects for the articles. The November/December one is the Art Issue and has articles on culture, art, poetry, history and book reviews & interviews on those subjects. From their website: “The Believer is a monthly magazine where length is no object. There are book reviews that are not necessarily timely, and that are very often very long. There are interviews that are also very long. We will focus on writers and books we like. We will give people and books the benefit of the doubt. The working title of this magazine was The Optimist“.

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My Thoughts On This Book

So, John and I were at UTC on Saturday to visit the Apple Store. I mean, as customers with a goal. We weren’t just being social with the thing.

Anyways, once we’d completed sending chunks of our money to visit said computing corporation we wandered by the news agent’s stand by the movie theater. There the cover of The Believer caught my eye (please, no paper cut jokes), especially the article title “Veritable Human Dumplings: Why do people love mock marriages between dwarfs, stuffed kittens, and other tiny, cute entities?”

As someone with a Cultural Anthropology minor and an occasionally rampant sense of humor, I was naturally intrigued. The article was very good, starting out with a discussion of P.T. Barnum’s promotion, as entertainment, of the wedding of his resident dwarf, Colonel Tomb Thumb. The article proceeded to ponder the nature of our view on cute, Victorian era stuffed kittens and modern day pet marriages.

moreVikings doesn’t usually review non-comic magazines, but the November/December 07 issue of The Believer so interested me that I just had to share it. What I particularly like is the eclectic mix of articles, from the history of Las Vegas floor coverings and the recent change in their carpeting design styles to a soldier’s short story on cantaloupe.

There is also a review of an almanac series from the late 1800’s (complete with a couple full-page illustrations from said book), as well as more lengthy reviews for more recent publications. The instructions for how to use the temporary tattoos in the issue are pretty witty and the responses in the advice column (”Sederatives”) were funny. I also enjoyed the interview with Don Ed Hardy about tattoo history and his art.

The graphic layout of the issue is very striking, with every page framed in a deep red and each article header accompanied by a line drawing. The index is on the back cover, along with all of the usual edition and magazine info. There are few advertisements, and those are full page book ads.

The articles in the November/December 2007 issue of The believer are:

• “Eighteen Temporary Tatoos” by various
• “The Visual Erotics of Mini-marriages” by Racel Poliquin
• “Desctruction, New Construction, Again Destruction” by Alexander Kauffman
• “Nutrition Is a Force Multiplier: A Monthly Gastronomic Chronicle of War” by Roland Thompson, a soldier in Iraq
• “Sederatives” by Paul F. Tomkins
• “The Modern Lovers” by Leanne Shapton
• “Rolling Out The Carpet for Homo Ludens” by Alexander Provan
• “Schema: Las Vegas Capet Patterns” by Chirs Ying
• “Non-places, Megamuseums, and Democray” by Alan Michael Parker
• “Don Ed Hardy interview” by Matthew Simmons
• “A Book for the Millions” review by Paul Collins
• “One-Page Reviews” by various
• “Dave Hickey interview” by Sheila Heti
• “Portfolio: Dave Hickey’s Top Ten selected by Dave Hickey
• “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” by Nick Hornby
• “Ai Weiwei interview” by Claudine Ko
• “Liz Cohen interview” by Jen Graves

I enjoyed the issue and I’m certainly going to check out the next one. I’m especially intrigued by the nest issue’s article teaser for “The Brain and the Tomb: Adventures with the Archimedes Palimpsest”. The only magazine I’ve ever had a subscription to was the supernatural Marvel comic Spirits of Vengeance, but I’m seriously considering subscribing to The Believer.

Cover price is $10.00 U.S, $14.00 Canadian and yet other prices in the U.K. and Europe (hey, I may be an HTML coder but even I get sick of writing special symbol codes).

Rating & Levels For This Book

I Give This Book two Vikings out of five (”good”)	Violence Level one Burning Village out of five	Romance Level one Hearts out of five
# of actual vikings in book: 0 What do these levels mean? »	Humor Level one Smiles out of five	Lust Level zero Kisses out of five

Author and Publishing Information For This Book

Author & Book Details Title: The Believer Author(s): Rachel Poliquin, Alexander Kauffman, Roland Thompson, Paul F. Tompkins, Leanne Shapton, Alexander Provan, Chris Ying, Alan Michael Parker, Matthew Simmons, Paul Collins, Sheila Heti, Nick Honby, Claudine Ko and Jen Graves. ISBN#: 1543-6101 Genre(s): magazine Edition Reviewed: November/December 2007, vol. 5, No.9 Illustrations: black-and-white drawings, etchings and photographs. covers are in color Page Count: 88 Part of a Series: yes, monthly magazine (excepting January and July)

Publishing & Copyright Details Publisher(s): McSeeney’s Publishing LLC Copyright: 2007 In Print: yes Original Language: English Published in Other Languages: no Subscribe Online » Find a Local Book Store »

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