Fungible Convictions

On the heels of the new issue of the Paris Review comes the summer reading edition of the country’s best-designed (for reading) literary journal, Tin House.

This edition features fiction from Stephen King and Antonya Nelson, poetry by Ben Doyle and Grace Paley, interviews with Roddy Doyle and Will Self, and culinary-literary thoughts and advice from the likes of Iowa’s Lan Samantha Chang.

When I say best-designed for reading, I mean it. Journals like AGNI, as good as they are, feel good to be done with. Not Tin House. The last word brings disappointment. It’s the only journal I leaf back through like certain people re-view fashion magazines.

Meanwhile, don’t miss the June/July music issue of the Believer. Because if you do, you’ll never know the true history of the Numa Numa Song.

[Tin House]
[Paris Review]
[The Believer]

First, go Tufts Boston Marathon team! Today is the greatest day of the year in Boston—half the city has the day off work for Patriots Day, the Red Sox play an 11am game (4-4, end of the sixth, the offense is starting to come around), and someone you know is running the Boston Marathon.

I’m about to head down to Copley to the finish line but wanted to give a quick plug to the top-flight April issue of the Believer. The evaluation of Susan Sontag obituaries—many of them snide, prejudiced, and generally unusually critical—offered a fantastic look into how America deals with its female intellectuals (the short version: not all our smart women are as self-effacing as, say, guy’s gal Doris Kearns Goodwin, and even she didn’t get cut the slack David McCullogh did after their footnoting blow-ups).

The Believer also published a partial transcript of Adam Curtis’ The Power of Nightmares, a documentary that traces the power of ideas—and the persons they’re connected through. The transcript comes from the first episode, which traces the song “Baby It’s Cold Outside” straight on through to 9/11—and it actually makes a bit of sense, scarily enough.

And as always, kudos to the Believer for producing the most distinctive and lovely design in literary journalism.